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

The honourable member interjects, ‘For heaven’s sake.’ We are not blind to what is going on on the other side of politics at the present. We are not blind to the tensions which exist within the coalition. It is a sad day indeed when the only thing they can seem to unite on is this continued Ronaldson doctrine driven campaign which is to stereotype the entire debate about asylum seekers in this country. That is what is going on. Let us just call it for what it is.

The honourable member asks about Villawood detention centre. I would imagine that all appropriate preparations are made for the continued refurbishment and proper provision of facilities in detention centres for a long, long time. Can I just go back to one core point relevant to this and other related questions which the honourable member and others on his side of the parliament have asked, and it is this: if those opposite were seriously of the view that the problem concerning asylum seekers had simply disappeared, why did they then proceed to build an 800-bed facility on Christmas Island? This is a process that was begun, as I recall it, in about 2004, 2005 or thereabouts. I thought that those opposite said that it was problem solved, that they had all these policies in place, that the problem had disappeared and—there was no such thing as global factors, of course—that it was a uniquely Australian response to a uniquely Australian challenge. Yet mysteriously, out of that, they had to build an 800-bed detention facility on Christmas Island.

The truth is that public administration requires proper preparation for dealing with a whole range of contingencies. The previous government acted in that way by preparing Christmas Island. The current government is also doing so in terms of additional capacity at Christmas Island and further preparations in onshore Australia. It is the right and responsible course of action, because future contingencies have to be planned for. That is the right way in which you handle this.

Again I draw the honourable member’s attention to the fact that, worldwide, the numbers who are now exiting Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have gone up. This has been occurring since 2005. It has been occurring as a consequence of global push factors concerning security within those states. As a consequence, all countries in the world—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, the United States, those of South-East Asia—are dealing with the same global push factors. The responsible course of action is to handle these matters in a practical fashion rather than simply have it fall within the rubric of the Ronaldson doctrine that you cannot generate good stories out of normal policy debates, that the best way to generate good stories is out of perpetuating stereotypes in the community. That is precisely what the opposition is now doing.

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