Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Will the government acknow­ledge that the asylum-seeker policies it has pursued for the last three years have encouraged the people smugglers and have manifestly failed; that those failed policies have encouraged thousands of people to queue-jump to try to reach this country illegally at great risk to their lives; and that those failed policies have resulted in a hugely expanded onshore detention system which is now bursting at the seams and has become the scene of riots and mayhem? Will the government now apologise to the Australian people for its failure of leadership in dealing with this issue?