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

and I'd just encourage the opposition to consider that there are good and bad ways to manage their borders. One of the things that we're really focused on is making sure that, instead of having to rely consistently on deportations, we are actually stopping people from coming into the country to begin with. What you'll see is that we have had very strong success in using the better networks that I've described to the parliament to prevent criminal syndicates from coming in and to prevent people who have fraudulent documents from coming in, and that is the approach that we're taking.

To the more general point, it is a little outrageous for the opposition to come in and make these aspersions about the government. I will just say that we have just received a report—a shocking report, 44 pages—that is an indictment of the Leader of the Opposition's record. Whatever one may think about me and whatever one may say about me, one thing I am not is a hypocrite. What we saw is that for the last few years we had the Leader of the Opposition walking around this country, beating his chest, puffing himself up and telling us all what a tough guy he was. Instead, he was cutting immigration and compliance numbers in half.

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