Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his contribution. One of the great successes of this country is the fact that we have, for many decades, successfully brought migrants to this country. But we've brought migrants to this country through a process. Those migrants have come from a variety of situations. We've had those that came, post World War II, through from Europe. More recently we've had those from various war-torn areas of the Middle East. Now we're seeing the request for those coming from Gaza, given what's going on in that territory following Hamas's barbaric attack on Israel on October 7.

I don't think anyone in this place has an argument with the fact that we should look to support people in need, and I think, as a country, we've had a tremendous track record of doing that. We should be very proud of that track record. But, in the same vein, we should ensure that the people we are letting into this country come here through the right channels and through the right processes. We should make sure that we know who is coming to this country and their background, to ensure that they are not involved with terrorist organisations.

I'll give the House a little bit of clarity as to why this is so important. There was a report today in the Jerusalem Post about somebody on the terrorist watchlist who was caught at the US-Mexico border for the very reasons we are talking about in this House—

Debate interrupted.

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