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

And he fails this latest test yet again. This government has taken every effort, since we have been elected, to clean up Labor's mess when it comes to national security, when it comes to border security. They in government ripped out over $600 million from our national security and border protection agencies. We have restored funding. We have put counter-terrorism unit officers at our eight airports. Those 80 officers have been involved in hundreds of intercepts of people who would seek to go overseas, who would seek ultimately to come back to do harm to Australians here. And in this latest proposal we are saying to the Australian people, 'Yes, we do recognise, on the advice from the intelligence chiefs, that we face a significant threat from terrorism, but we are prepared as a government to do what it takes, within the law, to protect the Australian people, and we make no apology for it.'

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