Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of public importance that's been brought by the member for Wannon, on the government's failure to keep our streets safe and our borders secure, and I thank the honourable member for bringing it. The federal government's first priority must always be to keep its citizens, our community, safe; to keep our streets safe and our borders secure. This government, led by the Prime Minister, with home affairs minister, Minister O'Neil; and immigration minister, Minister Giles, has failed on this most important priority. They have failed Australians as a result.

I turn particularly to the failure so far on Operation Sovereign Borders. This operation has been repeatedly undermined by this government since it came to power two years ago. It's all very well for members on the other side to be talking about what the coalition may or may not have done, but they have now been in power for two years, and there is the direct evidence we now have that asylum boats have started to return. We've had six boat arrivals now in as many months—six that we know of. This shows again Labor's chronic border failure. We had media reports yesterday that four unauthorised maritime arrivals were found in Broome on Friday. This represents yet another shocking failure of border protection under the Albanese Labor government. It follows recent reports of 33 illegal boat arrivals at Christmas Island and five in Far North Queensland in the last week alone. This is now the 17th—the 17th!—attempted people-smuggling venture to make the journey to Australia under the Albanese government. Again, this is the 17th that we know about.

This latest attempt comes after the Labor government have demonstrably and repeatedly weakened Operation Sovereign Borders. This has happened in three ways: they've abolished temporary protection visas, they've cut funding to border security by over $400 million and they have reduced aerial monitoring and on-sea surveillance by 20 per cent and 12 per cent respectively. How can this be anything but a weakening of what was a solid Operation Sovereign Borders? It's the latest in a cascading set of failures under the current government that have left Australians feeling less safe, less secure and less certain.

If we turn to the immediate boat arrivals and those that have happened in the past, Labor has a history of weakness on border security. We just have to remember 2007 when, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the government lost control of Australia's borders. Let us really hope that this Prime Minister is not following the example set by Prime Minister Rudd, because, back then, the Labor government was responsible for, arguably, the greatest humanitarian tragedy and policy failure in modern Australian history. We know that at least 1,200 people, including children, died at sea during that period and that 8,000 children were forcibly placed in detention. This is not something that we want to be returning to, but the asylum seekers are now seeing a weaker government—a government that's weaker on border security and two ministers that are weaker. That is a pull factor. We also have three previous immigration ministers who were part of that weakening: Chris Bowen, Tony Burke and Brendan O'Connor oversaw that humanitarian tragedy, and they're still sitting in cabinet—presumably with influence over the weakening of Operation Sovereign Borders.

Let's now turn to NZYQ. Of course Minister Giles has no control over a decision of the High Court. What Minister Giles does have control over is meeting with his department and receiving legal advice about important court cases that are coming up. That would have been far more important than running off to Labor conferences in the UK when the High Court back in June had given an indication that it was likely to find the way that it did. So the minister was on notice, but the minister wasn't responsible; he didn't meet with his bureaucrats and didn't take proper legal advice. A lot of these criminals that have now escaped should have been locked up.

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