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

The member for Corio, the previous member, asked for a clear statement. Here is a clear statement: we stopped the boats. We stopped the boats and they will stay stopped under this government. My opposite, the shadow minister, got up and for the first 60 seconds had me engaged a little. I thought: 'Poor bloke. He could get only one question during question time after 335 days of not asking a single question during question time.' I thought I would give him a chance and hear what he had to say, but he lost me when he said that somehow there was bipartisan support when it comes to this issue of stopping the boats.

Labor in government under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard will be remembered for many things—for pink batts, kids dying in ceilings, the cheque giveaways and the incompetent state of the economy that they left to us—but they will be remembered most of all, in my judgement, for the way in which they failed when it came to boats in this country. When Labor came to power in 2007 there were a handful of people and no children at all in detention. That was the legacy of the Howard government bequeathed to the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. What happened over the course of that government? All Australians know this story, and I am very happy we are being afforded an opportunity to repeat it today.

During Labor's period in government 52,000 people came on 821 boats. As the Australian public know, if you cannot control your borders you cannot control national security, and that was a large part of why Labor were kicked out of government. If you look at the shadow frontbench, those who aspire to be on this side of the parliament after the next election, you see failure after failure. I will go through that in a moment because their record goes to the complete and utter failure, the breakdown, of border security in this country under the Labor government.

It is a matter of public record that 1,200 people drowned at sea under Labor. Is it any wonder that we on this side have said that under Operation Sovereign Borders we will act within the law and meet our international obligations but in that context we will do what it takes to keep these people smugglers out of business? We stand by that statement. We absolutely stand by it.

All the people in the command structure of Operation Sovereign Borders, who ultimately answer to General Bottrell and I, will do whatever it takes within the law and to meet our international obligations to stop these people smugglers. For argument's sake, if we were faced with a situation where because of sea state we had the threat of people going into the water, we had the threat of a boat capsizing, and we were trying to turn that boat back, we would do whatever it took within the law to make sure that under Operation Sovereign Borders we could stop that vessel from landing on Australian soil, and we make no apology for that whatsoever. I will do whatever it takes and the Prime Minister of this country will do whatever it takes to protect our border protection staff and to protect our defence personnel who are operating under Operation Sovereign Borders. We will do whatever it takes to make sure we support the people smuggler victims, if you like—the people who are on these boats at sea—and we protect them at sea as best we can in the circumstances.

These are all very important points to make in the context of this debate. As the government has adopted from day one, we will provide updates under Operation Sovereign Borders when it is operationally appropriate to do so. The fact that Labor cannot get this demonstrates why they are still unfit to govern. If you cannot control your borders, you cannot provide assurances to the Australian people when it comes to national security.

I have got only a few minutes left so I want to go to the record of those opposite in relation to some of these claims. I want to go to the man who wants to be the Treasurer of this country after the next election, our friend the member for McMahon, Mr Bowen. When he was immigration minister in this country—and this is the man Labor wants to be Treasurer of this country—ultimately there was an $11 billion blowout as a result of actions taken directly by him and others, and under that man's watch 4,200 children arrived and were taken to detention. Today we have 124 children in detention. That is down from the peak of 1,992. When we came to government it was down to about 1,300. We have decreased it to 124. I pay tribute to the former immigration minister, Mr Morrison, to the Prime Minister and to members of the National Security Committee because we have adopted a policy that works. We have continued the success of Operation Sovereign Borders.

All of the claims made by those opposite and all of the confected outrage today demonstrates that the people opposite have no capacity to have the guts to stop the people smugglers again. The people smugglers are lurking in the shadows in Indonesia, across South-East Asia, in the Middle East and otherwise waiting, hoping and praying that Bill Shorten will be elected Prime Minister at the next election because when he was in government he provided streams of money into the pockets of these people.

I have spoken about the member for McMahon, but what about the member for Gorton, Mr O'Connor, when he was the immigration minister when Labor was last in power? He wants to be a cabinet minister in Bill Shorten's government. Let us have a look at his record. On his watch 12,821 people arrived on 184 boats in this country. We can hear a lot from the Labor Party but one thing we will not hear—one thing we will not be lectured on—is how to control our borders. As I said in my opening remarks, when John Howard left government he bequeathed a situation in which he had solved the problems that he inherited from the Hawke-Keating governments. Labor completely lost control of our borders, and Bill Shorten has not learnt one lesson. We have in place under Operation Sovereign Borders, under the command of General Bottrell, an operation which has closed down the people smugglers trade.

I think it has been very clear to all Australians during the course of the last couple of days and during the course of this debate that this person—who, when in government, ripped out over $600 million from our national security agencies—was part of a government that took money away from our front-line services that were seeking to stop the boats. People now get it. People now get that Bill Shorten is not fit to be Prime Minister of this country. People across the suburbs as we move around the country stop us and say that Bill Shorten has no capacity when it comes to stopping the boats. All Australians know that. He did not have the ticker when he sat around the cabinet table in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. He does not have the ticker now to stand up to the Left.

The true test of this opposition leader is coming in the next couple of weeks. If the Leader of the Opposition goes to the Labor conference and folds in the presence of the member for Sydney for the Left of the Labor Party to prevail in this matter—if he can not get, in conference, support from the Labor Left in relation to turning back boats where it is safe to do so, or if he cannot get the support of the Left in the Labor Party to adhere to the successful policy of temporary protection visas of this government, he has failed. So far this man has failed every test. We will see when he gives evidence in September to the royal commission whether he can pass another test. I suspect he cannot. The Australian public is on to this bloke. People know that he cannot pass the character test. People know that when it comes to the fortitude that is required to stand up to people smugglers—that is required to make sure that we can continue to stop the boats—this Prime Minister and this government are the only ones with the capacity to do that.

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