Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

Today, the highest duty facing the parliament is to end the iniquitous trade that has led to the deaths of so many people, to end the business of people smuggling and to end the attraction that so many desperate people find to climb aboard unseaworthy vessels and attempt the journey from Indonesia, or other countries, to Australia. On that I think the parliament would be united.

But what we are not faced with today is a single immutable choice, which we either accept or reject, as to how to actually do that. The government has consistently characterised this debate today as being about their solution or no solution. But there are other alternatives to that.