Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne for his question. The member for Melbourne's party, from time to time, tries to create the impression that it has a monopoly on empathy and a monopoly on morality. It does not. If the government were to follow the policies advocated by the Greens in this regard, the consequence would not simply be tens of thousands of unauthorised arrivals coming to Australia, it would be thousands of deaths at sea.

The policies that the honourable member's party was so supportive of under the previous Labor government resulted in precisely that, a complete collapse of security at the border, deaths at sea, well over 1,000 deaths at sea. They are the ones we know about. We do not know how many. So the honourable member can share his empathy with us, he can share all of that, but he has to recognise that the approach his party has advocated, which was in large part taken up by the previous Labor government, resulted in deaths at sea—women and children, young men, families. That is the consequence of abandoning responsibility at the border.

Let me say to the honourable member: one child in detention is one child too many. Every single one of us is anguished by the prospect, by the reality, of children in detention. The fact is that when our side, the coalition, lost office in 2007 and John Howard's prime ministership came to an end there was not one single child in detention. Within five years—

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