Subjects: Appointment of AFP Commissioner; Temporary Exclusion Order scheme; regional processing.

EO&E.......................................................

PETER DUTTON:

The Government will recommend to the Governor-General that Mr Reece Kershaw APM be appointed as the 8th Australian Federal Police Commissioner. Some of you will know Mr Kershaw from his time in the ACT and he now serves as you’re aware as the Commissioner in the Northern Territory.

The Commissioner started his policing career in 1988 with the Australian Federal Police and he was based in Melbourne, in the ACT, in WA. He worked in the Organised Crime Intelligence Unit. He’s worked at the National Crime Authority. He’s worked again in Perth with the ACC as a Team Leader of the Joint Task Force, as a Team Leader of Operations of Close Personnel Protection within the AFP; Chief of Operations, United Nations Police in East Timor. He was a Superintendent at The Hague – he has represented the AFP there with great distinction at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Superintendent in the Office of Deputy Commissioner, National Security and Deputy Commissioner of Operations, he was a Superintendent of Child Protection Operations and the Acting Commander in the hi-tech crime operations. Commissioner Kershaw, is then ranked of Superintendent, worked as Operations Support Participating Police Force, Superintendent Crime and Intelligence Acting Commander. He was the Acting Assistant Commissioner for Serious and Organised Crime. He was in March of 2010 a Commander. In February 2011 he was the Assistant Commissioner of Crime and Specialised Services.

He was the Assistant Commissioner in Darwin Metropolitan Service in July 2014, Acting Deputy Commissioner and Acting Commissioner within the Northern Territory. He was appointed as the Commissioner of Police and Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services in April 2015.

He has an extremely distinguished policing and public service career. He’s represented his country and the Territory with the great respect of those that have served under him and I'm very pleased that he has accepted the offer to become the next Commissioner.

I want to truly pay tribute to Andrew Colvin who has served for 30 years with the Australian Federal Police and has led the organisation with great distinction and with great capacity. Andrew Colvin is also a relatively young man who will go on to a very distinguished career in the next part of his life as well and we wish AJ all the very best in that endeavour. Reece I might as you to say a few words and then we’re happy to take any questions.

REECE KERSHAW:

Thank you Minister. It's an honour and a privilege to lead the men and women of the Australian Federal Police who have continually delivered for the Australian community and the Australian Government over the last 40 years.

My initial focus will be around making sure that those frontline officers in the AFP are supported with the right training, the right technology, the right equipment, that the operating model of the organisation is fit for purpose for now and the future, and also that the health and wellbeing of all staff is examined in relation to those strategies and those support mechanisms.

My service as the Minister has noted, includes serving in Europe, Asia, the Pacific and most recently for the last nine years in a state policing environment where I’ve been able to understand the importance of true partnerships, with law enforcement and other agencies – and that is going to be another area of my focus – to make sure we are able to unleash and unlock those resources, those law enforcement resources, to do as much damage to the criminal environment, to those persons that also break the law and to those organisations who seek to harm Australians, and to make sure that Australia is as safe as it can be.

QUESTION:

Mr Dutton, this morning you said that there are consequences for illegal metadata searches. Can you tell us exactly what consequences there have been for WA Police and ACT Policing and their unlawful conduct revealed by the Commonwealth Ombudsman.

PETER DUTTON:

Are there any questions in relation to the appointment of Commissioner Kershaw?

QUESTION:

Can I ask Commissioner, what priorities will you bring to it? Is it going to be Counter-Terrorism, Cyber, and secondly there has been some talk by your predecessor, he hinted largely, that the AFP were unfunded. What’s your perspective on both of those fronts?

REECE KERSHAW:

Look, I think at the end of the day you've got the resources you have and you need to do the best with what we've got and that's what I will do. I think the priorities are going to remain as counter-terrorism, our national security and protecting Australia’s interests, and in particular targeting organised crime – and that’s global now days – making sure that we have strategies that attack the supply chain of those organisations and those individuals, and making sure we’ve got the capability across the globe and nationally to be able to do that. I think State Police can play a greater role in that area and I look forward to working with all those partner agencies to do that.

QUESTION:

So you’re going to have a very strong advocacy role on behalf of the AFP. There was talk that the AFP – Minister I know you will disagree with it – but they were short funded by, in the order of $400 million.

REECE KERSHAW:

I mean look, I’m taking the budget – the budget is the budget at the end of the day – and I’ve gone through that…

QUESTION:

…so you’ll just roll over will you?

REECE KERSHAW:

No; I think what’s important is that you obviously have to demonstrate public value and remember that it’s taxpayer money – and I think that’s the first thing I’ll be doing.

PETER DUTTON:

Just to reassure you Andrew, I've not met a Head of Agency that hasn't asked for more money and I'm sure the Commissioner is, having served governments for a long period of time, will continue that fine tradition of seeking more money, as any leader of an organisation like the AFP properly should.

QUESTION:

Commissioner, do you think there needs to be a change in approach with the way the AFP investigates leaks and obviously the controversy that’s gone on with the investigations of journalists? Do you think there has been some mistakes made and perhaps a different approach needs to be taken in the future?

REECE KERSHAW:

What I'll be asking for when I start in early October is for a briefing and you have an incoming Commissioner's brief and I’ll be having a look at all those issues.

QUESTION:

So do you think there is something to look at? Like, has the controversy been regrettable?

REECE KERSHAW:

No, I think as a Commissioner, as an incoming Commissioner, you need to take into account what’s on the books and that’s what I’ll do.

QUESTION:

Further to that question, could I just ask: will your approach to be to follow the letter of the law and raid when there has been a leak relating to national security or will you balance some concerns of press freedom? And further to that, would you give a heads up to the Minister before you carry out a raid on a journalist?

REECE KERSHAW:

My style is that the Ministers Office would not be informed pre-operation, unless it was something of national security that required that and in relation to the media freedoms; I believe in our democracy and that’s the approach I’ll take.

QUESTION:

Mr Kershaw are you concerned that the Commonwealth Ombudsmen has said that WA Police and ACT Policing breached the safeguards in the metadata laws?

PETER DUTTON:

I’m happy to come back to the question, I just want to deal with questions around the Commissioner’s appointment to start with.

QUESTION:

Commissioner, the Attorney-General has said that he's seriously disinclined to authorise the prosecution of journalists. After you've had that briefing, if it becomes clear to you that a prosecution wouldn't be successful, would you order your officers to end the investigations into those three reporters?

REECE KERSHAW:

It is about process – and I’ve done this before where you can ask for a second opinion, or a third opinion about the process, and get those opinions and then make that decision – but it’s got to be informed with all the facts, all the legalities addressed and so on. That’s my style. I will get as much information as I can to see where it’s at.

QUESTION:

So just to be really clear, you are open, after your briefing, to asking the officers to end these investigations?

REECE KERSHAW:

Well that’s normally not the process. The process would be you’d have a legal viewpoint and then the operational decision makers make that decision.

QUESTION:

Commissioner, just back to Andrew’s question about your priorities. You've spoken about organised crime. What is your assessment – Andrew mentioned cyber, the cyber threat – what's your assessment of the cyber threat? We've seen a lot of high profile examples of cyber-attacks in Australia? What's your assessment of the level of that threat and how well we're combating it?

REECE KERSHAW:

I think it’s well known that we’ve got multiple issues within cyber; whether it be identity theft or the use of cryptocurrency now, people having I guess challenges with online child sexual exploitation, there's a whole range of issues there that need to be prioritised. It's a big, I guess, world as far as the internet goes, but that will be a priority as well – to make sure that we're keeping people safe online – but we're also able to trace and track those criminals; and I've done that before in high-tech crime where we're able to work with partner agencies and track down these syndicates that are using the internet for illegal means.

QUESTION:

Commissioner, a number of AFP officers have killed themselves at work in recent years. Do you acknowledge there’s a mental health issue within the force and what are you going to do about it?

REECE KERSHAW:

I think it's across Australia. I think if you talk…I go to the Commissioner's forums; t's a national issue. We talk with the Police Federation and our various police unions. I think there's some work to do there, more work to do there in that area. It is a disturbing, I guess, issue for us. I've lost some officers as well in the Northern Territory – so AFP is not alone in this area. I think it's really important to look at, you know, those strategies and the support mechanisms that we can roll out to prevent this from happening.

PETER DUTTON:

I think the other point to make there too is, I mean it’s not just a national issue when you look at policing agencies across the world, they experience the same tragic outcomes and we’ve got officers with access to firearms, where you have a high stress environment in terms of the investigations that they’re involved in – and in some cases when you look at the individual circumstances around marriage breakdowns, child custody matters, where people have terminal illnesses – there are a number of particular circumstances that make each case unique, as equally tragic as the previous.

But this is not an issue that’s just known to Australia. It's an international issue and we are working very closely with all of our agencies to provide whatever support we can. It's an incredibly important area of focus.

QUESTION:

Commissioner, can I just ask you on drug reform? How do you feel about increasing calls saying New South Wales for drug decriminalisation in the wake of the Ice Inquiry? And Minister, I wanted to see your thoughts on that as well?

PETER DUTTON:

Well I’ll start. The Government's position, as I think Greg Hunt set out well yesterday in Question Time, is that we have a lot of money going into health services to provide support for people who fall victim to the scourge of drug use, but there is no safe dosage that kids can take at these events.

There is a very important issue for us to deal with here – and obviously it's of national interest at the moment – but the Federal Governments perspective has been consistent across both Labor and Coalition Governments for a long period of time; and that is that we are not going to water down those laws.

We have a market here where people pay significant prices, above world average prices, for many of these illicit substances and therefore we are an attractive destination market.

So yes, we are providing record amounts of support for health services, but we are also putting a significant effort into disruption, particularly where we're seeing amphetamine or precursors, ice etc, coming out of Mexico or out of South East Asia and we're not going to take our eye off that ball and if people think there is a different agenda unfolding here, I can assure you that is not the case.

QUESTION:

Just in relation to the foreign-fighters legislation, you said that there were 80 Australians overseas and separately we were told by NGO's and so on that there's about 50 to 60 children. In terms of the people that are over there now, is it the case that the majority of Australians there now are children? And how many of those do you know are under the age of five? How many do you know are under the age of 14?

PETER DUTTON:

Sam, we haven't given a breakdown of those numbers and we're not going to. We are dealing with each individual case at the moment and in addition to the 80; you might be talking about some people who have left our shores, who said they were going to Indonesia for example, but have ended up in Syria or Iraqi. Those people may now be travelling on a false passport, it may be the case that they fled to Europe or somewhere else and at some point we will need to manage the return of those individuals.

So the number may well go beyond that because of course we weren’t aware of every travel plan – in some cases we have been able to work back to work out – in fact their true intent was to go and fight for ISIL.

We will look at those cases individually, but the idea of the TEO, the idea of the citizenship loss and the other tranches of national security legislation that we have brought before the Parliament is to keep Australian safe. We want to deal with the threats.

Now, there are some women who have been dragged by their husbands into Middle East in horrific circumstances and there are others who are willing participants and are an equal threat to Australians.

In some cases children have been born over in Syria or Iraq, we believe to potentially an Australian citizen mother, but we don't know the father's nationality or background. There are other cases where you are talking about children of a very young age – I have a lot of sympathy in relation to try and repatriate those children and bring them back into our country – but we need to be cognizant of the threat that the mother potentially provides or that we would be faced with if she was to return.

As you go up the scale, if you have got children of 13, 14, 15 years of age, and through their formative years, they’ve been watching Mum or Dad or others around them involved in the fight to kill people in the Middle East, that is a very serious issue for us to deal with.

So, the point I would make is that through all of these Bills, including TEO, we are looking at cases individually and we are looking at ways in which, if we’re to bring somebody back, that we can do that with the assistance of family services, de-radicalisation programs, Imam’s, people within the Islamic community that we are working very closely with.

We will do all of that and that has been the approach and I think it's the best approach in difficult circumstances.

QUESTION:

How many foreign-fighters have come back since 2016?

PETER DUTTON:

The best numbers that I can give to you, as we’ve said publicly before, is that we estimate about 230 people have left our shores to go and fight in the name of ISIL. Some of them have been involved in horrific circumstances where multiple people have been killed, or they facilitated attacks elsewhere in the West.

We have a judgement that about 100 people have been killed in the theatre of that war; that 40 have returned and we will deal with people as we find them. But there is an urgency with this and the red herring about Labor throwing out that this is not constitutional; there are amendments to be made: I mean the Labor Party was against tax cuts – they ended up voting for it – they were dead against the drought measures – they ended up voting for it. It seems their tactic at the moment is to fight everything as long as they can and then if they think we have got the numbers in the Senate, they fold and they’ll support.

Now that seems to be the case yesterday or last night in the House of Representatives where Mr Dreyfus moved 41 amendments, said in his speech that it was unconstitutional and then voted for the Bill.

There's no consistency of approach here and I think the Labor Party is in a complete muddle at the moment. So we will work through it.

QUESTION:

Minister, why won’t you tell us how many of those people are children? And recently we’ve seen women repatriated to Australia who have been married to ISIS fighters. What about children, young male children who have been potentially born into those families and have been forced to be child fighters, would they ever be repatriated to Australia under any circumstances?

PETER DUTTON:

I need to take into account those considerations. I also frankly need to consider the rights of the five-year-old Australian child at a school here in Australia because we can't just take somebody having been over in the Middle East and put them into year five or year six or year 10 at the local school or the high school. Let’s be realistic about it.

So there’s good reason as to why we don’t want media attention to some individual cases. I don't want cameras parked out the front of schools, or people being scrutinised as they’re going into a mosque. We will work with good people in the Islamic community, which we are doing at the moment. We’re working with the, particularly in the New South Wales and Victoria, the family services authorities in those states and we will put a bespoke arrangement in for some individuals.

We don't know whether or not some of these children are Australian citizens or not. We don't know because we don't have DNA testing, we don't know where these children were born, it’s a very difficult circumstance and so I’m not going to provide a running commentary on this family or that individual circumstances.

I’ve given you the way in which we are approaching this which I think is reasonable. I think threat level for us is different that some of the women pose and I want to be clear about this; the advice to me is that some of these women are as bad as any of the men that we have seen. So let's be realistic about those that we are bringing back.

Others, as I have said before, have been in violent relationships or have been sold or traded into some other relationship in horrific circumstances. That's what we’re dealing with.

QUESTION:

You have set a hard line with deporting criminals from Australia I think who have convicted serious crimes, what happens if Iraq and Syria starts deporting some of these Australian citizens, from character grounds essentially, saying we don't want terrorists here – especially when subsection 15(1) of your own legislation says the Minister must accept these people and issue a return permit if they are being deported. Won’t they just override these TEOs anyway?

PETER DUTTON:

No, no you’re conflating a few issues there. So let's deal with people returning to Australia. We, as is the case for any country, issue travel documents; whether it’s somebody’s passport, whether it's a visa to come to our country. Now in some cases, in many cases, the Foreign Affairs Minister has made a decision to cancel passports as a way of managing people or preventing them from travelling, either further afield from Syria or Iraq, or returning back to Australia and so that is one of the mechanisms that is available to us.

We have the ability not to accept people back, even if they are in a host country where they’re demanding that those people be returned to us, because in the end my responsibility is to act in our national interest and that is what I will do.

In relation to the TEO Bill – so you quote section 15 – in the TEO Bill there is the ability for the Minister of the day to make a decision about a TEO which can exclude somebody for up to two years. Every one of those decisions is reviewed by a former judge, or a senior member of the AAT – bearing in mind that the person needs legal qualification if they are in the AAT as a senior member and they have the ability…the TEO doesn't come into effect until it has been signed off by a former judge, or the senior member of the AAT.

The person can then apply for – and I think a lot of people have missed this in the debate – there is the ability for the individual to apply for a return permit. If they apply for a return permit, they can come back to Australia and in fact, that then moves the TEO off the table.

So I can't, as much as in some cases I would want to, exclude some of these people from ever coming back to our country, because they are Australian citizens, they have constitutional and legal protections and we have a legal obligation to bring those people back.

But what we’re doing through the TEO is not detaining people for two years offshore, we’re not precluding them from returning to Australia ever, but we are saying that we do want to work with those people to identify where it is they're going to turn up in Australia; what working arrangements they have got in place; what school they intend to send their kids to. We need to work through the individual circumstances and that is what the TEO Bill allows us the time to do.

If you’ve got somebody at the moment who refuses to co-operate, doesn't tell us where they are going to live, who they are going to associate with, whether they are inciting violence, the rest of it; that is a very more difficult circumstance to deal with then if we can hold somebody for a defined period of time, until we can get all that in place, that gives us the best ability to manage the risk and to try and prevent a terrorist attack from taking place.

So the point was, in relation to what the sanction might be. Well, there will be obligations in the WA case that you provide for police to conduct themselves in accordance with the directions given by the Commissioner, under the relevant Police Act within that state and there would be sanction for that officer and that would be an issue for the Commissioner within the example you give, WA. There would be also the prospect of civil penalty if somebody decided to take an action, if they believe there had been a breach and in certain circumstances – not commenting on this particular circumstance –  but there can be examples where people step outside the law where they're supposed to be in the process of executing their duty and it might give rise to criminal offences.

I don't know what action to pre-empt your next question I think that you started. It's a question for WA as to what action might have taken place there and if there is something else to say...

QUESTION:

But the AFP is responsible for ACT policing and they accessed Metadata unauthorised by 116 times.

PETER DUTTON:

No, the ACT Police, as you know, operate under the ACT Government, under the Local Council Government here, so that's an issue for the ACT Government and that’s a contracted arrangement between the AFP and the ACT Government and we don't direct those officers, they operate under the ACT law and under the Commissioner of the ACT.

QUESTION:

But they are still AFP employees aren’t they?

PETER DUTTON:

Of course they are and they work though under an arrangement, long-standing with the direction of the Chief Minister, the Police Minister in the ACT, as we see in other States and Territories.

QUESTION:

How can Australians be confident their safeguards are working? How can Australians be confident their safeguards are working when you, the Federal Minister, can't actually list any consequences that have accrued for these unlawful searches?

PETER DUTTON:

Karen?

QUESTION:

Minister, what you said about cancelling passports is certainly true, about dual citizens, but you can't cancel the passports of people who are only Australian citizens…

PETER DUTTON:

Yes you can…

QUESTION:

…I’ll just ask my question, because you can’t leave them stateless. And in relation to Temporary Exclusion Orders, the PJCIS actually recommended that you should consider the risk of temporary statelessness i.e. people in the countries that these people are in, managing them from there, before you implement the ban. You rejected, that was one of the recommendations you rejected, why was that?

PETER DUTTON:

Again, I think a few of the facts are wrong, with respect.

So I think you are talking about citizenship loss, you said passport cancellation…Cancelling somebody's passport doesn't render them stateless or, it can only apply to dual citizens – that’s in relation to citizenship loss.

So we can't under our Constitution, and because of the convention that signed up to, render somebody stateless and that was considered obviously when we put together the Citizenship Loss legislation, but that is a separate issue to somebody's passport being cancelled. And that happens regularly, and there can be a reinstatement – and there is a process for that reapplication – but that doesn't leave somebody stateless, but it does leave them with a temporary inability to travel, which is the exact purpose of the cancellation. So that happens under law.

What we’re proposing, essentially, is an extension of that where we want to manage the return of people where we are obliged to take them back and I think that's important.

To go to the last point you make in relation to PJCIS. Look; I’ve believed for a long period of time that Labor has effectively managed Mark Dreyfus through the PJCIS process.

QUESTION:

That was a recommendation of the entire committee, Mr Hastie included.

PETER DUTTON:

I think the PJCIS, frankly, has done the job that the Labor caucus should do. The Labor caucus, I suspect people, because they are compelled to sit there, find it excruciating to listen to long lectures by Mr Dreyfus because as you know, he is the smartest person in any room, at least by his own account.

So I think we need to recognise that the PJCIS, like any committee to the Government, provides recommendations. In relation to this this Bill we have accepted 17 of the 19 recommendations.

QUESTION:

But why didn’t you accept that one?

PETER DUTTON:

Because ASIO and the AFP advised us that the Bill would be in a better form if we didn’t accept those, but we noted them, which is the advice that we’ve taken.

So in the end, the Government will look at the recommendations of the PJCIS on this Bill or any other. But we are not going to get ourselves into position, which I think we were in in the last Parliament, where Mark Dreyfus waters every Bill down and that keeps the left contained within the Labor Party and it’s convenient for Mr Shorten, as the Leader at the time. We’re not going to allow that to happen because what ends up happening is we end up with a Bill that is ineffective and I’m not…these matters are too important for that.

So Anthony Albanese can manage Mark Dreyfus in a different process, but I’m not going to allow national security ageniesy to be stifled by Mark Dreyfus and his ability to water down legislation.

QUESTION:

Can I just ask the Commissioner, was it the AFP's advice not to follow those recommendations, can you explain why?

REECE KERSHAW:

Sorry, which recommendations?

QUESTION:

The recommendations from the PJCIS.

PETER DUTTON:

I’ll answer that. I mean Reece is the Commissioner in the Northern Territory, he takes up the position of Commissioner for the Federal Police in October. So I mean it’s an unfair question to the Commissioner-designate until he’s been able to be briefed. So put the question to Andrew Colvin, he’s the AFP Commissioner.

QUESTION:

Ok, but what is the explanation from the agencies Minister as to why those two recommendations aren’t being followed?

PETER DUTTON:

Well there’s an element David in relation to one of them about knowledge and recklessness and you can look at the legal advice around constitutionality, which was another issue discussed in the committee. The Solicitor-General’s advice to us is very clear on the constitutionality, that is that the Bill is valid in its current form that we’ve put before Parliament – as it was in its original form. So we need to work through on an operational basis the application of these laws, so that they have some effect and that’s the way in which the agencies provided that advice is what we’ve acted on.

QUESTION:

Minister, why did you not put forward exclusion orders three or four years ago when the UK brought in a similar scheme? Have you been too slow?

PETER DUTTON:

No we haven’t and we’ve been able to manage the return of some through passport cancellations, through others who have presented at Embassies and we’ve been able to, in some cases, arrest people and we might be able to do that in some of these cases.

I guess the point I was making before in response to Sam’s point, and I think to Karen as well, is that there are very specific circumstances in each of these cases where no silver bullet exist for us to deal with it and this is the latest opportunity for us to be able to give another tool to deal with a difficult person coming back to Australia. We have been able to deal with the realities of the last Parliament, the last Senate, etc and I believe that we are in a position to get this Bill through the Senate and that’s what we intend to do.

QUESTION:

Minister, does the Government have any intention of delivering a substantial energy policy, like the NEG? And if so, when?

PETER DUTTON:

I’ll leave that up to Mr Taylor to answer.

QUESTION:

As you would be acutely aware, James Marape was emphasising this week that he would like to see a timeframe for refugees and asylum seekers to leave PNG. Is that timeframe, in your view, by the end of this year? And what attitude would you have to PNG striking an arrangement with New Zealand to take up to 150 a year?

PETER DUTTON:

Well Andrew, firstly; I had a very good meeting with the Prime Minister in Port Moresby last week and I've had a number of discussions ongoing, obviously with Minister Thomas and I met up with the new Police Minister, both in Moresby last week and here as part of the delegation visit.

So we've got an exceptional relationship with them and we made the point in the discussions that none of us around the table entered into the agreement to put people on Manus or Nauru. That was done by Mr Rudd, by Ms Gillard.

Our job is to get people off. Now we've got 585 people to the United States; a deal that was never envisaged, never possible under Labor. Labor never had a plan to take a single person off Manus or Nauru. My desire is to get the number down to zero as quickly as possible. We've got now just over 400 in PNG, just over 300 people in Nauru. We have a number of people in the pipeline to go to the United States…

QUESTION:

New Zealand?

PETER DUTTON:

…and we are working as closely as we can to zero, as quickly as possible. The Prime Minister was very mindful of that. The other point he made, which I think he emphasised when he was here as well – which I respect greatly – is the fact that the people on Manus have been treated very poorly by many people including some in the press here in Australia.

They are islanders, peace-loving people, very accommodating and they have been portrayed as somebody different than that. PNG is quite aggrieved by that, as I am – and I've made this point in a number of occasions – and we are going to work with the PNG Government to reframe that because there are people that have been presented in a way that they shouldn’t have.

QUESTION:

You have avoided the questions though?

PETER DUTTON:

No, I’m happy to come to the point. If I could get it down to zero tonight, I would. If I could bring those people to Australia and it wasn’t going to restart boats, I would have done it by now.

QUESTION:

The time frame though…

PETER DUTTON:

…I am not putting a deadline date on it because to go to the point before about people travelling, there are Iranians on PNG; Tehran will not issue travel documents for those people. They will not go to the United States. They've said that they won’t accept a position to go to the United States. No other country in the world will take them and they are holding out to come to Australia.

Now in that circumstance, I am not taking that person and I've been clear about it. We've provided resettlement assistance for people to go back to their country of origin. There are some 117 people up on Manus who have been found not to be refugees and we will continue to work with the authorities up there to get the number down to zero.

But I just remind you that we've now had three vessels in only a short period of weeks. There were boats on the water anticipating a Labor government being elected in May. We have a very significant concern about some of the messages up in Sri Lanka at the moment and we are working in a way that won't restart boats, but to get people off Manus and Nauru as quickly as possible.

I'll just finish on this point. I have never ruled out the New Zealand option, but I've made the point – and I’ll make it again today – now is not the right time for us to be sending people to New Zealand because New Zealand is being marketed in Sri Lanka, as it is elsewhere, as essentially the same destination as Australia. The same welfare system, the same housing opportunities, the same education systems, the same government support; all of that is being marketed in a similar way.

So there may be a time when we can exercise the New Zealand option, and we're grateful for it right back to Prime Minister Key's day, but we will exercise that option when and if it is in our national interest and it’s not going to restart boats, because under both the Labor Party and the Coalition at the moment, if there's a boat that successfully gets through tonight with 30 kids on board, they are all going to Nauru.

President Obama and President Trump have been very clear that they will not be able to access the US arrangement and if they've come from Iran, we can't send them back to Iran.

So let's be realistic. If the problem starts again, what happens? What will happen is this. Nauru will fill and overflow and then you've got the problem of where people go to beyond that. I've closed down and the detention centre's been demolished in Manus. Nobody is in detention on Manus Island and we've worked now to get 585 people off Manus and Nauru to the United States.

We've got people who are here; when they need medical attention, we've been providing medical attention. That has always been the case, but I'm not going to make decisions that will encourage people smugglers in Sri Lanka, who this very moment, are encouraging innocent men, women, and children to pay money to get onto those boats.

We're not going back to Labor's days. I'm not going back to having children in detention and I'm not going to allow our country to again be held ransom by people who are evil, criminal syndicates taking money to put ventures together.

Thanks very much.