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

I was making the point that I am not asking the Leader of the Opposition to endorse the arrangement with Malaysia, but I am asking him to agree to amendments which would give executive government the power to act. To give the Leader of the Opposition a good example of where that power might be necessary, if we go back to the Howard government's arrangements with Nauru, they were a nonsignatory country in the days of those arrangements. The arrangements were not legislated in either Australia or Nauru. They were only enlivened by a memorandum of understanding between the two nations. So if in the future a government decided that it wanted to replicate exactly the circumstances that the Howard government had engaged in with Nauru at that time, it would need power as expressed in this amendment in the clause that the Leader of the Opposition has pointed to.

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