Tony Abbott Doorstop - Border protection; Ken Henry; Labor-Greens alliance; WikiLeaks

09/12/10

Subjects: Border protection; Ken Henry; Labor-Greens alliance; WikiLeaks.

E&OE

TONY ABBOTT:

Ok well look, it’s great to be here at the Curtin RAAF Base. I’m here in the company of my friend and colleague Barry Haase, the member for Durack and also Senator Michaelia Cash, Senator for Western Australia, and look it’s very important that the Australian public understand the consequences of the Government losing control of our borders. We have a detention centre here. It’s full. There are detention centres filling up all around Australia and filling rapidly because this is a Government that can’t control our borders, and this is not just something that happens in remote locations. We are seeing a detention centre opening on the outskirts of Adelaide. We’re also seeing a blow out in costs because this Government can’t control our borders.

If I could just say a few words about more general issues. Every day, we learn more about the Gillard Government and it just gets worse. We now have the inside story from the Treasury Secretary. He says that 2010 was his department’s worst year ever and it’s just going to get even worse next year. It confirms what I’ve been saying now for months about the Gillard Government. It’s a bad Government getting worse. The Labor Party is in government but the Greens are in power. That’s now been confirmed by no less an authority than the Secretary of the Treasury. Then you’ve got the head of the Productivity Commission Gary Banks who has revealed that as far as this Government is concerned another reform just means a higher tax. It just means a new tax. It shows that this Government is addicted to taxes, it has not a clue about how to improve our economy.

Finally, we’ve had more WikiLeaks today which demonstrates that the unions are in charge. You’ve got a senior member of the Government Richard Marles, who’s effectively the member for the ACTU. You’ve got union officials boasting about the fact that they’re effectively running the Government and you’ve got senior members of parliament conceding that this is correct. But this isn’t just all inside gossip from Canberra, it demonstrates that the incompetence of this Government comes at a cost. This is an incompetent Government. As long as this Government is in power, you won’t get lower taxes. You won’t get fairer welfare. You won’t get better services. You won’t get stronger borders. The Australian public is paying for the incompetence, the division and disunity of this Government.

QUESTION:

We’ve got Julian Assange in jail at present… But there’s been a pile of documents that have been leaked [inaudible]?

TONY ABBOTT:

What it shows is that we have a Government that doesn’t really know what it’s doing. What these leaks show is that, sure, the Americans have a poor opinion of the former prime minister now the foreign minister. It doesn’t stop there. The problem isn’t Kevin Rudd, the problem is the Government. The Government has been just as shambolic in its approach to foreign policy since the leadership changeover as it was before.

QUESTION:

And the detention centre, what do you feel for the people who are in there? What do you expect to feel from them and [inaudible]?

TONY ABBOTT:

Look, I don’t blame the boat people. I blame the Government. There are millions of people who would love to have a new life in Australia if they thought they could find a way in via people smugglers but it’s the Government which is to blame here for putting people smugglers back in business by giving them a product to sell. If the Government changed the policy to deny the people smugglers a product to sell, we wouldn’t have the boat people.

Thanks so much.