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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In direct answer to the question: as the Leader of the Opposition is well aware, the government has negotiated an arrangement with Malaysia where the refugee convention obligations this nation has freely assumed will be honoured in respect of the people that we transfer. This is the arrangement, which we have the most clear advice from experts within the Public Service, that will act as the clearest possible deterrent for people smugglers.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition who asked this question: I detect hypocrisy here. This is the Leader of the Opposition who, during the election campaign, said his policy, if he were Prime Minister, would be a 'boat phone'—that is, he would make calls to patrol boats as he sat at the Lodge or Kirribilli requiring them to turn boats around. He knew that was not possible, but he was pretending to the Australian people that he would tow those boats back to Indonesia, which is not signatory to the refugee convention. As to the outcome for the people on those boats, he was never going to worry himself about that.

So the Leader of the Opposition in the last election campaign marketed a sham policy behind a three-word slogan. If he had been able to implement it, it would have taken asylum seekers to a non-refugee convention signatory country with no protections. The issue now, post the High Court case, is: will the Leader of the Opposition finally deal with the facts of this policy debate and will he ensure, by working with the government to amend the Migration Act, that the government of the day can make the decisions it needs to make to have asylum seekers processed offshore or will he just go on wrecking? This is the test for the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr Randall interjecting—

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