Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

This has been an area that has unfortunately ripped through the nation. There has been serious discord in our society for many a year as a result of this issue. It is one that we should never play politics with. The lives of men, women and children, of course, are endangered if we do not find the most effective approach to protect them, and the best way to protect them is to smash the business model—which is, of course, to allow people smugglers to say to them, 'Get on that vessel and you will get to Australia.' If we do not do that, and if the Leader of the Opposition does not support the government in that approach, then Tony Abbott will rue the day if he did not accept the proposition that we have to put the greatest and strongest deterrent in place to smash the people-smuggler model and to protect the interests of men, women and children; protect the interests of the personnel of Customs and Border Protection; and, indeed, protect the interests of this nation.

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