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

In answer to the shadow minister's question I will repeat what I have said already in question time today and what I had cause to say yesterday. I understand that there are sharply divided views in this parliament about refugee and asylum seeker policy. I understand that. Indeed, our nation has lived with that for many long years—with sharply divided views on a number of these questions—and I suspect we will live with sharply divided views both in this place and in the community broadly for many long years to come.

Against that backdrop of community division and different views both within this parliament and beyond, government needs to address the task and always have in its mind what is best in our national interest to secure our borders and to ensure that we meet the obligations we have voluntarily accepted under the refugee convention. The government has made a set of decisions about that. I understand the Leader of the Opposition does not agree with those decisions and I do not ask him to. But I do ask him to join with the government in putting executive government in the legal position it believed itself to be in before the recent High Court case. That is the legal position the Howard government also believed itself to be in. That is the question before this parliament—

See this speech in context