Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

What we saw in question time today was a government that is just not being fair dinkum with the Australian people. We've seen it on a number of fronts in its first term and this week. We've seen the government proposing a truth tax which would penalise Australians who simply want to know what is going on here in Canberra. They are now going to have to pay extra fees to lodge freedom-of-information requests. We have seen this government ignore, time and time again, orders for the production of documents in this place. It is now almost a well-established fact that this government is the least transparent government in a generation.

Now here in question time very simple questions that were asked about the management of Australia's borders and the security of Australians were not answered. Not only were they not answered but the minister looked shifty, sounded shifty and acted shifty in his answers to these very simple questions. We know from public reporting and from other governments who seemingly are more transparent than this one that there is something going on here with the consideration of so-called ISIS brides, women that had voluntarily gone to associate with a terrorist organisation, one of the most vile terrorist organisations in modern times. We know now that there is something going on about potentially those people coming back to this country. We know that because the acting New South Wales chief of police told the New South Wales parliament that the police force of New South Wales was working with Commonwealth authorities about the potential relocation of these ISIS brides. It's good that the New South Wales government is being transparent with its people. It's good that the New South Wales government agencies are being upfront with the New South Wales parliament—as they should—and are letting their people know. It is just unbelievable that the federal government can't show the same level of transparency, especially given that they are the primary responsible body in this space. Obviously if anything happens it's good that local police forces are being engaged, but the decision-making here, the actual responsibility here, about bringing anybody back to this country in these circumstances lies with the Australian government.

My heart does go out to any children here that have been innocently captured in this terrible situation. We know from previous examples involving ISIS that sometimes there are completely innocent children that have either gone there with their parents or even been born in these other countries and raised in a terrible, shocking environment of violence, intimidation and oppression. I don't want to see any child punished for the sins of their parents. So obviously there has to be a degree of compassion in these cases. But that does not obviate the government's responsibility to first put the security of Australians at its paramount level. We have to be assured that the safety and security of Australians is taken care of first, and a competent government should be able to reasonably explain to the Australian people through their parliament what they are doing to ensure the safety and security of Australians.

There are a lot of questions here about how this cohort is being managed. The government continues to wrest back with what can only be described as weasel words, saying they are not giving any assistance to this cohort. But there is a lot that is maybe being done that is short of assistance that the government refuses to reveal. One of the major questions for me is, are Australian authorities able to go to the place—to Syria, or to somewhere close by—and actually interview and assess the risks of individual people outside Australia? That is a key question. Traditionally we have been able to do that. But there is a very dire security circumstance over there now, and some of the reporting suggests that the current plan is for people to come here, and then we'll do the assessment. I'm very worried about that, because I don't understand, then, if an unacceptable risk is found, what we could do about it, if they're already here. We've seen this many times with illegal boat arrivals as well.

I would just hope the government will be transparent. It would be against their practice, but it would be much better for the Australian people if you could just be upfront and fair dinkum with us all.

Question agreed to.