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

I thank the member for Mayo most sincerely for this very important question. He, like all of my colleagues on this side of the parliament, supports a very strong border protection policy. He knows, like all Australians know, that it was only a couple of years ago that Labor had completely lost control of our borders. If you do not have secure borders in the modern age, you cannot have a safe society. One of the biggest achievements of this government has been the fact that we have been able to restore security to our borders and to our community. We have been able to stop the boats. We have been able to stare down people smugglers. Those people opposite laugh, but 1,200 people drowned at sea when Labor lost control of our borders—1,200 people drowned at sea when 50,000 people came on 800 boats.

We do not want a return to those days. It means we must have first-class efforts both in terms of our personnel and in terms of our assets at sea and in the air. That is why I am very pleased that there is a very strong relationship between the Australian Border Force and the Australian Defence Force. I welcome very much the announcement by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence today, in relation to the defence white paper, of 12 new and more capable offshore patrol vessels that will be acquired. Importantly, from the Australian Border Force perspective, they will have aerial surveillance capacity.

At the moment Australian Border Force operates eight Cape class vessels, a Bay class vessel and two large-hulled vessels—the Ocean Shield and the Ocean Protector. We invested in those assets. Labor pulled money out of the Australian Border Force, out of Customs, because they were determined to support the people smugglers. For some strange reason they thought that having people arrive illegally by boat was somehow a way to run your border protection policy, and it was a complete and utter failure. The Australian public realise that, when it comes to this election in a very short period of time, they can trust this government to secure our borders. They know that Labor, over six years in government, demonstrated to the Australian public that they do not have that capacity; they do not have the guts to stand up to people smugglers and to secure our borders.

We have stopped those boats. At the same time—while Labor had 8,500 children in detention—we have reduced the number of children in detention down to zero. That is something this government is very proud of. We are not going to allow the Labor Party to pretend to the Australian public, during the election campaign, that somehow they will not unwind these policies, because they will. They have said very clearly that in relation to temporary protection visas, which have been at the heart of the success in stopping the boats, they will abandon that policy. Under Labor, the people smugglers will be back in power, and Bill Shorten, as was demonstrated with Kevin Rudd, will be the greatest friend that people smugglers have ever had.

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