Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks very much, Mr Speaker. Of course, this is relevant to the truthfulness which underpins various of the assertions that we hear in this place, because the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday that the government had embraced a policy for early withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the interview upon which he had based that, the defence minister says ‘I haven’t of course put a timeline on completing the training task’ in Afghanistan. The verballing that we had from those opposite of the defence minister yesterday suggests the care and attention they dedicate to truth in this general debate on asylum seekers where the overriding objective is the politics of fear and smear.

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