Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

We have seen this afternoon an attempt by the government and the crossbenchers to delay getting to this matter of public importance because they would rather talk about anything than their own failures in national security. National security is the poor policy cousin within this government. That has been on display today as we have just seen. It has been on display by this Prime Minister when she was Deputy Prime Minister and did not go to National Security Committee meetings, instead sending her bodyguard. Perhaps, when we have been seeking to ask questions of the Prime Minister on these national security matters, given she is unable to understand the questions let alone answer them, we should submit those questions in writing to her bodyguard.

Also, we have seen the Prime Minister today deride the opposition for putting national security on the agenda in this place and holding her government to account for their failures on serious national security matters. This Prime Minister, talking about national security, said the opposition was taking the low road. That is her assessment of having a discussion and a debate and, most importantly, being held to account on national security matters. I think this speaks volumes about the Prime Minister's sense of the importance she places on these matters within her government. National security is just descended in the pecking order of issues that should be under the attention of this government.

There is no greater responsibility of any national government than national security and if the Prime Minister does not believe that that is a topic—national security that she should be asked questions about in this parliament—then she is in the wrong job. But later this year the Australian people will have the opportunity to remedy that. They can put a government in place that will make national security a top priority, as it should be for every national government.

The Prime Minister is oblivious—I think because of her ignorance of these matters and her lack of appreciation of their importance—of the impact and damage that is being done by her own policies. That is no greater than in the area of this Prime Minister's own failings on border protection policy. No area of failure better demonstrates how this government does not work, how their policies do not work, than the impact of their policies on Australia's national security interests.

Every month, more than 3,000 people are turning up illegally by boat to this country—an average of over 2,000 per month this financial year—up from an average of just two per month when Labor came to government all those years ago. Twenty-three thousand people who arrived illegally by boat are now in the system in detention or somewhere else. Nineteen thousand are yet to even be processed, have their asylum applications received or assessed—19,000. By the time we get to the election in September of this year it is likely that we will have in the vicinity of 30,000 people in the system, the vast majority of whom—likely to be over 25,000—will have not had any assessments done on their claims whatsoever. What a legacy caseload that will leave to whoever forms government after the next election! That is no surprise, but I will come to that later.

This government has form on dumping the problems that they cause in one term and passing them off to the other side of an election. Fourteen-and-a-half thousand visas have been denied to people applying offshore in some of the worst places you can imagine because under this government visas have been given to people who arrived illegally by boat. More than 6,000 children have come on boats under this government's policy—a record. And, of course, the record blow-outs in costs have sucked the resources from our national security agencies, whether they be the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, Customs—my colleagues will talk about that today, I am sure. These have gone from $85 million in immigration alone—that is where it started in 2007-08—to $3 billion on these matters in the budget a few weeks ago for immigration.

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