Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was red-faced rhetoric; that is right. It was a debate which was an opportunity for him to spread more of the politics of fear and confusion. We are seeing that as a result of this motion. The coalition has to come clean on whether it opposes the housing of families and children in community based accommodation or whether it wants these families to remain in detention centres. And that goes to the nub of the proposition. Do the opposition want these people to remain in detention centres or do they want them to be in community based facilities? There was a bipartisan position from 2005 that it would be better for women and children not to be in long-term detention centres but to be in more community based facilities. But we see through this episode perhaps a reversal of that bipartisan position.

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