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

The present policy of the opposition as I understand it—and it has moved on a number of occasions—is, despite the risks pointed to by the Chief of Navy in Senate estimates, to endeavour to turn back boats and to return asylum seekers to Indonesia, a country that is not a signatory to the refugee convention. And it is to do that in circumstances in which no agreement about any protections for those asylum seekers have been negotiated, including the most fundamental protection to which the refugee convention obligates a nation: to not return asylum seekers to the place where they were persecuted. That hypocrisy from the opposition comes against the backdrop of having said in this parliament that its position is to argue for a change to the Migration Act that limits offshore processing to countries that are signatories to the refugee convention. So the opposition's current policy is a hypocrisy compared with what they said in this place. What they said in this place was a hypocrisy compared with the conduct of the Howard government—

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