Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Monday this week the Liberal Party celebrated Robert Menzies's 'Forgotten People' broadcast. We can take many lessons from it, particularly the timely reminder that family life is at the heart of our nation. But it also reminds us that some things never change. So, while the Labor Party primary vote continues to shrink to match their diminished imagination and vision, it reminds us that they are still the cold-hearted class warriors of yesteryear—people who play a zero-sum game, who cannot acknowledge good policy, even when it drives us all towards a stronger, secure future for this country. As Menzies himself said, the class war is always a false war. And the topic of this debate is exactly that. The class warriors are seeking to ignite a class war.

We are living in a very dangerous world. The tragic events of this week confirm that. The West—and by that I mean Western liberal democracies—faces threats from both within and without. And the evil terrorist act which took the lives of 22 people in Manchester this week reminds us that Australians are also not immune from this threat, the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. So the core task of government is to secure the Australian people so that they can live peaceful lives and pursue their own ambitions and happiness. To be free, we need to first be secure.

The coalition government is therefore delivering national and economic security to the Australian people and we are doing so in a competent, just and fair manner. Our budget priorities reflect this fact. I am going to demonstrate in three points how we are delivering national and economic security to the Australian people: (1) we are securing our borders and we are securing the Australian people by raising the standard for Australian citizenship, (2) we are equipping our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the resources to disrupt the defeat terrorist threats and (3), unlike those opposite during their six years, we are building our defence force and growing an organic defence industry.

Firstly, on the border security and securing the Australian people: this government, since taking office in 2013 and commencing Operation Sovereign Borders, has stopped the boats. We have secured our borders. Need I not remind those opposite of their record: 50,000 illegal arrivals on 800 boats and 12,000 deaths at the sea to the cost of $13.7 billion, with an ongoing cost of $1.9 billion. Since OSB started, this government has turned 30 boats around, we have closed 17 detention centres and we have got 8,000 children out of detention—and we are building on this. We have seen the disaster facing Europe, particularly France and Germany, and we have committed $95.4 million in this budget to support new technologies for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

We are modernising our biometric storage to enhance the processing of people who cross our borders. Over 700,000 people move across our borders every week, and that is going to increase by 20 per cent in the coming year, so we are spending money in this year's budget to make sure that we can process people more effectively. We are also committing $12 million over the next four years to introduce tougher standards for Australian citizenship, making sure that people have competence when it comes to English, have allegiance to Australia, commit to our values and laws and demonstrate a willingness to integrate into our society.

This budget equips our law enforcement and security agencies to disrupt and defeat terrorist threats. Since coming to office in 2013, we have improved CT funding for those charged with protecting Australian people. We have introduced eight tranches of legislation which strengthens the ability of intelligence and law enforcement agencies to investigate, track, arrest and prosecute homegrown terrorists. In this year's budget, we have committed $321 million to increase the Australian Federal Police's ability to counter threats and to do their work of policing those who cause harm to the Australian people.

Finally, on Defence: we are maintaining our commitment to increase Defence spending to two per cent by 2021. Under Labor, we went to the lowest spending for Defence since 1938. That was on your watch; you treated Defence like a giant ATM and we are still recovering from it. This government cares about securing the Australian people, and this budget demonstrates our commitment to those priorities.

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