EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

 

It’s terrific to be here in Darwin with the officers and personnel of our border protection command. I want to thank Commodore Bates and the personnel of HMAS Bundaberg for the opportunity to see at close quarters what they do and to have a chance to talk to so many of them about what’s important to them. 

I want to say on behalf of the Coalition, that we deeply, deeply respect the work that the Navy does. We deeply respect the professionalism and the commitment of all our naval personnel. These are highly professional people doing a difficult job under trying conditions. They show tremendous commitment and very high levels of patriotism and devotion to duty. So, on behalf of the Coalition, and I’m sure on behalf of the nation, I salute the men and women of NORCOM and all of those involved in our border protection efforts.

 

The tragedy, of course, is that the men and women of our Navy and the other border protection forces are all too often being left to pick up the pieces of this government’s border protection failures. All too often they are acting, in effect, as a water taxi service for the people smugglers because this is a government which has chronically failed to stop the boats. The flow is becoming a flood. There’s now been some 378 illegal boats under this government and almost 22,000 illegal boat people under this government. 2012 is already a record year for illegal arrivals by boat. This is a monumental, comprehensive policy failure and the truth that the Australian public understand is if you can’t control our borders, you can’t govern the country.

 

The Coalition stands ready to put strong border protection policies in place. There are three essential elements to our border protection policies: we’ve got to have rigorous offshore processing at Nauru; we’ve got to have temporary protection visas – and I stress temporary protection visas – to deny the people smugglers a product to sell; and we’ve got to have the option of turning boats around where it’s safe to do so. Now, I don’t for a moment claim that the work that our Navy does is easy. It’s not easy. It’s very difficult. At times, it’s quite dangerous but if the Indonesian navy can turn boats around, if the Sri Lankan navy can turn boats around, it is within the professional capacity of the Australian Navy to turn boats around. They’ve done it before, they can do it again.

 

Just on one other subject before I throw to questions. This is a Prime Minister who is now trying to blame the states for electricity price rises that are largely caused by her carbon tax. At least 50 per cent of the price rises that people in New South Wales, for instance, are now experiencing are the result of her carbon tax. If she was serious about reducing the cost of living pressure on Australian families, her speech today would be about abolishing the carbon tax or at least putting it on hold. But no, instead, this is a Prime Minister who always wants to blame someone else for the problems that she has caused. Frankly, it is gold medal hypocrisy for the Prime Minister to blame the states for price rises when every one of these price rises goes through a federal regulator. So, for the Prime Minister to blame the states for this is both misleading and ignorant and, frankly, her effort today is a total political own goal.

 

Do you think that that regulation needs to be strengthened, the federal regulation?

I think it is gold medal hypocrisy for the Prime Minister to blame the states for price rises when every single price rise has gone through a Commonwealth regulator. Her regulator is allowing these price rises, so how can the Prime Minister possibly blame the states for something that is within her control?

There’s been up to nine of these 14 patrol boats requiring maintenance at any one time. Do you think perhaps the Government’s cuts on the Defence budget might be the cause of this?

I certainly think that there is nothing that is going to be as easy or as possible with a reduced Defence budget. Plainly, the less money you’ve got for Defence, the less capable our Defence forces are going to be; the less available our Defence forces will be to meet all the various contingencies that they must face including border protection.

On the asylum seeker issue, there is currently an expert panel advising the Government. Will you reject those recommendations purely to force an election?

We don’t need an outside committee to tell us what our policy is. The Coalition has had a consistent policy for more than a decade now and as Labor members themselves have said, by establishing this so-called expert panel, the Prime Minister yet again has sub-contracted out to others the job of leadership which really falls to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

 

Where do you stand on the carve up of the GST where the Territory’s concerned? We obviously have the states entering into yet another brawl as per usual but the case has been made more strongly for the Territory to lose its GST carve up. Where do you stand?

 

I think it’s important that we wait for the Greiner-Brumby report. I think once we have the Greiner-Brumby report we will be in a much better position to know exactly what is going on inside the black box of the Commonwealth Grants Commission and in good time before the next election, in receipt of that report, the Coalition will have more to say.

 

But they’ve indicated, Greiner and co indicated initial support for that ridiculous horizontal fiscal equalisation term. It sounds like they’ll probably come out and back that again. So, do you support horizontal fiscal equalisation?

 

I support a fair go for everyone. I support things happening in accordance with the overall national interest. Obviously, that means a fair go for the Territory as well as a fair go for the larger states. Let’s wait and see what the Greiner-Brumby report comes up with and then we’ll have more to say.

 

You’re launching the CLP campaign, or helping launch the CLP campaign tonight. How closely are you coordinating a policy agenda with Terry Mills?

I’m very, very happy to be here to support Terry Mills. Terry is an outstanding leader of the CLP here in Darwin. I think he’ll make a great Chief Minister and I’m looking forward to joining him in just an hour or so’s time.

 

Will his policy on things like outstations coordinate with your government’s, should you come to power?

 

Look, we have the same values, we have the same philosophy, but obviously he’s dealing with Territory issues. I’m dealing with national issues. We will work closely together and I certainly think that what you’ll get from Terry Mills is much stronger and more effective government here in Darwin. I look forward to being able to provide stronger and more effective government in Canberra whenever there is an election.

 

 

Would you support changing to a tied grant scheme rather than the current Commonwealth Grant Scheme for funding the Territory?

 

 

As I said, we’ve got the Greiner-Brumby review process in train. Let’s wait and see what that gives us and then there will be more to say.

Following your comments yesterday about the Racial Discrimination Act, today there have been comments made that you are trying to create an ‘Abbott-proof fence’ that will ensure that there is more bigotry in Australia. What do you make of that?

 

 

I think that’s just desperate politicking from a Labor Party which is, in some sense at least, embarrassed at the political censorship which is now going on under this government. This is a government which is trying to bully sections of the media because the media are reporting the Government’s mistakes. Well, it is the absolute job of the media to report the Government’s mistakes and any government which is trying to censor political commentary is effectively trying to muzzle our democracy.

 

Is it fair to say that the increase in asylum seeker boats could be attributed to the fact that all these patrol boats, at some stage or another, are requiring all this maintenance?

No, I think that the increase in illegal boat arrivals is due to the fact that this government has completely lost control of our borders. It’s not the Navy’s fault that boats are arriving, it’s the Government’s fault that boats are arriving and I want to make it crystal clear that the boats are arriving on our doorstep despite the professionalism of our naval personnel.

 

 

Just on the asylum seeker issue, you mentioned visas, Nauru and the need to turn the boats around. My understanding is that Scott Morrison talked about also the need to make changes to solve the asylum seeker problem at the source. Can you tell us more about how that would work?

 

 

Well, Scott was talking about the importance of having a regional deterrence system rather than a regional admissions system. He wants regional countries to be working together to remove the pull factors and to stop the arrival of people from outside our region into our region. Unfortunately, this government is just turning our region into a magnet for people smugglers and that’s the disaster we’ve got, the absolute disaster that we've got: a Commonwealth Government which inherited a solution and has created a problem because Prime Minister Gillard and Prime Minister Rudd didn’t have the magnanimity to leave well enough alone. The people of Australia understand that the first responsibility of government is border protection. You can’t be a fully sovereign nation if you can’t control your own borders and, as I said earlier, if you can’t control the borders, you can’t effectively govern the country.

 

[ends]