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

I want to say thank you very much to the member for Tangney for his question. Like all members on this side of the House, he's absolutely determined to make sure that we keep people smugglers out of business. We don't want to see children in detention again. Eight thousand children went into detention under the Labor Party. We don't want to see deaths at sea again. There were 1,200 people who drowned at sea under the Labor Party. The fact is that the people smugglers are still there. They are still in business and, as people see on the Mediterranean now, there are people drowning there as they attempt to get to Europe. There are significant national security consequences for a country that cannot secure its borders.

The reality is that the Leader of the Opposition went to the last election promising to have a carbon copy of the Liberal Party policy to present to the Australian public. Somehow, he was on the same page as us and nothing would change if Labor got into power, but—do you know?—we had heard that story before. We heard it when Kevin Rudd was coming into power in 2007, when he said, hand on heart, that his would just be a carbon-copy policy of John Howard and that nothing would change. The same policy settings would be in place. Just like Mr Rudd got mugged by the Left of his party, so it turns out that the Leader of the Opposition has been mugged by the Left of his party, and, bit by bit, we're seeing the Labor Party undo its policy in relation to Operation Sovereign Borders. The fact is that the Labor Party doesn't have the capacity to stare down the people smugglers and the reality is that, at the next election, the Leader of the Opposition will say again to the Australian public that there will be no change if he's elected as Prime Minister and that the same policies will be presided over, but we know that this Leader of the Opposition is shifty and he can't be trusted. The reality is, as we've said time and time again—as Daniel Andrews has demonstrated in Victoria, a government that's led by the CFMEU—the Labor Left will not allow a policy which sees boats stopped, deaths at sea stopped and children out of detention.

This government will not deviate from the policy that it took to the last election and the election before that, because it has produced results. The Labor Party, under this shifty Leader of the Opposition, cannot say to the Australian public that they will honour the policies, because already they have announced that they will walk away from particular elements of Operation Sovereign Borders, which has seen success in stopping those boats. The Australian public know that, when this Leader of the Opposition opens his mouth, he can't be trusted. They know that, when he says that he will adopt the policies of this government, they only have to look at the track record. He hasn't even waited to get into government before he's undone the policies. And what the Australian public know of this Leader of the Opposition is: he can't be trusted.

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