Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the comments by former Labor minister, now citizen, Graham Richardson, about the Prime Minister’s failures, and I quote:

The announcement of the East Timor detention centre, which the government is clinging to despite it becoming increasingly ridiculous, springs to mind.

As the government has clearly lost its way on border protection, will the Prime Minister now abandon her three-word slogan of ‘regional processing centre’?

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

They must have forgotten to have the tactics meeting today.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Swan interjecting

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

I am being in a more generous spirit than the Treasurer. The Treasurer is probably right—they did have the tactics meeting today, and this is the product of it. Let me explain to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that the government is committed to working on a comprehensive plan to address unauthorised arrivals. That is why we are working on a regional protection framework and a regional processing centre. I understand that the opposition thinks that it is smart to wander around with three-word slogans, no policy content, no idea about how these things would come to light and crazy statements like the Leader of the Opposition’s statement about boat phones—sitting in Kirribilli issuing orders to patrol boat commanders on the front line about what they should do the next when they see an unauthorised boat. This kind of puerile nonsense we will leave to the opposition, and whilst we leave it to the opposition we will be getting on with the hard work of dealing with these questions of unauthorised arrivals.

The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is doing that. He has already made comprehensive statements about the circumstances of children in detention. As I am aware, the opposition still cannot work out, given its internal divisions, whether it is in favour of that or against it, whether what the member for Cook says is going to be the same as what the member for Pearce says or whether they will continue to be absolutely different. They still are not able to put any content around what they would do if they were in government on the question of dealing with detention and unauthorised arrivals. They are full of statements but no details. We are getting on with the hard work. We will continue to do that. The minister has dealt with the question of children in detention; he has dealt with the question of our long-term detention strategy. We are in dialogue with our region about the regional protection framework and regional processing centre. We understand as we go about this hard work that the opposition will play cheap politics. That is what they do.