David Fawcett told Labor senators in Senate estimates he questioned the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group perhaps brought the fleas in the first place. Photograph: Ben Macmahon/AAP

The Liberal senator David Fawcett has appeared to describe asylum seekers as fleas in Senate estimates, bringing cries of hear hear from other senators.

He made the remarks to Labor senators as they discussed boat arrivals during a hearing into the immigration department on Monday.

I just do question the ethics of nitpicking when your particular group perhaps brought the fleas in the first place, he told the hearing at Parliament House.

Unknown senators on the committee said hear hear, while Fawcetts fellow Liberal and committee chair Ian McDonald was heard on the microphones to say nicely put.

But the South Australian senator later sought to offer a clarification, saying he was referring to Labor senators pursuing small, process-driven details from the department when boat arrivals spiked on their watch.

The metaphor was that if they were nitpicking they were responsible for the cause of that irritation, he said. It is certainly not intended to apply to people who are refugees.

The Labor senator Kim Carr had asked a series of questions about an audit office report highlighting immigration department cost blowouts.

Fawcett asked the minister assisting the prime minister on the public service, Michaelia Cash, about the cost savings of having closed detention centres and stopped boats, and the stress placed on the department by high numbers of boat arrivals to Australia.

Cash said there had been large numbers of unauthorised arrivals under the Rudd and Gillard governments.

It is the unfortunate reality in terms of what occurred under the former Labor government that they wound back the former Howard governments strong border protection policies, she said. The statistics in terms of the unauthorised arrivals led to a course of events which, unfortunately, this government is still trying to clean up.

Fawcett then made his fleas remarks, directing his comment at Carr.

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Liberal senator appears to describe asylum seekers as 'fleas' in Senate estimates - The Guardian