Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, and we will review the Hansard to make that clear as it demonises the debate, as we know. Today we heard lots of rhetoric and very colourful language. I forgot how many times the words ‘guts’ and ‘stomach’ were mentioned in the previous contribution. I lost track after seven times.

Basically we have a debate today about the issue of detention and about the policies that this government has put in place since we were elected. They are policies that we went, very openly, to the Australian people with. It interested me that the previous contributor kept talking about the minister taking responsibility, stepping up and using his guts and stomach, but I got the impression that what that meant was having courage to come forward and talk with the Australian people about what was going on.

I do not believe there has been a minister who has had more public commentary on the issues of his portfolio over the last couple of months than Minister Bowen. Consistently he has run the line that our policy is part of an international response to the issue of refugees. One of the things that the opposition cannot understand is that our policy is looking at responding and working with refugees through the UNHRC, using the internationally accepted processes and ensuring that the law is fulfilled but most importantly that there is compassion. Senator Cash did talk about the statistics but I am not going through a statistical argument; we have had that. We know how many people have come in and how many boats have arrived. We have seen the stunning press releases that have been issued every time by the opposition. We saw the splendid imagery in recent times that was showing large red boats attacking our—