Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I can only say that any government decision in relation to extension of detention facilities would be taken by government in the normal way and announced. Those announcements have been clear. The decisions have been clear. We have been totally consistent in that regard. There was a lot of speculation around the extension of facilities during the election campaign, as there had been previously, because every time the department went, under normal circumstances, for contingency planning to look at a site or consider alternative accommodation there was community discussion and invariably press coverage. But that is different from government making a decision to increase accommodation capacity, and when those decisions were taken they were announced.