Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government is getting a reputation at home in Australia and abroad for all the wrong reasons. Here in Australia it is getting a reputation—more than getting a reputation; it has got a reputation—for not combating the cost-of-living increases that now punish every Australian family. It is getting a reputation for being deaf, dumb and blind to the increases in the cost of doing business that are now being felt by every Australian business, with many of them being forced to pass them on to consumers in order that they may continue to keep their doors open. And, now, Labor is getting a reputation for itself internationally for its weak leadership on border security.

As a Western Australian senator, news of almost 40 illegal maritime arrivals reaching the north-west coast of Western Australia over the last few weeks unfortunately came to many Western Australians as another reminder of why this Labor government, led by Anthony Albanese—supported by Labor members of parliament like the member for Pearce, Tracey Roberts, the member for Cowan, Anne Aly, and the member for Perth, Patrick Gorman, who is the Prime Minister's right-hand man—has given up on the interests that are important to Western Australians. The fact is that an illegal vessel travelled across vast seas and reached the Australian mainland—in this case, the Western Australian mainland—and dropped passengers without detection. This, I might add, is a part of the world that I am very familiar with; I have been to Beagle Bay and to One Arm Point, and I regularly travel across from Broome to Kununurra on the road, on the single-lane highway. The fact that illegal maritime arrivals can arrive undetected is an embarrassment for this Labor government.

It's particularly bad for Western Australians because, as I said, it comes on top of a litany of other issues which are demonstrating that Western Australian priorities are the very last thing on the minds of this Labor government. Having wasted $450 million on a referendum—which didn't just fail but failed catastrophically, and which is now being criticised by some of those people who were so close to the referendum they almost owned it—means that very few Indigenous Australians living in the far north of Western Australia are getting the important services that they need.

Question agreed to.