Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for his question and his ongoing interest in the security of this nation. Can I also pay tribute to the outgoing Minister for Home Affairs, the member for Macquarie, Bob Debus. Thank you for your counsel in recent days, Bob; it has been very helpful to me. It is well and truly the case that he has done a great deal of work in this portfolio. He has shown a great interest in border protection and the interests of securing this nation.

The government is committed to keeping Australia’s borders secure and to working with our partners across the region to stop people smugglers. The government’s approach to unauthorised boat arrivals includes retaining the excision of offshore islands, retaining mandatory detention of all unauthorised boat arrivals, retaining offshore processing on Christmas Island for all unauthorised boat arrivals and removing from Australia those who do not qualify for protection.

Before the budget we already had more boats patrolling our northern waters than the previous government and had increased spending on Customs surveillance.  However, the spike in people-smuggling activity worldwide means we need more resources to deal with this global problem—

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