Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

First of all, the premise of the question is wrong. With these latest arrivals, the capacity of Christmas Island will not be reached. In fact, with the new arrivals we will have fewer people there than we had a couple of months ago, given the processing that has occurred. But, as I have made clear in the past, extra capacity is being developed at Christmas Island and we also have the Northern Immigration Detention Centre at Darwin that is available if required. There are available facilities to us if we see larger numbers of arrivals. I have been the first to make clear to Senator Fierravanti-Wells that we are going to see continued people-smuggling activity in the near future. We are absolutely committed to combating it. We have had some successes, with the extradition of Mr Ahmadi. We are working closely with Indonesian, Malaysian and Sri Lankan authorities, but the battle against people smuggling continues and will continue to need to be waged strongly. (Time expired)