Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind the Prime Minister that the Canadian government has just introduced five-year temporary protection visas to deal with an influx of some 500 asylum seekers. Given that 5,500 illegal boat people have arrived this year, including four boat in just four days, why won’t the Prime Minister reintroduce temporary protection visas? The policy worked before and it can work again.

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

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I am aware of the changes being contemplated by the Canadian government. In fact, they sought some advice from our very own immigration officials as they put together this suite of changes. If the Leader of the Opposition were to be honest and accurate and detailed with this parliament and went through it change by change, what he would recognise is that the Canadian government have gone for a different mix of measures. For example, in some areas they have taken a different approach. In this country we have mandatory detention, we deal with people’s processing to finality, whereas my understanding of the Canadian approach is that they are going to put a one-year time limit on such detention. So there are differences. But we here in Australia need to make the decisions that we believe are in our nation’s interest, that are the most effective range of policies, and we need of course to implement solutions for the long term, which is why as a government we are working on the regional protection framework and regional processing centre. It is why we have announced our long-term strategy for detention. It is why we have announced some new arrangements for children.

I am yet to understand with any precision or clarity where the opposition stands on those changes. If the Leader of the Opposition was being honest about this, rather than making simplistic comparisons with only one aspect of the new Canadian proposals, what he would actually be saying to the Australian people is that this is a complex problem, there is no one policy measure that provides the solution and there is certainly no three-word slogan that does.