Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have fans everywhere, and there are fans in this chamber. That is fine. It does not bother me. I will be doing autographs later in the evening!

On the issue of transparency—and I think this is really important—legitimate concerns are being raised regarding what has happened on the high seas and what has happened with the purported amounts of cash. They are, at this point in time, simply allegations. No-one from this side is coming forward and saying that they are necessarily matters of fact. We are saying that these are serious allegations. They are important allegations. They are allegations of a significant nature. They have been made. It is in the interests of us in the Senate and in the interests of the parliament for us to be able to have an open, frank and transparent debate within the boundaries of what is and is not in the national interest, taking into consideration the national security implications.

I think it is unfortunate that the Attorney-General, when asked these questions today, chose to try to turn that which was a legitimate debate into something that it was not. Let's be clear: nobody wants or should want to see people die at sea. Nobody wants to see people smuggling. We as a Senate, a parliament and a nation want to have a proper debate about the best way to bring these kinds of practices to an end. There is a legitimate concern that, if paying people smugglers is a technique that is being used, that should not be the path forward. Yet, unfortunately, when we tried to go down that path of questioning, when we tried to go down a legitimate line of inquiry with legitimate questions about how much money has been given, we ended up having obfuscation, with the Attorney-General doing everything he could to avoid answering the real question.

Unfortunately we saw that happen as well when we were talking about the issue of national security and dual citizenship. Again, let's have the debate. There are people in this chamber and in this parliament who believe that there may be a case in the right circumstances for the stripping of dual citizenship. There may not be a case for that. We want to make sure. We have to look at the specifics and have that debate. I think it is unfortunate that we are trying to do this in the vacuum of actual legislation. If legislation had been presented and put forward, it would be a lot easier for us to have these debates.

But, again, when we try to ask some legitimate questions that have been raised by someone as senior as Bret Walker SC, what do we get? We get stonewalling. We get the debate being shifted. So far, in what have been very difficult debates, I think it has been a positive development for this parliament that there has been, to an extent, so much bipartisanship on these kinds of issues. But that cannot exist when the information is not there. You cannot have a bipartisan approach in a vacuum. Unfortunately, we have not seen this legislation and, when we ask legitimate questions of the Attorney-General, he tries to enact a bit of theatre and play some games but he does not answer them.