Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I join my colleagues in this debate on the Anti-People Smuggling and Other Measures Bill 2010, the changes in which the coalition duly supports. But, as previous speakers have said, it is all too little too late. I will get onto the details and technicalities of the bill, but I could not help notice, in my rush to get onto the speaking list on this matter, that it is an issue which has moral, financial and social dimensions. It is probably the No. 1 issue in this country since climate change has been taken off as the No. 1 issue, and it ought to be. This is not pink batts. This is not a portfolio that is in the mess in which Peter Garrett, the former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, left his portfolio. It is not the embarrassment and disgrace in which Penny Wong, the former Minister for Climate Change and Water, left her portfolio. It is not the portfolio of Julia Gillard, the Minister for Education, with its memorial halls and billions of dollars of waste. This is not the same. This is a portfolio in shambles. It is a portfolio that deals with human cargo. This is a little more serious. We have the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship sitting on the other side reduced to interjecting speakers on this side because he has surrendered every other part of his portfolio to the Prime Minister. What an embarrassment he has made of it. What a castration he has made of this minister. It must be embarrassing to see him stripped of his powers in the media and in the department. He is not interjecting me now; he is playing the ignoring game. Every other speaker—and I watched it on TV—he sought to interject, and that is what he has been reduced to. By the way, no-one else around here is backing up the minister at all. Not one of them is on the speakers list. This is a pattern of course with this government.