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

I thank the honourable member for his question. It is the case, as all Australians know, that this government is absolutely resolute when it comes to border protection policies. We have taken tough decisions to make sure that we can stop the drownings at sea, to make sure that we can stop the boats and that we can get kids out of detention, and we have closed 17 detention centres.

That has not been the case for every government, for every party, in the Australian political landscape. As we know, the Labor Party, having inherited from John Howard the situation where boats had stopped and there were only four people in detention undid all of that policy, and so, when we went to the last election, the reality was that Labor could only stitch up a deal by working with the unions at their national conference. As people know, you cannot get policy through the Labor Party, unless it passes their conference. So all of the unions come together and they vote for or against policy.

The trouble for the Leader of the Opposition is that the Left and the Right were divided when it came to boat policy, which of course resulted in 50,000 people coming on 800 boats and 1,200 people drowning at sea. What happened was that there was a dodgy deal stitched up at the Labor Party conference between the Leader of the Opposition, because he is the king of dodgy deals, and his friends from the CFMEU. I do not know if my colleagues can see this, but this is talking about—

Mr Hill interjecting—

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