Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member's question suggests that the government has a regional reputational difficulty on this matter. Having just been in the region, let me tell you that those opposite, during the period that they were in office, did not just have a problem of regional reputation—there was an absolute foreign policy disaster in the region through the actions on the part of the Indonesian government at the time, under President Megawati, to open the doors because those opposite did not know how to manage the relationship with Indonesia, and on and on it went.

From those opposite there was also the extraordinary spectacle on the eve of the election, which the Prime Minister just referred to, when the country was absolutely misled on the question of children overboard. Let it not be forgotten that those opposite collectively stood by when one of their senior ministers went to the Australian people and delivered a fundamental untruth to them—and they know it. One other thing that those opposite failed to deliver during their period in office was any regional processing agreement. The shadow foreign minister asks what has been engaged by my portfolio in support of the work done by the immigration minister. Let me tell her: through the work that we have taken most recently in the Bali process, for the first time there is now a regional framework agreement which can be applied to all countries within the region. Secondly, for the first time it contains within it a provision for regional processing centres. Thirdly, it contains within it the buy-in of the International Organisation for Migration.

Ms Julie Bishop interjecting—

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