Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

What I was drawing the House's attention to was that the shadow minister for justice apparently believes that the Labor Party has a longstanding view in their national platform against mandatory sentencing, which is interesting because I came across this document: A secure and fair Australia: Let's move Australia Forward, brought to us by Julia Gillard and Labor. It is issued under the imprimatur of then Attorney-General Robert McClelland and then Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor. In this document, they actually brag about introducing mandatory sentencing. I will quote directly from it:

In May 2010, Federal Labor introduced tough new people smuggling offences. They included penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment and mandatory minimum terms of up to eight years.

The fact that this Labor Party have absolutely no idea what they stand for led to six years of chaos for our law enforcement agencies under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. But they now have a chance to do better. They now have chance to join with the government to send the strongest possible message that this parliament opposes gun crime and this parliament will make sure that you have mandatory minimum penalties of five years if you smuggle guns.

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