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

I thank the member for Petrie most sincerely for the question and for the interest he has in these matters of making sure that we can get kids out of detention, because nobody wants to see anybody in detention, particularly children. I am very proud to be able to report to the House today the number of children in detention—children who came off boats to try and settle in this country—is now down to 34. That is a significant achievement. I have repeated to the House on a number of occasions that we want to get that number down to zero, and I am determined that we will get it down to zero. Not only do we want to stop the boats but we want to make sure that we can get children out of detention as quickly as possible.

It has not always been this successful in this country in terms of border protection policy. When the Labor Party was in government, a couple of people who are sitting on the opposition front bench now were prominent ministers in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. If Mr Shorten was elected at the next election, they would be prominent ministers in a Shorten government. I think it is important to point out a couple of the records of members opposite. The member for McMahon, the shadow Treasurer who has now come up with this disastrous negative gearing policy which is going to drive down housing prices and drive rents up, is the Chevy Chase of this parliament, let me tell you. Everything he touches turns to dirt. He is the Clark Griswold—he presides over every policy disaster. Whether it is in government or in opposition, he is a disaster. Let me read out his record. There were 25,000 people who arrived illegally by boat when he was the immigration minister. Almost 400 boats arrived on his watch, over 4,000 children were taken into detention and six detention centres had to open when he was the minister for immigration.

Since we have been in government—as I have said to this House before—we have had no successful boat arrivals since I have been the minister in this portfolio. We have had no deaths at sea. The number of children in detention, as I say, is now down to 34. Bearing in mind that he was solely responsible for the children in detention, 4,000 under his watch went into detention. Eight thousand in total went into detention.

See this speech in context