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

I thank the honourable member for his question. This is a significant issue in Western Australia, but it's a significant issue right across the country. In Queensland, for example, Queenslanders feel very strongly about border protection policy, and I notice some comments coming from Susan Lamb, who is the Labor candidate for Longman. She wants to allow the boats to restart and come back to our country, which would be a disaster, because, when Labor last wanted to implement this policy, there were 50,000 people who came on 800 boats, and 1,200 people drowned at sea. You hear Susan Lamb saying to people in Wamuran, Caboolture, D'Aguilar or Bribie Island:

It's been a long and deeply disturbing process on Manus. I can't understand why this Government won't accept the NZ offer as a bare minimum?

Labor put people on Manus. It was her government. It was the Labor government that put people on Manus. It was Labor who put people on Nauru. It was Labor who allowed 1,200 people to drown at sea, and they want to go back to that tragedy. It's been almost 1,400 days since we had a successful people-smuggling operation. And we've got hypocrites like the member for Batman, the sanctimonious hypocrite—

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