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

I thank the member for Forrest for her question because it seems that the Leader of the Opposition still is a little unsure about the progress of Operation Sovereign Borders, which has meant that for the last 75 days there has not been a successful people-smuggling operation or venture to reach Australia.

I say that because this morning he said, 'There is no doubt that the tempo of operations has put an additional strain on our border protection fleet.' I know he may think he was referring to an article in The Australian, but the article he probably should read in The Australian was this one from August 2012, which states, 'Asylum demands breaking Navy fleet as patrol boats crack up.' It reads:

AUSTRALIA'S navy patrol boats are literally cracking up under the strain of intercepting the surge in asylum-seeker vessels …

That was the history under the previous government when they ran the most extensive 24-hour water taxi service in the history of this country, as boat after boat—more than 800—turned up on their watch. That was the history under the now Manager of Opposition Business and former minister. We used to have an average of 26 boats turning up every single month. When the member for Gorton was minister, we had an average of 37 boats turning up every month. For the last two months, there have been none that have turned up with a successful venture to Australia.

I am asked about the impact. The impact of Operation Sovereign Borders and, in particular, our maritime operations has been devastating on people smugglers. People smugglers are having calls on them to hand the money back by the people who have ended up back in Indonesia. They are saying, 'We want the money back,' and the people smugglers are running and hiding. This is happening for one reason: our policies are no bluff. They are no threat; they are real. They happen. If boats seek to come illegally to Australia, then they are removed from our waters. That is what happens under our policies. We do not trumpet it; we do it, and in the doing you get the results. That is what you get.

At the last election, those opposite took a bluff to the election. They took an absolute bluff to the election. What they had was an invisible 10,000-man camp on Manus Island, which the now Manager of Opposition Business used to boast about. There were detailed resettlement arrangements which looked like this: an absolutely blank sheet of paper. And I table the former government's detailed resettlement arrangements for people in Papua New Guinea. I table it. It is a blank sheet of paper. They left the hard work to this government to clean up the mess of more than 800 arrivals, a capacity at Manus Island which was under-resourced, with arrangements which were underdone and not thought through. This government knows that you do not bluff the boats away; you have policies which get the job done. And that is what we have got.

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