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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question, but I regret to advise him that the premises on which he has based his question are wrong. He does give me the opportunity, though, to explain some facts to him and this House about the arrangement that I have entered into with the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Either the Leader of the Opposition does not understand this arrangement, or he is misrepresenting it in the public domain. This arrangement of course is to break the people smugglers' business model and to take out of the hands of people smugglers the very product it is that they sell. They seek to prey on misery; they seek to say to people that they can get them to Australia, that their asylum claims will be processed here and if those claims are found to be valid, they will be able to stay. The arrangement that Prime Minister Najib and I are committed to is an arrangement that will break this business model. The message to people smugglers and to asylum seekers would be that if you risk your life and spend your money on getting on a boat trying to come to Australia, you risk being taken to Malaysia and being put to the back of the queue. Malaysia is a country with tens of thousands of refugees who have genuine claims which have been processed and with no prospect of resettlement. Of those refugees we will take 4,000 extra, on top of our current humanitarian intake.

The Leader of the Opposition has been out there first and foremost trying to pretend to the Australian people that the 800 asylum seekers who are taken to Malaysia will somehow come back to Australia within the 4,000 quota. This is not right. The 4,000 refugees taken from Malaysia will be people who are in Malaysia now, whose claims have been processed and who are genuine refugees. The Leader of the Opposition has been trying to say to the Australian people that somehow we, the Australian government, will not be able to have a say in the selection of those 4,000 refugees. Of course this is wrong. Right around the world we take people through our special humanitarian intake system and we work with UNHCR and others so that refugees who have valid claims come to this country and settle in this nation.

Finally, the Leader of the Opposition has been representing that somehow it is the wrong thing to do to increase our humanitarian intake. He went to the last election saying he would increase that he would increase the humanitarian intake to 15,000. In a private conversation with the member for Dennison he said in the pursuit of his naked political interest that he would double it, costing the federal budget $3 billion. Let no Australian succumb to the analysis that the Leader of the Opposition can, without hypocrisy, criticise our decision to increase the humanitarian intake. The difference is that we explain it and we do it for a reason in the national interest. The Leader of the Opposition wanted to do it behind closed doors in his narrow political interest.

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