Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

a reduction of one-third during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.

They also stripped $125 million from ASIO to fund measures unrelated to its core business. ASIO was also forced to absorb $57 million in costs for new activities. They cut $128 million from the Australian Federal Police, cut almost 1,000 members of staff from the Customs and Border Protection Service and they cut the budget and personnel of the Australian Crime Commission, Australia's most powerful law enforcement agency, by one-third whilst they were in office.

Labor also deprived our security agencies of the vital legislative reform that they needed to do their job. Despite the growing terror threats, the member for Isaacs, as Attorney-General, did not pass one national security law in his tenure. This is despite the fact that we had agencies pleading for legislative reform, including publicly to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security on data retention, when ASIO, the AFP and the ACC joined together to say that if data retention did not proceed every security, intelligence and serious crime investigation undertaken by them would be affected.

We take national security seriously on this side of the House. The Labor government for six years never did!

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