Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

The government obviously opposes these amendments in toto, and the reason is quite simple. I think this is a Labor-Greens stunt which is not becoming of the shadow minister. The shadow minister tries to have a sensible approach to these matters but is completely and utterly deviated by the Left within his own party. They are in some sort of arms race with the Greens to try to be further to the left when it comes to these very serious matters.

This government made it very clear that we would stop boats and we have done that. During Labor's period in government, 52,000 people came on 821 boats. Labor completely lost control of border security in this country. There is no question about that at all. In 2011, we saw the result of the pressure of those people arriving within the detention centre network when serious riots took place at two centres in particular. People were flowing in across our borders with no control by the then government and it resulted in this sort of action taking place within the detention centre network.

This government have stopped the boats, we have closed down 13 detention centres, we have reduced the number of children in detention centres from a peak of 1,992 when Labor was in government down to 100—and we want to reduce that number even more. At the same time, we have made a very clear point to those people within detention centres that we will not tolerate the sort of behaviour that we saw in 2011. I will not tolerate people being assaulted within detention centres.

Ms Butler interjecting—

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