Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister update the House on the importance of having strong and consistent border protection policies? What action is the government taking against groups seeking to undermine the success of these border protection measures?

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

I thank the honourable member for Brisbane for his question and recognise the fact that it's now been 1,478 days since the last successful boat arrival, so this government has taken control of our borders. When Labor was in government, they lost control of the borders. The worst part is that Labor has not learnt the lesson of six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. The fact is that they presided over 50,000 people coming on 800 boats, and 1,200 people drowned at sea. They put 8,000 children into detention and, at the next election, they promise to do it all again. The fact is that the Left of the Labor Party is dictating policy in relation to this particular area. We know that, over the course of the last couple of weeks, the ACTU and others have been out there calling for a shift in the Labor Party's position to weaken Labor's position on border protection, but that is exactly what Julia Gillard fell for and it's exactly what Kevin Rudd fell for.

We aren't going to allow the people smugglers to get back into business. People who believe that somehow this problem has been dealt with and the problem has gone away don't recognise that we've turned back 33 boats over the last couple of years. We've disrupted over 70 attempts to put people onto boats to send them to Australia. We have already seen tens of thousands of people cross the Mediterranean at the beginning of this year into Europe. The problem has not gone away.

We have secured our borders, but we've done much more than that. We have gone through people who are here as noncitizens—that is, those people who are here on visas—and we have cancelled more visas of criminals in the last 12 months than Labor did in six years. We've been able to deal with a number of outlaw motorcycle gang members who were involved in the distribution of ice. They are the criminals who are responsible for importation and distribution of drugs in this country. At the same time, we've been able to get off Manus and Nauru 371 of the people that Labor put on Manus and Nauru. I did not put a single person on Manus or Nauru, but I am getting them off. The Labor Party put them on, because they lost control of our borders. As sure as night follows day, if this Leader of the Opposition is elected as Prime Minister in this country, those detention centres will refill overnight. The fact is that, when you look across the backbench, there is one after the other who advocates a watering-down of Labor's position, and what that would result in is giving control back to the people smugglers, who would see people back on boats, kids drowning at sea and kids back in detention, and, for that, they should be condemned.