Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This Labor government has comprehensively stuffed up our border protection arrangements. By comprehensively stuffing up our border protection arrangements not only have they recklessly and irresponsibly put our national security at risk; they have also put huge additional pressure on our budget. Just as a result of Labor's ongoing border protection fiasco, the budget for this year is not worth the paper it was written on. You have to remember that the previous coalition government had fixed this problem. Through genuine offshore processing of all illegal arrivals, through temporary protection visas to ensure people smugglers no longer had a product to sell and by turning around these boats coming from Indonesia with Indonesian crew whenever it was safe to do so, the previous coalition government had fixed the problem.

But this Labor government, first led by then Prime Minister Rudd with Deputy Prime Minister Gillard at the time, thought they knew better. They comprehensively dismantled what was a successful policy framework and the results were there to see almost immediately. If you look at the graph over a long-term period you will see that as soon as the Labor government dismantled the policy framework on border protection that was put in place by the Howard government there was a huge spike in illegal boat arrivals that has not been reversed. Under this government, since they weakened our previously strong border protection arrangements, there have been 44,452 illegal arrivals on 724 boats. This year alone there have been 24,541 illegal arrivals on 384 boats.

The reason that is important is that this government's budget in 2012-13, incredibly and unbelievably, was based on an assumption that there would be just 5,400 illegal arrivals. In MYEFO they updated that to 12,000 illegal arrivals for 2012-13. But, guess what? The actual number of illegal arrivals so far is more than 4.5 times as high as what was predicted in the budget and twice as high as what was predicted in MYEFO.

I asked the minister today whether she stood by the prediction in the budget that between this year and next year the number of illegal arrivals would fall by about 46 per cent. The minister gave us a lecture on the methodology that was set out in the budget papers—we already knew that. But the one thing that the minister refused to do today was stand by the budget projection that the number of illegal arrivals by boat would reduce by 46 per cent. The reason for that is that she cannot. Given the current trend of about 100 illegal arrivals a day by boat, if the policies of the current government continue there is no way that there will be a sudden drop next year to just 36 illegal arrivals a day, as is predicted by the minister for finance in the expenditure projections in the budget. We call on the secretaries of Treasury and Finance to reflect on the current trend of illegal arrivals by boat and, if the government's current policy settings are maintained, make whatever adjustments to the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook they consider to be appropriate in their objective and independent judgment.

The government's record on border protection is outrageously incompetent. It has been an extraordinary fiasco. It is one that was predictable and was indeed predicted by the coalition. Not only have we a situation where we have had more than 44,000 illegal arrivals, we have actually had boats arrived in Geraldton undetected. For the people of Sydney that is the equivalent of an illegal boat arriving undetected in Port Macquarie. It is completely unacceptable. We have had a person with an INTERPOL Red Notice—a convicted jihadist terrorist—housed behind a pool fence. This government has to go just because of the absolute and comprehensive failure of its border protection arrangements. (Time expired)