Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

If this government was really keen to break the people-smuggling model then quite frankly they would resign. They are the people smuggler's business model. When they came to office the people smugglers had been broken. The people smugglers had tested the previous government and the previous government had shown the resolve that was necessary to stare them down. Subsequently, they could not bring people to Australia illegally anymore.

But then the government changed, and as a result we had a change in policy. Because of the enormous moral vanity of those opposite, who thought that they could make changes to our robust system of border protection without any consequences, we had the people smugglers going back into business.

If the people smugglers were a public company, Julia Gillard would be the chairman of the board, Chris Bowen would be the managing director, and the cabinet—

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