Mr MORRISON (Cook—Prime Minister) (15:12): The leader of the Labor Party sounds a little rattled, doesn't he. Mr Conroy interjecting— The SPEAKER: Member for Shortland! Mr MORRISON: He sounds a little rattled and a little breathless today. But I do know one thing. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER: Members on my left! Mr MORRISON: The leader of the Labor Party has never seen a private jet that he hasn't wanted to climb on board of. He's never seen a big table that he hasn't wanted to sneak his knees under. He's never seen that, as you've heard from this despatch box before. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER: Members on my left! Mr MORRISON: And when the former Prime Minister called you out on that, he was dead right. This is the leader of the Labor Party who has been sucking up to the Melbourne elite all of his life. As he sought to climb up the greasy pole, over one body after another, he sought to destroy them, and all those members who sit opposite know it only too well. This is the leader of the Labor Party who wants to run the country like a union. He runs the Labor Party like a union, and we know—and they know—the character of the leader of the Labor Party. Mr Bowen interjecting— Ms Plibersek interjecting— The SPEAKER: Member for McMahon! Deputy Leader of the Opposition! Mr MORRISON: But I'll tell you why he's so rattled. What the last fortnight has demonstrated is not only the lack of character of the leader of the Labor Party, which the Australian people have had a good 5½ years to have a good look at. They've made up their minds on this bloke. They know he's weak. They know he's someone who rolls over, whether it's to the left on taxes or to the left when it comes to border protection or any of these things. They know the leader of the Labor Party is a very weak man. They can see it in his character and they know he's not the sort of person that they would want to have leading this country. But the other thing is this. In the last fortnight, not only have we seen the weakness in the character of the leader of the Labor Party; we have seen that he is leading a divided party on matters of the greatest importance to the Australian people: their jobs, the economy and their safety. Dr Mike Kelly interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Eden-Monaro! Mr MORRISON: These are matters upon which the Labor Party are hopelessly divided. We know they are divided on the economy, because when we wanted to expand Australia's trade borders, when we wanted to go out there and execute those arrangements with China and Korea and all of these countries—particularly with China—what did the Labor Party do? They opposed it. And then they were for it, then they were against it and then they were for it. When it comes to matters of the Australian economy, the Labor Party is riven. What do we also know about the Labor Party in this past fortnight? We know when it comes to our traditional industries—the minerals industry, the resources sector, the forestry sector and the agriculture sector—this is a Labor Party that has deserted the workers in all of those areas. They have deserted them. We have in the member for Corio, who would be part of a Shorten cabinet, someone who said this, 'The global market for thermal coal has collapsed, and, wonderful'—Captain Wonderful over there!—'that's a good thing.' Our biggest minerals export employs, across the sector, some 55,000 people who are seeing the market upon which their jobs depend evaporating away, and the Labor Party says that this is a wonderful thing. So if you're living in North Queensland, if you're living in Townsville, if you're living across the Galilee Basin, if you're living in Queensland, if you're living anywhere in New South Wales—perhaps up in the Hunter Valley—if you're living up there, know this: the Labor Party's not for you. The Labor Party says that your job doesn't matter. The Labor Party says the global markets upon which your job depends don't matter. Those in the Labor Party who used to think that it did matter no longer have a voice under this leader of the Labor Party. This leader of the Labor Party, who says he's a great person for jobs, with his career in the union movement—clearly what he was learning in the union movement was not how to support people's jobs but only how to support himself. So many union leaders we've seen from those militant unions go into those jobs seeking only to support themselves, advance themselves and get themselves into this place. The number of times I've asked those opposite to raise their hands if they're a member of a union—here we go again! Raise your hands if you’re a member of the union? There's just one! Maybe there are three. What a brave bunch they are! They cannot even declare their hand that they are members of union movements. I don't know why they wouldn't. If it's a good thing, why wouldn't you happily proclaim it? Because they know that the only reason they were members of those union movements was to try and crawl into this chamber on the back of their union members. It's not only in the area of our traditional industries where the Labor Party have declared their hand in the last fortnight as being hopelessly divided. Of course we know that under the Labor Party they are hopelessly divided on the issues of national security. That was no clearer than when they came into this place last week and voted to support weakening Australia's border protection regime, hopelessly ignoring the lessons of their own history and ignoring the body count on their own watch. I remember well when the Labor Party members were in government and they came into this chamber and wept. The tears have dried up, just like their memories when it comes to border protection, because they have committed the same sin of offence in this place that they committed when they were in government, when they hopelessly ran our borders down. The reason that happened is not because there are some people on the other side who believe that borders should be protected. It's because those who don't are controlling the Labor Party, and the leader of the Labor Party has hopelessly rolled over to the left, and others simply want to undermine our borders. They have recklessly supported a bill that does many things, as the Attorney and the Minister for Home Affairs and the minister for immigration outlined this week: transferring permanently to Australia people who, in many cases, have been found in those countries not to be refugees at all, and those who, under a character test, would never be allowed to come to Australia, because, also under that bill, what the Labor Party have done is weakened the ministerial discretion that previously existed that prevents a minister and the government of the day being able to protect our borders. They've watered down that discretion. And, as a result, they've also ignored the fact that, in order to address the very error that they were advised by our security agencies that they'd be making, we would need to immediately reopen the Christmas Island detention centre. Mr Neumann: Nonsense, it's rubbish. Mr MORRISON: I get the interjection from the member for Blair that this is absolute rubbish. Now if he won't listen to the advice of security agencies when he's in opposition to protect our borders, what hope would we have that he'd listen to them if he were in government? This is a betrayal of the member for Blair. We don't know if he would be Minister for Home Affairs, because not even the leader of the Labor Party can express that confidence in the member for Blair in terms of what his job would be. But he's not prepared to listen to those agencies now. The Labor Party and the leader of the Labor Party are not prepared to listen to our security agencies now when it comes to protecting our borders. It was the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs who said to the government after the bill was passed, 'you must now reopen the Christmas Island detention centre'. Now we have the member for Blair saying that's the wrong thing to do. We had Senator Wong say it's the wrong thing to do. We had the leader of the Labor Party say it was a tactic one day and it was fine the next. And the member for Sydney still doesn't believe it's the right thing to do despite the fact that that advice has been made very clearly. So understand this: the reason why Labor were so hopeless on our borders was not just because they lack the will, it wasn't just that they didn't understand the consequences of their own divisions, it was not that they didn't understand that you have to deal with the world as it is, not as you'd like it to be, but because, when it comes to border protection, the Labor Party are hopelessly divided. They fought with themselves year after year on the issue of border protection, and minister after minister failed and failed. Let's not forget the tragic record of those ministers who were in that government who wish to now be ministers again in a new government. The member for Watson had over 4,000 people turn up in just one month. The shadow Treasurer had 25,000 people turn up on his watch. They cannot be trusted to make Australia stronger; they can only be relied on to make Australia weaker.