Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

(—) (): As I understand it—and we are grateful for this support—those opposite support the very important campaign to seek the election of Mathias Cormann to lead the OECD at a time when the world needs strong leadership such as that that Mr Cormann would deliver. The OECD has never been led by anybody from our region. But it does beggar the imagination that those opposite would seek to conflate their cheap political point with the important process of getting Australians back to Australia. I would suggest that the effort that the consular officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, that the effort that officials are making to return Australians, literally in every capital where Australians are located, and to support them, is a very, very focused and conscientious one. But we are operating in the middle of a pandemic. We are operating with quarantine caps; we are operating with flight restrictions, and we have returned over 43,800 Australians since— (Time expired)