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

Under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments Australia experimented with policies of the kind the Greens advocate for, and it was an unequivocal disaster. The weakening of laws concerning immigration and access to benefits like Medicare and Newstart was like manna from heaven. It was perfect advertising for the people smugglers, so the arrivals started to come. And they came and they came and they came. Twelve hundred people—men, women and children—died at the hands of people smugglers trying to get them to Australia's shores. That is 1,200 souls. It breaks my heart to think of each and every one of those needless deaths, but the coalition stopped the boats with Operation Sovereign Borders. We stopped the boats, and we have reduced the number of deaths at sea through illegal people smuggling to zero.