Ross Vasta (Bonner, 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 maintaining Australia's strong and consistent border protection policies? Is the minister aware of any threats to the integrity of Australia's borders?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Bonner for his question. Everybody on this side of the House understands that you need to get border protection right. We need to make sure that we don't see kids drown at sea or go into detention. This government has worked day and night to stop people arriving illegally by boat. We've got the kids out of detention. We have closed 19 detention centres. We don't want to see a return to the desperate days when Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were in control of the Labor Party, but I fear we are watching a re-run of that train wreck under this Leader of the Opposition.

As people start to look at the implications of the bill that was rushed through by the Leader of the Opposition and the Greens in this chamber and the Senate this week, people will realise how dangerous that piece of legislation was. At the moment, the government has the ability under the Migration Act to stop somebody accused of sexual assault, for example, hopping onto a plane in Dubai, Wellington or Washington, or wherever it might be, to come to our country. That is a reasonable prospect in any circumstance and, I believe, in any reasonable person's mind, a power that should be vested in the government of the day. There's no doubt about that. Nobody could argue against it. But it derives from section 501 of the Migration Act, and there are 12 parts to that act. The difficulty is that, with Labor's approach, they have abandoned 11 of the 12 sections. It means somebody coming from Manus or Nauru, under the Leader of the Opposition's now law, could come to our country. I don't believe that the Australian public support that. I don't believe that the Australian public want to see kids back on boats or drowning at sea.

But I can say that what has happened this week is that the Labor Party has completely undermined their own credibility. They went to the last election promising the Australian public that their policy would be no different to that of the coalition. The reality is that they have abandoned temporary protection visas. That is a central pillar of our success with Operation Sovereign Borders. They have walked away from it. There are only two remaining pillars. One is in relation to offshore processing. This week they completely abandoned it. That leaves one pillar, and that is turning back boats where it's safe to do so. Does anybody believe—in this chamber, around the country—that this Leader of the Opposition would be able to turn back boats where it's safe to do so? Of course not. The people smugglers understand that Labor's weak on border protection, and the Australian public this week have seen it on full display. (Time expired)

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm actually quite touched, I've got to say. He doesn't get much of a chance to ask a question. He doesn't ask questions very regularly in this place—and you can see why! So let me come to it: the department—

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Oh, scream and yell all you like. It won't make any difference. You're hopeless on border protection as well. The reality is that the federal government contracts the companies. There are federal procurement rules in relation to contracts. The department, not the ministers, deal with procurement, and if there are issues then the department—the secretary of my department—will deal with those issues.

But I can tell you what this contract is about. It's about delivering security services. Why would you need services of this nature—on Manus Island or Nauru, for example? You'd need them because the Labor Party brought 50,000 people on 80 boats. Tragically, 1,200 didn't make it. As we know, they drowned at sea. But many people made it, and when Mr Rudd set up the arrangement with the PNG government to open Manus and to put women and kids and people onto Manus Island, it meant that the government in very quick fashion had to put up tents, had to have people living in dreadful conditions, had to contract very quickly—a horrible situation, and we're seeing it potentially unfold again if this Leader of the Opposition wins the election in May. That's the reality.

Labor has been a disaster on border protection. They spent $16 billion—money that could have been spent on hospitals here, could have been spent on roads here, could have been spent on all sorts of government expenditure, such as listing medicines on the PBS. Don't forget, Labor ran out of money and they couldn't list drugs anymore, when they were last in government. So imagine asking a question about why we're spending money on the detention network. We're still cleaning up your mess! That's the problem. We don't clean up Labor's messes overnight. This has taken years. And we've got to a position where we have closed 19 detention centres. We've got to a position where we've got the 8,000 kids that Labor put into detention out of detention, yet we're facing the prospect this week in parliament where Labor wants to undo all of that, to bring people of questionable character to our country, to bring people to our country, which will send a message to people smugglers that they are back in business. Why would the Labor Party do that? Why would they risk billions of dollars and lives again? Why would the Labor Party do that? Because this Leader of the Opposition is weaker than Rudd and Gillard combined.