Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

And I am told, ‘That’s right.’ In a triumph of hope over experience, I am going to try and inject some facts into this debate in the hope that maybe the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and others might grapple with the facts as they engage in the public debate about asylum seeking and people movement. Fact No. 1 in dealing with the question of how many people are moving around our globe: the UNHCR tells us that, at the end of 2008, the total number of refugees and internally displaced people under its care remains high at roughly 25 million—almost unchanged since 2007. So some sense that there has been a big drop-off is not right. Fact No. 2—and here we go, of course facts do not want to impinge on the opposition’s views—

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