Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Gallacher, I spent many years as a government lawyer doing my fair share of immigration work. This area is fraught with complexity. But it is also fraught at times with people making allegations. In this instance, it is clear that the inquiry brought forward little more than a series of vague, untested, unsubstantiated claims, lacking in credibility and amounting to little more than hearsay. Embarrassingly, Labor and the Greens could not even agree on a single set of recommendations for their inquiry, so Senator Hanson-Young from the Greens was forced to write an additional report to perpetuate her failed political claims.

Well before this political inquiry began, the government had carried out an independent review by the former head of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, Mr Moss, into allegations of inappropriate behaviour at the Nauru Regional Processing Centre. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is implementing the review's 19 recommendations. Over and above the Moss recommendations, the government has established a child protection panel to provide independent advice on child protection in detention and has provided additional Australian Federal Police resources to assist the NPF.

It was the former Green-Labor-alliance government that filled the detention centres with men, women and children after 50,000 people arrived illegally on 800 boats over the six years of Labor government. We hear a lot from those opposite, but the reality is that 1,000 people died at sea. We did stop the boats. Yesterday's announcement in relation to the Syrian humanitarian crisis is a direct, positive dividend of having stopped the boats, because we are now able to make the sort of contribution that we are making for people who are genuine refugees under UNHCR processes and assist them to come to Australia.

Going back to the issues raised by Senator Gallacher: there would be no illegal maritime arrivals in detention today if Labor and the Greens had not opened the borders to people smugglers. Let me take you back to the dismantling of these programs. At that time, I was the shadow parliamentary secretary in the immigration area. I remember vividly Senator Evans dismantling 26 separate programs in the border protection area. What do you think that did to the fabric of a previously organised process? It gave free rein to the people smugglers. It is little wonder that they had a very successful business model, but we ended that business model, because we ended the illegal trafficking of people into Australia. We have stopped the boats, we have stopped the deaths at sea and we have restored integrity to our borders.