Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

And it is illegal, according to the High Court. They claim they have regional partners. Name one. Name a regional partner. Some flimsy deal with Malaysia where they give us 4,000 of their asylum seekers and we give them 800 is not a regional arrangement. That is a bilateral deal between Australia and Malaysia which involves no other country. It is not regional at all.

Labor has cycled through a whole succession of failed policies and now finds itself in the position where its latest option is its only option. The only thing it will accept by way of offshore processing is the one option it needs the parliament to support and, not surprisingly, the parliament, as far as I can see, unanimously but for the Labor Party is saying, 'No, Malaysia is not an acceptable option. Malaysia is the worst possible option of all the options available to the government right now.'

We do not demand that they implement Nauru as the only place on which to have offshore processing. We think Nauru is the best place because we know Nauru works. Nauru worked for six years under the previous government, in combination with temporary protection visas and turning back the boats when safe to do so. But our amendment, the Nauru amendment before the House of Representatives at the moment, does not demand that only Nauru be accepted. It only demands that countries which are signatories to the convention on refugees be considered for offshore processing. There are 148 of those options.

The government knows that it is in a bind. The government knows that its preference of recent days for offshore processing now boils down to being prepared to be flexible, and it needs to make a decision. The opposition is not saying, 'No, they cannot have offshore processing.' The opposition is saying that they do have a way out of this dilemma. They can climb aboard the boat to freedom we are offering them, which is a proven method of turning back the people smugglers and deterring the business of people smugglers—and that is to accept that a country such as Nauru provides a valid and viable way of solving their present problem.

As Senator Brandis has pointed out, the only thing that stands between this government sinking into a morass of failure with respect to this matter and returning to a policy of onshore processing, which we know will lead to an explosion again in the number of boats arriving on our shores, and the only thing that stops them from grasping the solution in front of them is pride. It is pride that prevents them from acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, John Howard had it right with the Nauru Pacific solution. Maybe he got it right. They have spent so much time and so much political capital knocking down the solution over a period of six or seven years that they now cannot bring themselves to say, 'Maybe he was actually right.'

The fact is that it is not our job in the opposition to sort out the mess that this government has got itself into with one failed policy after another in this area. But we are offering a way out—a simple way out with a very small amendment to the government legislation, introduced into the other place today. It is the Nauru amendment. All it takes is for them to do the right thing and accept that it is a way out. I particularly appeal to people like Senator Cameron—who has argued within his own party that the Malaysian solution does, indeed, breach Australia's international obligations—to do the right thing and cross the floor to support this legislation with our amendment when the opportunity arises. I have crossed the floor before. It can be done. Senator Cameron has the same privilege and right as a member of parliament. If he believes what he said about not going down this iniquitous path of the Malaysian solution, he can do the same thing. (Time expired)