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

I will not tolerate the staff within those detention centres being assaulted, and I will not tolerate Commonwealth property being destroyed within those centres. Out of the 2011 riots, Labor commissioned a review into their own failings within the detention centre network. The review came back with recommendations which we have implemented in this bill. In this bill we codify what is reasonable force to be used by those officers within those facilities—not only for their own protection but also, most importantly, for the protection of the people within those centres. Labor commissioned the report into their own failings. The review came back with recommendations which have been accepted by us—and, I might say, accepted by Labor up until this point.

I received no notification of these amendments before coming into this chamber. I have received no notification from the shadow minister that he had any problem with this bill. I had no notification from the shadow minister that he was going to cosy up beside the Greens and the member for Indi in relation to this matter. I had no prior notice whatsoever. Is this a genuine attempt to try to improve the bill? Of course it is not, because the shadow minister and the Labor Party had indicated their support for the bill. What has happened? The Labor Party have been taken over internally by the left wing of their party. We hear a couple of voices within this chamber but there are others out there. I feel for the shadow minister, because he is trying, I think, in a genuine way to implement sensible policy. But he is just on the eve of his greatest test. The Labor Party are going to have a very important discussion about this, and let us see whether or not they are serious when it comes to these border protection management issues. If you start the boats up again, the detention centres will re-open, the kids will go back into detention and we will have the same riots that we saw in 2011 when Labor lost control of the detention centre network. We are not going to go back to those bad days. We will not allow the boats to restart—

Ms Butler interjecting—

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