Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I warmly welcome Senator Sinodinos back to this chamber, and I thank him for this question.

Before joining this chamber, in a past life Senator Sinodinos was the chief of staff to one of our most distinguished and outstanding Prime Ministers in our history ever. I would just refer you to a very important statement that he made in relation to our borders. He made this point:

It's about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open hearted people taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations.

But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

When we came into government in 2013, after Labor had dismantled the successful border protection policies of the Howard government, we inherited chaos and dysfunction on our border: 50,000 illegal arrivals by boat, on 800 boats; 1,200 deaths at sea. It took our efforts to fix the absolute chaos and dysfunction that we inherited, to put back a strong border protection framework.

And you'd think that Labor would have learned from their mistakes. No; they are at it again. Senator Sinodinos asked why it is important. Let me say why it is important. We have delivered a human dividend that is both compassionate and fair. We have stopped the deaths at sea. We have closed 19 detention centres. Remember that there were more than 8,000 children in detention under the previous Labor-Green government. Now there are none. All the children are off Nauru, or have their bags packed for the United States. That's what strong border protection delivers. Our plan is simple. We won't change it, we won't weaken it. We know that Bill Shorten, in a desperate attempt to score some tactical political points, is prepared to compromise our national security, is prepared to compromise our border security arrangements. He should stand condemned for it. The Australian people can't trust Bill Shorten with our borders.