Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Clearly the reopening of our international borders to fully vaccinated travellers in less than two weeks has been very well received on the Gold Coast, in the member's electorate of Moncrieff. The Gold Coast is a city that relies on tourism, but there are many destinations right across Australia that are also pretty excited about the fact that our international borders will be reopening in less than two weeks.

Our very swift and decisive action to close the borders at the beginning of the pandemic clearly meant that many lives were saved. It was a very essential action to make sure that our communities were going to be very safe throughout the pandemic. But we were always aware that we would need to reopen those borders as soon as we possibly could. We've faced a very rapidly evolving situation here. We have dealt with a whole range of challenges over the last two years. I mean 'we' very broadly. I speak not only of the government but also of the people of Australia. Because of the actions that have been taken, we are now in a very, very strong position to be able to fully open our borders to fully vaccinated travellers, and we are doing that from 21 February.

That has all been possible because we as a government have taken the very difficult decisions that we needed to take. The coalition government will always take the difficult decisions in protecting our borders because we know how important that is. That's whether it's biosecurity control, record drug seizures, making our ports and airports more secure, stopping criminals and paedophiles by cancelling their visas or, importantly, stopping the boats and cutting off the people-smuggling trade. That is part of the coalition's DNA.

I have been asked about alternative approaches. We've seen the outcome of an alternative policy, and that is more than 50,000 illegal arrivals on more than 800 boats where, tragically, more than 1,200 people lost their lives at sea. That was the reality. We know that Labor always likes to have an each-way bet. Before an election, they'll say that they're going to be strong on borders, but we know they've proved that that is actually not the reality. I can't bring myself to even contemplate what the border policy of a Labor-Greens government would be. The opposition leader has previously said that he could not turn back the boats. And we know that the member for Melbourne doesn't like the idea of borders at all. So imagine what the policy would be like if ever there were a Labor-Greens government here. What a power-sharing arrangement that would be. The people smugglers would be jumping for joy.

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