Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian public understand Labor's failures when it comes to border protection. But what they may not understand is that more than 8,000 children arrived by boat and that in 2013 the number of children in detention peaked at 2,000 at any one time.

I rise today to inform the people in my electorate of Petrie who have approached me with concerns about the number of children in detention that, as of yesterday, there are only 192 children remaining in detention. This is a significant achievement on the part of the coalition government.

Labor's legacy is a shameful one. There were 1,992 asylum seeker children in detention in 2013. Before Labor came to power in 2007, that number was zero. Under Labor more than 50,000 illegal people arrived by boat on more than 800 boats, and about 1,200 people perished at sea.

It is the coalition government that is getting children out of detention through the reintroduction of TPVs. I am very confident that in the not-too-distant future the number will be at zero once again.

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