Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Brandis, civility is not a sign of weakness in debates. Can you please listen to me in silence—the same courtesy I gave to you?

Let us go back to former Prime Minister Fraser. This is a direct quote from him yesterday, as reported in the Age:

I believe playing politics with the lives of vulnerable people, seeking votes out of their misfortune, is about the worst thing any politician can do in any country in any part of the world …

The article goes on to say:

He later told reporters—

after, I think, he had opened an immigration program—

the coalition’s immigration policy, which includes the resurrection of the so-called Pacific Solution, had played a role in his decision to hand in his Liberal life membership.

So he has not only resigned from the party for which he was Prime Minister from 1975 to 1983; he has handed back his life membership of the Liberal Party. If that is not an indication of a former Prime Minister’s view about the policies of the opposition then I do not know what is.

As I said before, there is something sadder than a government that is in denial, and it is when somebody like former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has to resign from his own party to make the point that your policies on immigration are wrong. They are unfair, they are uncompassionate and they need to be changed.