Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Blair for his question. All of us in this House would acknowledge that this is a person who comes to work every day and acts with the utmost of integrity, and so it's no surprise to get the question from him today.

Last week the Australian government made a decision to release a report written by Secretary Mike Pezzullo into the disgraceful actions of the former government to release information about a boat arrival on election day on 21 May. This was the former government sabotaging protocols that protect Operation Sovereign Borders and protect the people in uniform who do dangerous and difficult work. One of the truly outrageous things about the secretary's report is that it details the fact that the decision was made by the former Minister for Home Affairs to release this information while the operation was on foot. This is without precedent in the history of Operation Sovereign Borders, and what it meant was that an operation that was being undertaken by Border Force and Defence Force officials was undermined by the shadow minister who now sits opposite me.

The report also details the fact that, despite the Prime Minister at the time asking the Minister for Home Affairs to release the statement herself, she chose not to do that. Instead, she put the acid on a Defence Force official, who wears uniform for our country, to make the statement for her. That was an act of cowardice. If you are going to politicise this operation, you do it yourself and you put your name to the work that you do. The shadow minister opposite had an opportunity—

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