27.6.12 Migration Legislation Amendment (The Bali Process) Bill 2012

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (17:21): I join the member of New England in lamenting that this is a political question, though in one sense I do not think that we should shrink or resile from that. This is a political question, we are in politics and we are here in the parliament to debate the best answer and solution to this very serious problem. I do not see any problem in putting different points of view or in articulating our case for what might be better.

I come from the school of political philosophy that says that sometimes you have to be tough to be compassionate, and being tough can be a more compassionate approach in dealing with some matters. Under the Howard government a tough approach to ensuring our borders were secure ended up being more compassionate. When Kevin Rudd came to government we heard a lot about how we could be both tough and compassionate. I have the benefit of having sat through the last parliament listening to that. We saw that government unwind the system mechanism by mechanism, bill by bill, and say that the system had been so evil and that it had really done wrong to people. The government said that Australia was being harsh, cruel and unusual and that it could get to a point where allegedly we could be somehow both tough and compassionate.

I do not think that it is wrong for members of parliament to search their consciences and make a decision about on which side they fall on various issues. On border protection you can be a compassionate person and say, 'My view is that we should accept everybody that comes here, open the borders and let people in,' or you can say, 'No, I prefer to have offshore processing and have people come through an orderly program in a different place.' Those are both valid points of view. But a government that attempts to do both ends up doing neither. That is what we had from the Kevin Rudd government, and that has been the approach taken by this government for a long time. They have attempted to do both and have ended up doing nothing except, in my view, take a non-compassionate approach to this issue.

The member for Wakefield said we are being inconsistent. The member for Parramatta said 'Please—please—compromise.' But if the Labor Party were genuine about compromise and about finding a political solution, we would have had genuine political solutions being proposed and genuine dialogue and discussion. The member for New England is right to say this is a wholly political question, because we do not have that genuine discussion, dialogue or compromise in this chamber today. The member for Berowra was exactly right when he said that how we handle this hinges on human rights concerns. The current government when it was in opposition rejected, on the basis of human rights concerns, the Howard government's bills. The amendment that the coalition is moving today is on human rights and humanitarian concerns—the same principles applying to both governments—yet we have accusations of inconsistency and lack of compromise.

Of course we do not want to see people drown when they come on boats in dangerous situations in which their lives may be in peril, but all of us have known this has been happening for years. We have known about what the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called an evil trade which will lead to more deaths. I recall him saying how evil and bad these people smugglers are. He also said that something had to be done years ago. But nothing very meaningful has been done. Nothing very meaningful has been proposed. There has been a lot of political debate and discussion but no action.

We need to think about the risks that our services and border protection personnel face every day: the dangers they face when boats are set on fire or there are accidents in dangerous seas and the very real strain and stress that they face every day in a system that is groaning. We also need to think about the fact that we spend $1 billion to administer 19,000 arrivals every year. We all know that there is a problem here. Why are we here right now discussing this? We are here because there has been a series of disasters and more disasters are happening. We have all known about this for some time.

The job of a government is to govern; it is not the government's role to subcontract that to the opposition. In the act-react cycle this week in this parliament we have seen the opposition proposing bills and the government reacting. Today we saw that again, and it is not to the betterment of this place for the government to rush in and have scenes in this chamber when we are all looking around and wondering what the hell is going on. It would be better to have a measured, reasoned and detailed approach to something for once—to really come forward and say 'Let's have a compromise.' We need to sit down and say, 'How can we work this out?' But that has not been going on today.

This legislation is wholly inadequate, which is why we have put forward an amendment. The amendment is to improve the quality of this legislation. But let us not fool ourselves that we are coming up with some kind of comprehensive solution, that one side is moral and the other side is immoral or that if you go to a meeting you are compassionate and if you do not you are not compassionate.