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

and there are some members in this place who were involved in the advocacy from the back bench that led to those changes. The changes to the Migration Act are ones that we are relying on to deal with children and to deal with at-risk families. I believe that that is appropriate. At the same time, of course, we announced our long-term strategy in relation to detention centres. As recently as last week, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship was involved in dialogue in our region about a regional protection framework and a regional processing centre. The government will continue to pursue that regional protection framework and regional processing centre. We believe that that is important to the management of irregular people movement in our region, particularly taking out of the hands of people smugglers the very product that they sell by taking away the incentive to engage in forward transit.

None of this is easy and I am not going to pretend that it is. This is complex policy. We have said that consistently to the Australian people. We will continue to pursue it. We will allow the opposition to pursue their three-word slogans.

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