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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4340 ..

Ms Tucker: For the moment.

MR PRATT: Thank you, Ms Tucker. I look forward to the next exchange. It is very important to be compassionate about illegal entrants. It is very important to be compassionate about the refugees who arrive with them and who have jumped the queue, by the way. Nevertheless, some of those people are refugees and it is essential that we be compassionate with the wretched and desperate economic migrants whom our authorities have been intercepting.

Mr Speaker, the facts speak for themselves: significant numbers of economic migrants are among the illegal boat arrivals. But genuine compassion also means that we do not offer false hope. I say again: genuine compassion means that we do not offer false hope, that we do not egg on wretchedly desperate people to risk their lives and their life savings to attempt dangerous journeys to our shores. The irresponsible left and their activist colleagues are to be discouraged for encouraging those in detention identified as people who must be repatriated to hang on to false hope when, by law, their return to country of origin is inevitable. The Greens add fuel to that fire in a most irresponsible way.

Mr Speaker, we have seen attacks in other parliaments by the likes of Senator Faulkner on the alleged behaviour of our agency personnel in relation to the terrible tragedy involving the loss of 350-odd lives when the SIEVX sunk off the Indonesian coast.

Ms Gallagher: That was humane!

MR PRATT: But it is not proven, Ms Gallagher.

Ms Gallagher: It is proven that they died.

MR PRATT: It is not proven that the Australian government, our defence personnel or our AFP policemen, whom we represent in this place as well, by the way, unwittingly or wittingly had anything to do with the disappearance of the SIEVX, but that sort of mud is thrown around in the politicisation of the disaster. It is the presentation of this sort of emotional allegation and argument by people such as the Greens and the Faulkners that clouds the issue on a subject which is very delicate and very emotive. That has got to stop. One would think that the people in this place would be a little more sensible and responsible in the way that they approach these sorts of issues.

Mr Speaker, we cannot solve the world's problems. Australia already has the second largest intake of refugees and, frankly, I would like to see this intake doubled. I would like to see our caseload of genuine refugees and people who are in longstanding refugee caseloads brought to this country. But there are 20 million refugees and displaced people round the world and God knows how many economic migrants on the move and Australia simply cannot take them all and cannot solve everybody's problems.

But we must as a country intervene in those trouble spots and we must help to develop civil society in those places. We must contribute more in resources than we do. (Extension of time granted.) We must intervene in the trouble spots. We must pull our weight and we must do whatever we can to try to resolve problems at the source. In this

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