Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor question time tactics committee is just a gift that keeps giving. And as I look at the three across the board here—Senator Wong asking a question of Senator Brandis to do with border protection, Senator McLucas coming up with housing affordability and then Senator Conroy with regard to submarines—I do not know where to start! I will start with the last; I will start with Senator Conroy, the shadow defence minister.

As Senator Brandis pointed out, during the time of the Labor government, despite the overwhelming voices of Senator Gallacher, Senator Wong and then Senator Don Farrell, he could not remember hearing any of those voices screaming out about the fact that not one single solitary submarine was being built. There was not even a plan for a submarine to be built, let alone a warship in South Australia or anywhere else. Where were their voices? They were not around. Do not come in here now with your crocodile tears!

Of course, Senator Conroy will always be known for the NBN, the 'no bloody net'—I mean the National Broadband Network. I recall when I first came into this place asking naive questions of Senator Conroy. This was to be the biggest ever infrastructure program. In my naivete, I asked where was the business plan? Senator Conroy said: 'Business plan? We don't need a business plan.' I said, 'What about a cost-benefit analysis?' He said, 'We don't need a cost-benefit analysis.' I said, 'Would you be doing a risk analysis?' The answer was no.

But what is the coalition government doing about the submarine project? It is participating in a competitive evaluation process so that we can get the best of the best. And have Western Australians got an interest in this? You bet we have. Where are the submarines based? At Garden Island. And where does most of their maintenance take place? Ten kilometres to the east, at Henderson. We have a very keen interest in it. But let you be assured, Senator Gallacher, and let you go back, through you, Mr Deputy President, to all of your colleagues in South Australia and say, 'At long last the submarine project is in the hands of a competent, confident, mature government—unlike that of Labor over the last six years.'

Let me go to border protection, as asked about by Senator Wong. Why do they keep giving us these gifts? Senator Brandis, you must yourself be absolutely astounded when we know that Labor, when it came into government, had a circumstance in which there were no illegal immigrants coming into this country; we had solved the problem. I remember the then Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Chris Evans, saying there would not be a need even for the Christmas Island detention centre because Labor had solved the problem. And what happened? As Senator Cash told us, this has cost some $12 billion. As Senator Brandis told us, there have been some 50,000 illegal entrants and 1,200-plus people who have drowned at sea—they are the ones we know about; one every second day. And we speak about the people smugglers. I note, from my own experience while undertaking business on the Indian subcontinent, there were not just people smugglers in Indonesia; they were in Sri Lanka, they were in Bangladesh, they were in Iraq and they were in Afghanistan. And those people smugglers, they creamed it. And here we have Senator Wong now coming in here pretending umbrage about the actions being taken by the coalition government.

As Senator Brandis and Senator Cash told us in this place, we have closed up their evil, rotten trade and we will keep it closed unless, or until, Labor come back into government. I call on Mr Shorten and Ms Plibersek to stand up here and say you will not remake the mistake you made at the end of the Howard years when you turned back a policy that worked, when you created, again, a whole industry for people smugglers.

As Senator Macdonald said, if you want to pretend outrage about what the Indonesian government might be saying, then simply remind them of what happened in June 2011 when the supply of beef protein to 69 million low-SES Indonesians was cut down overnight without the government even having the courtesy to explain to the Indonesians why they did that. And then we had Labor saying, 'Oh, the ban was only on for five weeks.' The ban on live exports was not only on for five weeks. It was the coalition that pressured them into putting that back.

What a shame that I do not have the time to comment on the so-called affordable housing outrage of Senator McLucas. (Time expired)