Rowan Dean: Sarah, thank you for coming on the show this morning. Great to see you and you’ve also got a great sense of humour. I don’t think any of us can compare with Donald Trump’s sense of humour but there you go. But listen, we did want to ask you about the fuel situation. And we also wanted to ask you about immigration. But firstly, this business where we’re wandering around the countries of Southeast Asia, Lee Kuan Yew warned that we were becoming the white trash of Asia. Albo has certainly made that a reality. We’re begging for fuel here, there and everywhere. Meanwhile, as your colleague Dave Sharma accurately pointed out, why aren’t we talking to the Americans, Sarah? They’ve got all the fuel.
Senator Henderson: Well Rowan, great to join you this morning. And Dave made a very good point. The Prime Minister is going cap in hand to Singapore and Malaysia. Why is he not speaking with the United States, which, as you say, is the largest exporter of oil and gas and of course doesn’t depend on crude from the Middle East. The refineries in Singapore and Malaysia depend very much on crude from the Middle East. So it’s a much more certain, if not longer, but much more certain fuel supply from the United States. And it demonstrates that our relationship is in tatters.
We have seen President Trump call out Australia for not assisting on at least three occasions and we’ve now seen weasel words from the Defence Industry Minister, Pat Conroy, this morning. He was asked by Andrew Clennell – has there been any formal request for support. He said no and then he was asked – what about informal requests for support? And he said not to my knowledge. Well, he is the defence industry minister. So Australians can rightly not have trust in this government. This relationship has deteriorated very badly. And that, of course, is indicative in the fact that we have not gone to the United States for support for our fuel security.
James Morrow: Let’s move on to immigration here, Sarah, because this has been the week, I think, that a lot of us, myself included, have really been waiting for, that we would see some policy come out of the Coalition on immigration. And it’s been, I would say, really quite strong on a lot of questions. But one of the things that I’m really interested in is this acknowledgement that there’s a massive number of people. 65,000 some say, others say more like 100,000 people in the country who have absolutely no legal right to be here. They’ve exhausted all of their appeals with the various tribunals. We can’t get them out. What does the Coalition propose to do to actually get them out? Would they be putting penalties on people who employ people who shouldn’t be here legally? What would they do to make those people, I think, probably the first instance, self deport?
Senator Henderson: Well James, as Angus announced last week, we are determined to take a very tough stand on immigration, which is out of control under Labor. 1.4 million people have come to this country in three years under Labor. This is a broken system. So we are putting Australian values at the heart of immigration policy. And as part of that, we will deport those who are here illegally. The estimate at the moment is 77,000. It could be climbing up to 100,000 but we won’t stand by and do what Labor has done and allow people here illegally to remain in this country. So we are taking a very tough approach. We are putting Australian values first, and we are saying to the Australian people that unless immigration is managed properly, our housing security, our services, our infrastructure will continue to be jeopardised as of course, has happened under this government.
James Morrow: Okay, so you’ve got that 77,000, whatever the number is, people who need to be removed, whether they are deported or self-deport, that deportation, that’s a huge effort. What would the Coalition propose to do to actually physically remove those who don’t wish to be removed? The reason why I ask this is because there was a really interesting poll the IPA did with Fox and Hedgehog the other week. They said that a lot of people who’ve gone over to One Nation would come back to the Coalition if they had a strong immigration policy, but many of them said also, we don’t trust that actually in government they’d go through with it. So how would the Coalition actually go about getting rid of these people who shouldn’t be here?
Senator Henderson: Well, James, it’s very simple. They will be booted out of the country, they will be deported. They will be taken to the gates at the airports and removed from this country. We just won’t tolerate it. We want in this country immigrants who put Australian values first. And when immigrants are breaching our laws, when they are breaching their visa conditions, they will be booted out. Pure and simple.
Rita Panahi: You say Australian values will be at the heart of the immigration policy. But what about the number? Because it all comes down to the number. We’ve had record numbers coming in under Labor. When are we going to get a definitive number from the Coalition of their target figure for immigration?
Senator Henderson: Well, Rita, we will know more about the numbers as we get closer to the election. I mean the numbers are all over the shop under Labor. Net overseas migration is completely out of control. Every single Treasury forecast that Australians have been told about has been wrong, and so we will have more to say about that. But look, the bottom line is we are absolutely determined to shut down the hate, to remove people from this country who hate Australia, who subscribe to values which are not consistent with the rule of law, with our freedoms, a this is a no holds approach. We are going to be so tough and under Angus Taylor’s leadership, he has made that very clear.
Rowan Dean: Now, Sarah, a question without notice. We were talking earlier about the First Nations ambassador, Justin Mohammed, who’s ratcheted up kind of $800,000 worth of international flights, first class to places like Switzerland and so on. Isn’t this the sort of thing, you’re always terrific in Senate estimates, isn’t this the sort of thing that the Coalition needs to be either in government axing or demanding accountability from Labor for this? I mean, Australians would go, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me. Nearly a million bucks on first class travel, for what?’
Senator Henderson: Well, Australians expect their government to treat every taxpayer dollar very preciously. And when they’ve got officials running around the world spending millions of dollars on travel, that is inconsistent with the fact that we are in a full-blown economic crisis under Labor. Let’s not forget, Rowan, we’ve got skyrocketing interest rates, skyrocketing inflation. You know, of course, the government announced the halving of the fuel tax but no offset. So this is an economy out of control under Labor. And when you see officials running around the world, that is just inconsistent with their responsibility to Australians. Of course, the Minister for Communications has been enmeshed in multiple travel rorts scandals, spending $100,000 just to go to New York for a couple of days. This is unacceptable and not on. And this government must do much better than that.
Rowan Dean: Absolutely, indeed. Sarah Henderson, thanks so much for coming on Sunday morning to chat to us on Outsiders.