Turnbull tips lively policy debate

28 May 2010, 3:48 pm   -   Source: AAP
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A future coalition government would return to a Pacific Solution-type arrangement to deal with asylum seekers, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has announced. (AAP)

A future coalition government would return to a Pacific Solution-type arrangement to deal with asylum seekers, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has announced. (AAP)

Former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has tipped a lively debate when Tony Abbott presents the coalition's hardline asylum seeker policy to the party room.

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Former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has tipped a lively debate when Tony Abbott belatedly presents the coalition's hardline asylum seeker policy to the party room.

Mr Turnbull suggested the current opposition leader should have taken the plan to the party before publicly announcing it on Thursday.

Already the scheme, branded as a return to John Howard era, has met with the disapproval of Liberal moderates, including Victorian senator Judith Troeth who said she only learned of it on radio on Thursday morning.

Mr Turnbull said he looked forward to a full explanation of the policy from Mr Abbott and immigration spokesman Scott Morrison when coalition MPs meet next week.

"There will be a lively debate and it will be very interesting to see how they respond to the questions and challenges that are raised," he said in an interview on the ABC radio Sunday Profile program.

Mr Abbott has defended the policy, saying Labor had given up on any serious attempt to protect Australia's borders with boat arrivals running at three a week, compared with three a year under the former government's tough stance.

"The former government found a problem, created a solution. The current government found a solution and created a problem because the prime minister wasn't man enough to leave well-enough alone," he told reporters in Sydney.

"The only way to stop the boats is to change the government."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the former government's so-called Pacific Solution was really just a 6-12 month stopover in Nauru at a cost to the taxpayer of $300-400 million with most ending up in Australia anyway.

He said the challenge of asylum seekers rise and fall according to global circumstances - the previous government dealt with some 15,000 people.

"Then it tailed off for a while. Then it began, of course in recent years, to rise again because of events in Sri Lanka and elsewhere," he told the Seven network.

"We will maintain a balanced policy on this, a hardline policy tough on people smugglers, and anyone who's not a genuine refugee gets sent back home.

Under the plan launched on Thursday, the coalition signalled a return to Howard-era border protection policies, including offshore processing of asylum claims, temporary protection visas and turning boats around where possible.

That attracted the immediate condemnation of those who condemned the approach under John Howard.

Uniting Church president Reverend Alistair Macrae said it was a shocking demonstration of the depth to which the Opposition was prepared to sink to harness a few votes.

He said Mr Abbott and Mr Morrison both loudly proclaimed their Christianity but had lost sight of the core of their faith.

"Mr Abbott and Mr Morrison have abandoned not only Christian values but basic human decency in a return to policies which punish already vulnerable people," he said in a statement.

Greens leader Bob Brown said the policy would debase Australia's reputation.

"Locking up children behind barbed wire and sending legal asylum seekers to be dumped on poor Pacific nations is not what this country's fair go is about.

"It's xenophobia, it's dog-whistle politics and it's nasty."

Fellow Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Mr Abbott would only compound the suffering of vulnerable people and put the lives of women and children at further risk rather than deter boat arrivals.

"The idea of pushing boats back and denying people protection, offends all those who value compassion and humanity," she said.

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