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

I will try not to be as droning as that, and liven the debate up a bit. Regardless of all of the pre-election commitments of the Labor government, all of the spin and con on this issue, it has reached a new level of crisis. We have now reached a record number of boat arrivals—I would call them ‘illegal boat arrivals’, and I would debate that very point—in this country for one year, and we still have two months to go. It is likely to break all records, and it is likely to flow over into 2011. Does anyone really think that the boats are going to stop under the current policies?

The previous speaker, Senator Lundy, and the representative for the minister in this chamber, Senator Carr—and there is an insult in itself, I should add, before I get to my very point. I am going to distract myself! Senator Evans, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, as failed a minister as he was in this particular issue, as embarrassing as he was, was dumped aside and for whom? For Senator Carr to be the spokesman here in the Senate! Talk about adding insult to injury. And Senator Carr, like Senator Lundy, hid behind a mass of statistics to hide the reality of this issue. I know the others from the other side are always latching on to statistics to spin their story. They say that under the previous government there were arrivals in the thousands and, in the year 2001-02, there were over 5,000—there were some 5,516, an enormous number. And that is true. The Howard government did face a surge of boat arrivals in this country, but we acted to stop them. We did it not by one or two measures, but by a series of tough measures on the grounds of national security and quarantine. It was expected of any government. It is a base responsibility of a government. And in the year after 2002, there were zero boats. Now that we have broken the record of the Howard government—we have now had 5,553 in this year alone—does anyone ever think there will be zero boats next year under the current policies? There will not be, and yet the Prime Minister rolled the previous Prime Minister—Senator Ludwig, you were a party to that.