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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that the government made the announcement today to be transparent with the Australian people about our long-term plans for detention centres. That was why the government today made the statement that I made with the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. In part, we made that statement—and I made it clear in the remarks that I made at the start of the statement—because the opposition loves to run around with spurious claims of secret plans, obviously raising fear and concern in communities about what is going to happen next, so we preferred the path of transparency.

To take just one example of that, the opposition have continued to insist that there is some secret plan to expand Curtin. Let me take the opportunity to say that they are wrong. The federal budget of 2010 funded a detention centre at Curtin with a capacity of 1,200 places. Less than 1,200 persons were initially moved in there. However, of course the relevant department took the prudent steps in designing the centre and putting the infrastructure in place so that the centre could reach its full capacity efficiently. When Minister Bowen became minister, he reviewed the work that had occurred at Curtin and decided to increase the numbers at Curtin to 1,200. That was the first time the department had been instructed to make the arrangements for staffing—and the detention centre manager, Serco, to move more people into the Curtin site. Minister Bowen made it clear in the announcement on 17 September that work had been underway to enable the decision for the extra 600 people to be moved in.

I note all of this became the subject of opposition interest because I was asked during the election campaign about plans to take Curtin to 3,000. There were never any such plans, and today’s announcement puts the matter beyond doubt. The reason we have been transparent and made the announcement today is that obviously these matters do become the subject of community concern. We want to make sure that they get the right information.

On the question of unauthorised arrivals in this country: as the opposition leader well knows, this is a matter that will not be solved by a three-word slogan. He had a three-word slogan during the election campaign; what he lacked was anything that looked like a policy or plan. The government has a policy and a plan. We have a policy for a regional protection framework, we have a policy for a regional processing centre, and the minister for immigration as recently as last week was involved in discussions on those questions in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Dili, and we will pursue that dialogue. It is not correct for the opposition to pretend that brandishing a three-word slogan is a solution. It is not. We will continue to work on the regional protection framework and regional processing centre and in the meantime we will be as transparent as we have been today about the government’s policies and plans.

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