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

If I could give a new member of the House a tip: don’t take cast-offs from the shadow ministers of questions they are too embarrassed to ask. It normally gets you into trouble. I am not surprised that they would be too embarrassed to ask this one, because obviously it is a completely unnamed, unidentified source, and whoever it is and wherever the words are from they are completely wrong. As a government we have more assets patrolling our borders than ever before. We have a stringent mandatory detention policy. We have made some moves in relation to the circumstances of children. If the member is opposed to them, if the Leader of the Opposition is opposed to those changes in the interests of children, then stand up and say so. We are still waiting for a policy response from the opposition because of their internal divisions on this question.

Whilst the opposition continues to play cheap politics—three-word slogans, stop this, end that, wreck, demolish—we will get on with the job of delivering in the national interest while the opposition stews in its own juices of bitterness, looking to impose that bitterness on the Australian people, putting their political interest in front of the national interest each and every time. The Australian people deserve better than this.

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