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

I thank the honourable member for his question. The reason that we have been able to secure our borders, the reason that we've been able to get out of detention the 8,000 children that Labor put into detention, the reason that we've been able to close 17 detention centres that Labor opened and the reason that we haven't had deaths at sea, whereas under Labor there were 1,200 deaths at sea, is that we have been able to put in place the policies, we have shown the strength of character and we've had the resolve to maintain a position that has resulted in that humane outcome.

What the people smugglers look for is strength of character and what they look for is consistency of position. We have had consistency of position in staring down people smugglers, as the Howard government did. It was clear to the people smugglers that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard both failed the character test and failed to take the position that should have been adopted—they walked away from it. Speaking of people who are walking away and failing the character test, the Leader of the Opposition walks away whenever this topic is raised because he doesn't like the inconvenience of the facts. The fact is that this Leader of the Opposition fails the character test on a number of fronts. We know that this Leader of the Opposition, for example, said at the time that he stood up for workers, but as it turned out the workers were dudded by this Leader of the Opposition when he was head of the union that was accepting payments from employers, and it turned out that the workers got ripped off. That's the reality.

In terms of the character test again that this Leader of the Opposition fails, we see him standing up in this place criticising the Prime Minister for living at Point Piper, yet we know that on a regular basis he is sipping Cristal in the homes of billionaires around the country and he's got his knees up on private jets flying from one side of the country to the other. We know that, when he's in Queensland, the Leader of the Opposition is accepting hospitality—

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