Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On this side of the chamber, we believe that this agreement with Malaysia is the only policy that will break the people-smuggling trade, that awful trade where people are making huge amounts of money by allowing people to pay for passage to Australia and risk their lives and their children's lives by putting them on boats—and not all of them make it here. As we were told in a briefing the other day, we do not even know about some of the boats that sink before they get to our waters. We need that stopped. We need the party oppo­site to come to the table, actually get stuck in and support our position to get offshore processing going. Let us get back to doing what we do best—accepting humanitarian refugees without the tragedy of asylum seek­ers getting on leaky boats and not making it.