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

Only those opposite would think that trying to stop jihadists from entering Australia had nothing to do with the question about how we need to protect our borders. That explains a lot about where those opposite sit on these issues.

We are taking steps. There are 10 national security alerts that we have every single day and 30 million passengers have come through our airports—going out or coming in—over the course of this year. So being on high alert is where our border agencies are. It has been a difficult job for them because the previous government ripped more than $700 million out of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Force. We have reinvested in this budget over $700 million into the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and in the establishment of the Australian Border Service. We have also invested $88 million in advance screening, which was announced by the coalition in opposition. We are enforcing our laws. We have already cancelled or rejected over 100 visas on the basis of character grounds and that ranges from criminality to even more serious threats to that. In addition, there has been a 20 per cent increase in field actions on illegal workers that has resulted in a more than 12 per cent increase in the location of illegal workers. There has been a more than 18 per cent increase in amphetamine type substance detections at our ports.

They are the results you get when you take border protection seriously, when you invest in it and when you back the people who are tasked to do these jobs. So we are stopping the boats, but we are going to stop a lot more than that.

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