Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Hansard source

Well how did it get to 40? Was that because of the policies you had in for those two years? Were you reprehensible? Were you incompetent? Were you not watching the ball when they did increase to that level? Is that what you are trying to say? The minister was not handling the problem? The truth of the matter is that refugee claims around the world are substantially about what is happening in home countries. People do not, in general, flee because they do not have a problem. What we have had in our region is, as I said, the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka which lasted for decades—

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