Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Given that over 25,000 people have arrived on illegal boats this financial year—triple last year's figure—will the minister explain to the House his decision to cut $14 million from the Customs and Border Protection enforcement program?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs ) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for his question. It gives me an opportunity to make this point: the Customs' budget is bigger now than it was under the Howard government. The departmental appropriation for Customs in this budget is $12 million bigger. The budget also includes an additional $50 million to target people smuggling, including for aerial surveillance, patrolling and interceptions. It includes funding to build the 12 new Cape class patrol vessels. Our Border Protection Command has access to 18 vessels and 17 aircraft, as well as communications satellite imagery. They work very hard. They would not have to work as hard if the opposition would work with the government on this.

This is a wretchedly difficult area of public policy. Whatever you think the solution is, we should all agree on this principle: that the government of the day should be given the power that it thinks it needs to save people's lives. That is the power we gave John Howard after Tampa, that is what John Howard would do if he were here now and that is what we have been denied by the Liberal Party, as well as by the Greens. It is a simple proposition: that the government of the day should be given the power it thinks it needs to stop people dying. We think that is flying people back. Flying people back to Sri Lanka dramatically reduced the number of people coming from Sri Lanka. The biggest cohort coming now is coming from Iran. We cannot fly people back to Iran because Iran refuses to take them. But we can fly them halfway back. We can fly them back to Malaysia and that is why the Malaysia agreement is so important. It is a simple proposition. The government of the day should be given the power it thinks it needs to stop people dying at sea. That is what we have been denied by the Liberal Party and it is what we have been denied by the Greens. We do not need questions, we do not need points of order; we just need you to vote for the legislation in the parliament.