Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

The undeniable truth, although it is often denied on the other side, is that when you have strong border protection policies in place you as a government determine who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come—unlike the former government, which quite happily rolled back the proven border protection policies of the former Howard government and quite literally outsourced management of Australia's very precious Refugee and Humanitarian Program to the people smugglers. We all know what the results of that were. In excess of 50,000 people came here illegally and 29,000 of them were dumped into the community with no processing, 1,200 people died at sea—confirmed deaths; we do not know the number of those not confirmed—and, in addition, 14,500 places in our refugee program were given to those who came here illegally as opposed to those who are languishing in camps.