Mr DUTTON (Dickson—Leader of the Opposition) (15:36): It is a very important day in the history of this parliament because the prime minister of our country has come into the parliament and has deliberately misled this parliament. That is the most serious allegation that can be made against a prime minister or, indeed, against a member or senator in this House or in the other place. I cannot recall a time in recent history were such a claim has been made against a member with the evidence so clear in relation to this matter. It is clear that the government has taken steps to avoid a debate. It is obvious now, with the Prime Minister leaving the chamber, that he is not prepared to defend his own position—again something without precedent in my 20-odd years in this parliament. Normally, you would expect a prime minister to stand up and defend himself or herself, to correct the record if, indeed, there had been an inadvertent misleading of the House. But this Prime Minister went on, question after question in his responses to those questions, perpetrating his misleading of this house. This is a very serious— The SPEAKER: I understand the Leader of the Opposition said the Prime Minister had deliberately misled— Mr DUTTON: Yes. The SPEAKER: I ask you to withdraw that as it is against the standing orders, as every other member has done over time. Mr DUTTON: I'm making reference to the process that went on today, which is exactly what I said in the House in my motion, where I said: 'considers that this constitutes a deliberate misleading of the House'. The SPEAKER: I understand the cause of the issue. It's the statement which has been made. All members since Federation—and Practice dictates that statement is unparliamentary. To assist the House and let the debate continue, I ask the Leader of the Opposition to withdraw that. Mr DUTTON: I withdraw on the basis that the Prime Minister refuses to be here. It is difficult, particularly when the government has taken a decision to use parliamentary process not to debate the matter, which I think reflects very poorly on this Prime Minister. It's a sobering day when the Prime Minister can't be here to defend himself against an allegation in my motion today, which I moved during the course of question time. I quote from that motion: '(c) considers that this constitute a deliberate misleading of the House.' It's a very serious allegation. What's the basis here? We're talking about the issue of national security. We have a situation where on 7 October there was an attack of the most serious nature in Israel where 1,200 people were slaughtered. One hundred people are still held hostage in a tunnel network, and we know that the atrocities that Hamas committed don't stop there, because they're hiding weapons within the population, under hospitals, in places of worship and in places of gathering, including residential areas, to this very day. They have no regard for the Israelis, but they have less regard for Palestinians. On 9 October, in our country there was a protest on the steps of the opera house where the antisemitism that we're seeing almost as common practice today was first highlighted and emphasised with that unruly crowd. It's important to recite that part of this story because the Prime Minister, from that very first moment, that very first test of his leadership, decided not to condemn those actions and not to condemn those blatant, obvious and transparent acts of antisemitism. And what has happened between 9 October and today? We've seen a level of antisemitism in our country that has never been witnessed. We have people who were in the Holocaust as survivors from the camps who shifted here post 1945, and, for the first time in our country's history and in their new lives here in our country, they say that they feel unsafe—in our country! How could that be? How could it be that people who have contributed to our country and have been peaceful in their presence here, who have educated their children and have worked hard and contributed to the fabric of our society—how could they be made to feel unsafe to the point where they're talking about wanting to return to Israel, a country under attack? It's because of this weak Prime Minister. This Prime Minister had the opportunity on 9 October. We've seen the protests on the university campuses go on for weeks and weeks. We've seen the response on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney and Brisbane and elsewhere around the country. We've seen the blatant acts of antisemitism, of driving them from the river to the sea, talking about annihilating, wiping out and exterminating—exactly the same language that Hitler used in the 1930s. This Prime Minister goes missing in action, and he has the audacity to stand up today to say to us that we should heed the advice from the director-general of ASIO that we need to lower the temperature of debate in this country. This Prime Minister's negligence, this Prime Minister's weakness, has given rise to a level of antisemitism in our country that is without precedent and should be condemned but which escapes his capacity to do, and this is a most egregious abrogation of his responsibility. What is the latest manifestation of this Prime Minister's incompetent period in office? It's not just the cost of living. It's not just in relation to the way in which they have gone about destroying parts of our economy. That is a very worthy discussion within this parliament, but today we condemn this Prime Minister for the work that he has done to undermine our national security agencies and the work that he has done, the decisions he's taken and the decisions that he hasn't taken which have resulted in an undermining of the security settings in our country. He was in here yesterday, and he said, 'Well, look, there's nothing to see here because we brought in or we issued visas for 2,900 people, and 1,300 people have come in'—from a war zone controlled by Hamas, a listed terrorist organisation. Can you imagine if John Howard or Kim Beazley or Paul Keating as leaders of parties had advocated bringing in people with affiliations or sympathies to Hamas or to Hizballah or to al-Qaeda or to ISIS or to ISIL? They would have been rightly condemned. Yet this Prime Minister has changed the settings for our security agencies such that they now allow people to come into our country who have sympathies for an organisation listed by this parliament as an organisation of terror. This Prime Minister is now saying that the bar has been lowered so low that people can come in who have sympathies to the acts that we've spoken about on 7 October, where women were beheaded, people were slaughtered and pregnant women were run down in the streets and the fields, and this Prime Minister says that that's okay. And he comes into this parliament yesterday and tries to say that every person who has come here of the 1,300—on tourist visas, which is without precedent—who hadn't been interviewed face to face and who hadn't been properly screened would be tested and checked by ASIO. That is not true. He misled the parliament. As I said in my motion earlier today, 'it considers that this constitutes a deliberate misleading of the House.' That is the quote from my— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): The Leader of the Opposition has been warned— Mr DUTTON: I am quoting from an earlier motion. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It being a quote doesn't actually make it any better. Mr DUTTON: I withdraw if it helps the process. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I appreciate that. Thank you for the withdrawal. That was my request. Mr DUTTON: I think the problem here is that we've now got the Prime Minister coming in here today quoting from Mike Burgess, the director-general of ASIO. In a quote, you can perhaps not quote the first sentence but quote sentences two, three and four and omit sentence five. You can accurately quote somebody in that fashion. But that is not what has happened here. The Prime Minister has come in today and deliberately twisted the words of the director-general of ASIO—one of the most serious allegations to be made against a prime minister. That is exactly what he did to suit his mistake from yesterday. This means that the Prime Minister is at odds with the director-general of ASIO. The Prime Minister has deliberately and selectively quoted the director-general of ASIO, omitting operative words to suit the Prime Minister's narrative from yesterday and justify his misleading the House, but it is clearly inaccurate and twists the words into a different meaning not meant to be delivered by the director-general of ASIO. This is a prime minister who can't be trusted. He's making Australia less safe and he should be voted out at the next election.