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

I thank the member for his question. As he will be aware, I have just released the Cornall report, which goes into the full account, as best as is able to be determined, of what happened on that terrible and tragic night. In that report you will find detailed accounts from over 300 transferees of what occurred that night, as well as from many others who were involved in providing services and various things on that evening. It is important that, through our partnership with the Papua New Guinean government, that we meet our objectives and our undertakings with them to provide the support to ensure that that facility is well run and has all the appropriate safety measures in place.

It is important that we continue this policy, because there seems to be an emerging theme here in this debate, which says that, because the boats are stopping, we can somehow ease off and maybe we should relax the policies. That is exactly the sort of thinking that I know comes from the Greens and from many of those opposite, which led to the Howard government's measures being taken away in the first place, which led to 50,000 people arriving on over 800 boats and which led to almost 1,200 deaths at sea, which are not occurring now because this government had the backbone to put in place the border protection policies that are saving thousands of lives.

The Deputy Leader of the Greens may not know that, on 4 September last year, a young man, an asylum seeker who was released into the community under the policies favoured by the Greens, was stabbed to death in his apartment by, allegedly, another asylum seeker. I wonder whether the member opposite is going to take responsibility for that. But I am not asking him to do that, as he has sought to do by implying that to this government today. This government has taken the decisions that we needed to take on our borders that those opposite did not have the guts to do, did not have the wit to do, did not have the will to do and, as a result, it was cost, it was chaos and it was tragedy. That is what occurred under the watch of those opposite, ably supported, encouraged and pushed on by the Greens to drive them into the policies that led to the carnage that occurred on their watch. I would encourage everyone in this parliament to look at the report that we have released. What you will see in there is a policy that was announced by the previous government, to which they were dragged kicking and screaming, and their implementation, as always, was just never up to the job.

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