30,000 boat arrivals under Labor

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Created on Wednesday, 21 November 2012 14:59

Written by Editorial staff

The federal government has broken a new record which was unintended and certainly unwanted - illegal boat arrivals have reached 30,000.

That's according to shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison, who says as a result of policies which haven't worked, the number of people arriving in Australia illegally on boats, without an immigration visa, is now more than the population of Alice Springs.

To put that in perspective, 30,000 is more than the maximum capacity of the Western Australian Cricket Ground.

Mr Morrison said that the rate of arrivals has increased lately to the point of lunacy.

"Of the 30,057 arrivals on 515 boats, more than half this number, (15,403) have turned up this year and more than a third (10,146) have turned up since July 1," he stated.

"The current rate of arrivals of more than 2,000 every month is the equivalent of the QE2 turning up every month with a full complement of passengers - Labor simply cannot stop the boats."

Mr Morrison added that more boats have arrived in 2012 so far than in the entire 11 and a half years of the Howard government.

To reach the 30,000 number at the rate of arrivals under the Howard government, the politician mentioned that it would take half a millennium.

He said that as a result of this government, re-establishing a working policy will be more difficult.

"Thanks to Labor's spectacular failure, the problems on our borders have never been more difficult to solve," the shadow minister argued.

"It will be harder to fix now than after the last election, and harder than it was 11 years ago when John Howard was faced with this problem."

Given the billions that has gone into dealing with this huge influx, Mr Morrison said Australia is not in a position to afford another term of these policy failures.

In 2008, the federal government under the then prime minister Kevin Rudd scrapped the suite of Coalition measures on border protection and since then boats have continued to come in greater numbers.

In August of this year, prime minister Julia Gillard introduced measures recommended under her Houston panel in a bid to cease the number of deaths at sea that were occurring.