Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The sacrosanct duty of any government is to keep Australians safe and secure and to ensure our national security. It is odd to hear the confected outrage of those opposite, because, when they were in government, they failed miserably to do the work necessary to keep Australians safe. I'll provide you with the facts on cyber security, immigration, key national security laws: we inherited a wreckage. We inherited a wasteland littered with empty press releases, with zero substance, and a pile of botched laws. I can tell you, as everyone knows in this place, that unconstitutional laws do not keep anyone safe. Unlike those opposite, we listen to the experts and we listen to our national security agencies. The so-called tough guy on the borders, the Leader of the Opposition, is responsible for the mismanagement of dozens of cases and multiple pieces of legislation. He had two goes at writing legislation to strip citizenship from our worst criminals, and he failed both times. Those opposite didn't even bother to provide ongoing funding to the high-risk terrorist offender scheme, treating it as a terminating measure. That's a fact. Labor has now fixed this. This Labor government makes decisions informed by national security advice. This Labor government, in conjunction with our agencies, is working around the clock to ensure that Australians are safe. This Labor government will introduce a constitutionally sound citizenship loss regime as soon as possible.

I say this to those opposite: if you want to keep Australians safe, you actually need to do it right. You actually need to do the work—not the smoke and mirrors, the jumping up and down and the confected outrage. You do it quietly, well and effectively.

The Nixon review was a damning indictment of Australia's visa system under the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite. The review found that our government inherited a broken immigration system where abuse of Australia's visa system was rampant. There were abuses of sexual exploitation, human trafficking and other organised crime in our system. Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition—first as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection and later as Minister for Home Affairs—presided over a migration system that was used to facilitate some of the 'worst crimes' in our society. That's a quote from the report. Here are some facts about the way those opposite did, or maybe didn't do, national security. Under the Leader of the Opposition there was an almost 50 per cent reduction in the number of compliance officers. Applications for onshore protection visas peaked in 2018-2019, with more than 40,000 on hand sitting with the department and awaiting a decision.

In contrast, this Labor government is building a better managed migration system. This Labor government is bringing forward the migration strategy, which will end the years of rorts and make our migration system fit for purpose. This Labor government has invested $50 million into migration compliance and building an immigration compliance division to tackle the rampant exploitation. Operation Inglenook has resulted in the cancellation of 45 visas of people working in criminal syndicates in Australia, including in human trafficking and sexual slavery. This Labor government is delivering a $160 million package of reforms to restore integrity to the system, to provide a fair go to genuine onshore asylum seekers and to work to break the business model of those who seek to exploit the system.

The Liberals opposite abolished a dedicated cybersecurity minister. The Liberals opposite failed to deliver stronger penalties to protect online privacy. Those opposite left a patchwork of inadequate policies and frameworks that failed to protect Australia's most sensitive data from cybercriminals.

This Labor government appointed Australia's first cabinet Minister for Cyber Security and our first National Cyber Security Coordinator. We set up Operation Aquila to enable the ASD and the AFP to fight back against cybercriminals. We've declared 168 critical infrastructure assets as systems of national significance. We've commenced the new cybersecurity National Exercise Program, we reformed the Privacy Act to bring penalties up to community standards and the finance minister has announced the National Strategy for Identity Resilience.

We are not going to take lectures from those in opposition, who, when they were in government, failed abysmally on national security. They talked a big game and they couldn't walk it. Now they come into this place and carry on with confected outrage, outrageously seeking to link antisemitism to the High Court decision. It is outrageous what they're doing. It's all about politics. It's all about politicising it. There is no substance on those benches opposite.

In contrast, we are working night and day to keep Australians safe. That is our duty as a government and we take it seriously and we're doing the job. (Time expired)

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