Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Once again, we have the opposition, made up of the remnants of the previous failed LNP government, pointing fingers to distract from their own record. I do hear from people that they're feeling less safe, but they feel less safe because of the cynical politicisation by those opposite of tragic events happening here and overseas—performing cheap political stunts, such as we saw during question time, is causing social disharmony and is not in any way making Australians safer, or making them feel safer. The Leader of the Opposition knows that and he doesn't care. That's because he, and those who stand with him, still put their own personal political benefit above the interests of the Australian community. What we saw in question time was disgusting, disgraceful and shameful, and pretending that this is in any way about increasing the safety of the community is offensive, because it is clear it's only about their own political fortunes.

But this is also about the record left by the previous government and the mess they left for this government to clean up. This is a desperate attempt to hide their failures, because the failures are significant. I'm not surprised they want to hide them.

The self-appointed 'tough guy on borders' was shown to be a nonsense in the Nixon review. This was more of the announcement-without-delivery that they were so fond of. The Nixon review was a damning indictment on Australia's visa system under those opposite. We heard how the immigration system under those opposite was broken and the abuse of the visa system ran rampant, with human trafficking, money mules, sex slaves and illicit drugs and tobacco. Organised crime took advantage of the hopeless visa regime overseen by those opposite to spread their misery, victimising Australians and those poor humans who were trafficked. That is what those opposite oversaw. That is what the 'tough guys on law and order' allowed to happen, through their inaction and incompetence. It isn't enough to tell the media that you're tough on law and order. You actually have to do something about it. And those opposite have proven they are not up to it.

So what did they actually do? Well, they cut the number of compliance officers by 50 per cent. As a result, the backlog of visa applications built up, and organised crime and individual criminals saw the opportunity and took advantage of those delays.

The Leader of the Opposition had two attempts at writing legislation to strip citizenship from our worst criminals—two goes, and he failed both times. He didn't bother to provide ongoing funding to the high-risk terrorist offender scheme, treating it as a terminating scheme. Perhaps—as with so many of the other measures they failed to budget for—they were putting their budget announcements ahead of keeping Australians safe. And of course the laws just ruled unconstitutional by the High Court, resulting in the release of criminals, were drafted by those opposite. Fail! That was the legacy of the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, under his watch: fail, fail, fail. They were putting their own interests ahead of the interests of Australians.

What have we done? We have invested $50 million into migration compliance, and we are building an immigration compliance division to tackle the rampant exploitation and abuse we saw under those opposite. Operation Inglenook has resulted in the cancellation of 45 visas of people working in criminal syndicates in Australia, including in human trafficking and sex slavery—people who were operating criminal enterprises, quite happily and unbothered, under the opposition leader's profoundly mismanaged immigration scheme. We are delivering a $160 million package of reforms to restore integrity to the system—an integrity sadly lacking under those opposite. We are working to break the business model of those who seek to exploit the system—those who flourished under those opposite, and particularly the Leader of the Opposition.

But they were not only incompetent on border security, in terms of keeping Australia safe; they also put Australians at risk in other ways. One of the things I hear a lot about in my community is cybersecurity and the rise of scams. I don't really have time to go into that, but they abolished the cybersecurity minister and they left a patchwork of laws that didn't work. And this is what we've had to fix again. So I was appalled by what I saw in question time.

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