UN General Assembly
2016

In the year before Australia’s strong border protection policies were introduced, over 25,000 irregular migrants arrived in Australia by boat. Over 1,200 people tragically died as a result, the victims of the criminal enterprises that prey on vulnerable people for profit. Without policies to ensure that we can decide who enters Australia, it would not have been possible for our Government to maintain the world’s third- largest permanent refugee resettlement programme. It would not have been possible for Australia to commit to taking an additional 12,000 refugees displaced by the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, or to increase our broader humanitarian intake by more than 35 per cent.