Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I think the Australian public are well aware that under the former government in excess of 50,000 people arrived here illegally by boat. The situation under the former government was this: the detention centres in Australia were quite literally overflowing. There was no capacity and no money to open any further detention centres, so the government quite literally dumped approximately 30,000 people into the community and did not process their claims.

We currently have approximately 25,000 people living in the community who are part of the legacy case load of 30,000 people who arrived illegally by boat under the former Labor government. The previous Labor government quite literally dumped people into the community without any care or responsibility. What we assumed on coming into office was a messy problem on a scale which, quite frankly, Australians had not seen before, and we are cleaning it up yet again. (Time expired)