Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended the Government’s decision to reauthorise Nauru offshore detention, saying Labor would approach the long-term torture of asylum seekers with much more compassion.
“Our policy and the previous government’s policies couldn’t be more different,” Albanese told journalists today. “Under the Coalition government, asylum seekers were locked up indefinitely without any hope of release. Whereas under our policy they’ll locked up indefinitely without any hope of release, but we’ll call it ‘processing’ rather than ‘detention’. It really is chalk and cheese”.
He said the majority of Australians wanted to see a more humane approach to asylum seeker policy. “What the Coalition government basically said to desperate people fleeing their homes was ‘Don’t come here or we’ll torture you’. Whereas we’ll be saying ‘Don’t come here PLEASE or we’ll torture you’. Manners don’t cost anything”.
Albanese said the two parties had a very different approach to developing asylum seeker policy. “They developed strategies for tormenting refugees behind locked doors, in absolute silence. When we do it we’re listing to The Pixies back catalogue. It’s a fundamentally different style”.
