Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens do not have a monopoly on compassion. Indeed, there is nothing compassionate or fair about encouraging people to pay tens of thousands of dollars to organised criminal people-smuggling rings. There is nothing compassionate or fair about leaving vulnerable women and children who don't have the money to pay a criminal people-smuggling ring to sit and rot in refugee camps year after year while others push them to the back of the queue. There is nothing compassionate or fair about penalising those people who go through proper processes and seek asylum by the book. There is nothing compassionate or fair about incentivising people to take a dangerous journey by sea on leaky boats, letting them drown and forcing our border protection officers to pull their wet bodies from the ocean. That is not kind, that is not compassionate and that is not fair.

Operation Sovereign Borders has three components: boat turnbacks, offshore processing and temporary protection visas. Offshore processing matters because it is vital to deterring the people-smuggling trade. When people know they won't get to live freely in Australia if they don't follow the proper processes, we stop deaths at sea and we make space for the truly vulnerable—those without the dough to jump the queue.