Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

As the honourable member knows, the enterprise agreement between the AFP and the government is being negotiated at an agency level, as it always has been—in other words, between the commissioner and the members. Those negotiations are ongoing, and of course it will require a vote of the members to be concluded. That is the first point. The second point is the hypocrisy of the Leader of the Opposition, seeking now to protect or defend the Australian Federal Police. In government they cut the funding for our security services again and again. Remarkably, after 50,000 unlawful arrivals came on 800 boats, the Labor Party cut millions of dollars out of the customs service. They cut our abilities to defend our borders, just as their policies made our borders less secure.

Again and again, Labor has failed to step up to keep Australia safe. They failed to invest in the equipment, in the ships that our defence forces need—not one naval vessel commissioned from one Australian yard in six years. And in terms of the AFP in particular, it is interesting to note that the Leader of the Opposition claims to be speaking for the AFP today but only earlier today his shadow Attorney-General, the member for Isaacs, was accusing the AFP of acting improperly—

See this speech in context