The Gillard’s Government’s plan to ship 800 people who arrived here by boat without a visa, to Malaysia, in exchange for 4000 refugees being sent back to Australia, is yet another bad Labor deal for Australia, Liberal Senator for Tasmania, Senator David Bushby said today.
“Given the continuing influx of boat people, the Gillard Government now must accept that they are the root cause of the current asylum seeker crisis,” Senator Bushby said.
“There are more asylum seeking boat people arriving than the Gillard Government knows what to do with, a situation created solely by the Gillard Labor Government, through their failure to recognise the consequences of their own decisions and a lack of courage to address the consequences”.
Assertions by Labor that their ‘Malaysia solution’ will undermine the product people smugglers have to sell, runs counter to Labor’s long held argument that the high number of boat arrivals is all about push factors (the dire situation in their home countries) rather than pull factors (how they are processed and dealt with once they arrive).
“The fact is that so long as the end product of permanent Australian residency is available, people smugglers will have a product to sell and the boats will continue to come,” Senator Bushby said.
“We have seen this week the government desperately trying to repair budget blowouts on multiple fronts. One of these is the cost of addressing the consequences of their out of control refugee policy – an additional $1.74 billion,” Senator Bushby said.
It is not enough for a Government to have tough words and waste millions on new detention centres which could be spent on real and productive infrastructure and services – the Government has to have the policy courage to match the rhetoric with the strong and effective policies that have worked in the past.
SENATOR DAVID BUSHBY Liberal Senator for Tasmania Chair of the Coalition Economics Policy Committee
