Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers to questions asked by Senator Cash. Senator Crossin's contribution to this debate was in part correct: the world has most definitely changed. We have moved from a border protection policy that was well managed and controlled under the Howard government to one that is poorly managed, ill-conceived and causing no end of disaster for our borders. Senator Moore likes to suggest that people do not agree with the coalition's attitudes. Nothing could be further from the truth. What the community wants is clear and decisive action in regards to border protection policies. They want border protection policies that work. They know what they want because they were able to see them under the previous, Howard government. These are not bridging visas; these are bandaid visas—a belated and botched attempt, creating yet another policy failure by this Labor government.

You would not want to be a supporter of the Australian Labor Party this morning and wake up to read the attitudes of Australia's leading newspapers. Just to reflect on a few of them, under the headline of 'Flawed law won't stop boat people', the Daily Telegraph says:

The Labor government's policies toward asylum seekers were mistaken from the very first minute they were put in place, and they continue to be dogged by mistakes to this very day.

The Age has 'Labor's descent into agony excruciating to see' and states:

It might have been less painful for Labor if the government had just embraced John Howard's hard asylum-seeker policy in one fell swoop. Instead it has been an excruciating crawl back to the Coalition days. Each change cuts into the souls of some in the ALP …

The Australian newspaper, under the headline of 'Demise of Pacific non-solution', said:

Five years of backflips, bad judgment, half-baked proposals and piecemeal border protection steps culminated yesterday in Immigration Minister Chris Bowen running up the white flag on Labor's half-hearted Pacific solution.

Dennis Shanahan's comments in the Australianon the subject were headlined, 'Admit it, the model has been broken'.

Trying to choose the most outrageous of this Labor government's failures is an almost impossible task, there are so many examples of bungles, backflips, waste mismanagement and maladministration. Each one would have proven a major embarrassment for any other government, including previous Labor governments. However, for the Rudd-Gillard government it is par for the course. Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the incompetence of this government than its utter failure to manage Australia's borders. I would just like to put it in some perspective, similar to my colleagues Senator Scullion and Senator Cash but taking a more local and more Western Australian flavour.

As senators would know, I take a very keen interest in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. The largest town in the Great Southern is the City of Albany, which is where I have a regional electorate office. According to the latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the population of Albany is 26,644 people, almost 30,000. Under the Rudd-Gillard Labor government, over 30,000 people have arrived in Australia by boat. It is worth reflecting on the fact that it took 186 years for the City of Albany to get to almost 30,000 people. It has taken but five years for this government to get to 30,000 illegal immigrants. A couple of weeks ago it was my pleasure to host the shadow minister for immigration, Scott Morrison, in Albany, where he held a very successful public forum to discuss some of these matters.

What a powerful demonstration of this government's ineptitude these numbers represent—more people having arrived on this government's watch than there are people currently living in Albany, the Great Southern region's largest population centre. In the five years this government has been in office, 30,000 people have arrived. Half that number, or 15,000, have arrived this year alone. We now have an average of 2,000 people per month arriving in Australia by boat. The Prime Minister said 10 years ago, when she was immigration spokesman for Labor under Simon Crean, 'Another boat, another policy failure.' I am not given to agreeing too regularly with what the Prime Minister has to say, but on that score she is absolutely correct.

Quite apart from the cost in human misery, there is the financial cost. The cost blow-outs from Labor's border protection failures now top $6.6 billion. This year alone, since the budget was announced in May—the same month I came to this place—the blow-out has been $1.7 billion, but there is nothing temporary about it. If 30,000 people have turned up under this government, 15,000 of them this year— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.