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

I think that for a bill which deals with Customs it makes perfect sense to provide a little bit of context regarding the way Customs has been treated by the Labor Party. The examples I am giving are of the two ways Customs has suffered very significantly for the Labor Party's failures. Those two failures are the border protection failure and the failure to manage our budget. Customs has borne the brunt of those two. I was talking about the way Canada responded to just one boat of illegal arrivals within its waters. When that boat arrived, it went off like a bomb within Canadian policy circles. I know this because I visited Canada a few years ago. They certainly took that arrival as a catalyst to change their policies. After that event they said that you could not apply for permanent residency status in Canada for up to five years, regardless of whether your refugee application was accepted or not. This contrasts with the situation we have in this country, where Labor has essentially granted permanent visas to the vast majority of people who have arrived illegally in our waters. Considering that comparable countries such as New Zealand and Canada have managed to implement sensible policies to curb similar problems, it is astonishing that this Labor government—

See this speech in context