Friday, 9 July 2010

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Federal Member for Hume, Alby Schultz, has labelled Prime Minister Gillard’s announcement that she will build a regional offshore processing centre on Timor Leste (East Timor) as pure spin akin to her former boss’s lack of detail and a political ‘quick fix’ method with no actual policy agreement in place.
“This ‘telephone policy’ is just more of the Labor Government’s spin in an attempt to cover up its complete incompetence when it comes to dealing with the increasing number of illegal boat arrivals.” Mr Schultz said.
“Her Government covered up the fact that on the very day she was making this great announcement, yet another boat had been intercepted by Border Protection Command.”
“The very essence that you can announce to the Australian people you have formulated new policy on asylum seekers, on a hastily made telephone call to the President of East Timor, has exposed Ms Gillard’s complete ‘L’ plate diplomacy and brazen political self interest.”
“In the House of Representatives on 13th May 2003 Ms Gillard said (House Hansard, page 14003), ‘Instead of stunts like this, it is time the Howard Government faced up to engaging in a long-term solution to refugees and asylum seekers. The so-called Pacific solution is not a long-term solution. Can anyone in this place really imagine that Australia will be processing asylum seeker claims on Nauru in 10 or 20 years?... Labor will end the so-called Pacific solution – the processing and detaining of asylum seekers on Pacific Islands – because it is costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle.’”
“The Howard Government recognised the problem and created a solution, it is the Rudd/Gillard Government that abandoned that solution and created a problem, all of their own work.” Mr Schultz added.
“The Prime Minister is now flip-flopping on her telephone policy desperately trying to find and negotiate a solution with other countries, one of which is a developing country lacking even basic medical facilities or infrastructure. To compound the issue making a phone call to the wrong person is bad enough; not getting a definite yes to a proposal which has no detail attached to it is ‘thought bubble’ incompetence in the extreme.”
“We had the ‘gang of four’ we now have an ‘L’ plate Prime Minister who has demonstrated she is just not up to fixing the mess that has been created on border protection under her and Labor’s policies.” Mr Schultz concluded.