Which member of the Labor frontbench said on 23 April 2003 that: “Another boat on the way, another policy failure”? If you guessed Julia Gillard, then you would be right.
A year ago today, Julia Gillard unveiled her ‘East Timor solution’ and said at the time:
”Those critics who want to declare the approach dead in week one are mistaken and will, I’m afraid, be disappointed.”
Today marks a full year since that announcement. The ‘East Timor solution’ was obviously a stunt to get through the election campaign.
Julia Gillard says it has been replaced by a ‘Malaysian solution’ – but no deal has yet been struck. And all while the number of unauthorised maritime arrivals continues to grow.
The figures below illustrate the extent of Labor’s failure.
Since Labor weakened the Coalition Government’s strong border protection policies in August 2008, there have been 11,600 arrivals on 231 boats.
Almost 5,000 of these arrivals have occurred since the Prime Minister told us her East Timor solution would “ensure that people smugglers had no product to sell.”
Only four people who had arrived by boat remained in detention when Labor took office in 2007. Since then, under Labor, it has been plagued by cost blowouts, new detention facilities and riots.
There is nothing humane about encouraging people to risk their lives by paying people smugglers to travel in unsafe boats to Australia’s shores. The Gillard Government must immediately return to the tried and tested measures of the previous government that were successful in stemming the flow of illegal maritime arrivals.
Just as we are regarding the carbon tax, the Coalition will hold Julia Gillard accountable for the consequences of her broken promises.