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

Frankly, I think the member for Corio demonstrated that he had a better temperament than the member for Blair. He had the ability to deal with very tough issues, particularly after the period when Labor first came into the opposition. He admitted the mistakes that Labor made. He admitted that the arrangements on Nauru were set up by Prime Minister Gillard. He admitted that there was an undoing of the successful Howard government arrangements and he at least had the ability, which is not demonstrated here at all and is reinforced again today by the shadow minister, that he could ask questions and conduct himself in a way that was not a threat to these prospective arrangements.

This shadow minister today has demonstrated that he is clearly a threat to prospective arrangements. Asking us today to publicly talk about where sensitive negotiations might be at at this point in time, asking us to disclose who it is we are talking to—having no regard to the interests of whoever that particular partner might be—demonstrates that he does not have the ability to carry out this portfolio in government. It has been evidenced on a day-by-day basis but reinforced in this chamber today.

It is clear that Labor do not want to talk about this issue because they do not ask questions in the House of Representatives on these very matters. It is unbelievable that he would seek to come here to lecture us about people that he put on Nauru that we have sought to get out to third countries or to return to their countries of origin. In actual fact, do you know the reason that Labor have no credibility on this issue? It is because half of their back bench still advocates that they should still come to Australia. Half of Labor's backbench demonstrate that this Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, has no ability to show the leadership required to send a purposeful and definite and clear message to people smugglers that if there was a Labor government in this country that somehow they would not allow the boats to restart. Because if you allow a crushing of one of the successful legs of Operation Sovereign Borders—that is, the operation of regional processing centres—and if you allow people smugglers, as Labor would, to say to people, 'We have again cracked the code to get people to Australia,' you would end up with deaths at sea again. You would end up with 2,000 kids in jail and those opposite should be ashamed of their track record.

Question agreed.

Proceedings suspended from 13:34 to 16:00

Employment Portfolio

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