Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister update the House on action taken by the government to secure our borders and secure our nation? What immigration and border protection measures have been put in place to keep Australians safe?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and for the very serious interest he takes in making sure that, like all members in this House, we keep every Australian as safe as humanly possible. The reality is that no peacetime government has committed more resources to national security than this government. We have secured our borders. It has now been over 1,032 days since we have had a successful boat arrival. I want to commend all of the officers within the Australian Border Force and those members of Operation Sovereign Borders who have kept our country safe and kept our borders secure.

We have also embedded Counter Terrorism Unit officers at our eight international airports. There are indeed more than 100 CTU trained officers deployed across airports operating international sectors. CTU interventions have resulted in the cancellation of passports and prevented the travel of minors to conflict areas. This is of particular concern to all Australians, particularly when we see what is playing out around the world in terms of foreign fighters returning to our country. I want to reassure all Australians that we are putting every assistance into providing support to our CTU officers working in concert with those officers of the Australian Federal Police and our intelligence agencies as well. It means that in 2016-17 the CTU teams conducted over 206,000 real-time assessments.

We have invested in intelligence capabilities to prevent potential threats from ever reaching our shores, and I am very proud of the fact that in this budget we announced $60 million to significantly upgrade biometric collection, processing, matching and data sharing capabilities. It builds on the previous $99 million investment into a new visa risk assessment capability, which will provide early identification of visa applicants who may pose a threat to national security and our way of life. The fact is that the Turnbull government will never stop working to keep Australians safe, and our government will always take whatever action is necessary to protect Australian families and the Australian way of life.