Labor's Indecisiveness on Asylum Seekers is Costing The Hills

Thursday, 6 October 2011

The Labor Government’s mishandling of asylum seekers is wasting billions of tax payer dollars. This is money that could be used in the Hills area.

Last Tuesday the 102^nd boat arrived since Julia Gillard became Prime Minister. That is a total of nearly 6,000 new arrivals since June last year. Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke has said that enough is enough and is calling on the Prime Minister to be accountable for the waste her indecisiveness is causing.

“Julia Gillard has back flipped on this issue more times than an Olympic Gymnast,” Alex Hawke said. “She was against offshore processing and then changed her mind, she supported Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) and then changed her mind, she told voters that there would be no expansion to onshore detention centres which of course has been another broken promise.”

“Prime Minister Gillard also said she would never go to a country that has not signed the United Nations Convention on Refugees and now she supports off shore processing in a country that has not signed the convention, Malaysia, over one that has, Nauru.

“It is clear to everyone that Labor is completely unable to govern but this situation is being made so much worse by how much money they are wasting in the process.

“Labor’s incompetence has caused a budget blow out of more than $3 billion combined with chaos and riots in our detention centres, where there is at least one critical incident occurring every six hours. A program that cost less than $100 million just over three years ago under the Howard Government, now costs more than $1 billion under the Labor Government.

“This is typical Labor behaviour, get something that is working, make some changes so it no longer works and waste hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars in the process.

“Every time Labor’s incompetence and mismanagement wastes a dollar that is a dollar that cannot be spent on things needed in communities all around Australia. For example, here in the Hills, That wasted money could be used to improve infrastructure such as Showground Rd.

“Labor needs to understand that the money they waste is not their money; it belongs to the hard working Australian tax payers,” Alex Hawke concluded.