Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hapless and hopeless is the only way you can describe what this government did before the High Court decision and after the High Court decision. They have been all at sea on what should be their No. 1 priority. They have misled the Australian community. They have misled this parliament. We stand here now still not knowing how we are going to fix this situation which at the moment sees 84 hardened criminals out in the community and the potential for another 340.

We wrote to the government on Monday, saying, 'We will work with you to fix this.' At 7.15 this morning, the government came to us and said, 'This is what we're going to do.' There was no bipartisanship on an issue which is of paramount importance, the No. 1 priority that any government should have—that is, keeping the community safe.

The Prime Minister was straight onto a plane to get out of here rather than do his duty and fix this issue. There are 340 people in the pipeline. We still do not know how this is going to be fixed in the long term. The Australian community knows what the government's priorities should be. The sad fact is that the government doesn't know what its priorities are.