Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister please update the House on steps the government is taking to protect Australian families from transnational and organised crime? What are the risks, and what is at stake if our approach to transnational crime is diluted?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Petrie for his question. Like all Australians, he and all of us in this place are worried about the cost of transnational crime. We're worried that that figure is now estimated at $47 billion. The sorts of things that we are talking about are when our parents or senior Australians might go online and have their savings ripped off, or they might be exposed to some sort of syndicate that is targeting vulnerable people who might give over passwords or bank account details. We are worried about the exploitation of children, particularly in relation to Australians moving offshore or travelling offshore to exploit children in South-East Asia, but also paedophiles and their activities and networks in our country as well. We are also worried about the distribution of drugs such as ice, particularly in regional communities where ice has infiltrated its way into many families and destroyed countless families across the country.

It takes investment and determination from a government to make sure that we are on the side of Australians when it comes to these very important issues. We have provided record funding not only to the Australian Federal Police but to the other agencies within the Home Affairs portfolio, including ACIC, ASIO, AUSTRAC and other organisations within this department. In addition to that, I've cancelled the visas now of almost 4,000 criminals in our country who have been involved in the sorts of criminal activities I've just detailed, destroying the lives of families, and involved in the distribution of drugs, with outlaw motorcycle gang members among them.

The Labor Party would have you believe that they stand for this too and that they would behave in the way that we have in relation to these decisions if they were in government. But nothing is further from the truth, because we know that when they were last in government, for instance, they took $128 million from the AFP between the 2010-11 and 2013-14 financial years; $30 million and 88 staff from the Australian Crime Commission between 2007-08 and 2013-14; $27 million and 56 staff from AUSTRAC between 2009-10 and 2013-14; and $735 million and 700 staff from customs, resulting in a 25 per cent reduction in sea cargo screening and a 75 per cent reduction in air cargo screening. They did this because they ran out of money. They can't talk about education funding, they can't talk about border protection and they can't talk about dealing with transnational crime because they can't afford to pay for it. They can promise whatever they like, as they always do in opposition, but we know that when Labor get into government they can never deliver on it.