Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gilmore for her question and for inviting me to join her on that day. She, like the other members on this side of the House, can all say to their constituents that this government is doing what we said we would do on our borders; we are doing it in the way we said we would do it; and we are getting the results we said we would get.

Critical to that has of course been the consistency of our position. Of course that is true. They would not understand about consistency of positions on border protection on the other side of the House. What has also been important is the issue of cohesion—a cohesive approach of purpose, of policy, of leadership and of organisation. Operation Sovereign Borders brings together 16 different agencies working together towards one goal, and that has been to stop the boats, and that is what is being achieved.

But that cohesive approach that we have had on border protection is also delivering cohesion in our community. Today the Scanlon Foundation report was released. What came out of that report was a critical finding, which I would hope all members of this House would appreciate: concerns about immigration levels being too high are at the lowest level on record for these surveys. In addition to that, positive sentiment towards immigration is at a level equivalent to or better than across the Western world.

One of the reasons we have been so strong in our borders is because we believe in our immigration program and we want to restore confidence in that immigration program that was lost under the previous government because they lost control of our borders. So we welcome that result. Professor Markus was also able to attribute that increase in positive sentiment for immigration to the coalition's strong border protection policies that have reduced concerns in the community about the asylum issue.

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