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

It's certainly the case that this side of the parliament is very aware—as I think the majority of Australians are aware—that border protection is incredibly important in this day and age. We had an incredible mess to clean up when Labor was in government. They had a situation where they'd inherited four people in detention under John Howard's government—no children—and they had 50,000 people arrive on 800 boats and 1,200 people drowned at sea.

There is a civil war taking place within the Labor Party at the moment on this very issue, because many of them propose to go back to the Rudd and Gillard policies, which resulted in those deaths at sea and those kids in detention. I saw an interesting tweet from somebody who is well respected by many members opposite—in fact, a former leader of the Labor Party. This is the 'Real Mark Latham'.

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