Where is it Ms Gillard? 

Protecting Australia and Protecting the Australian Way
Labor's Policy on Asylum Seekers and Refugees
The Hon Simon Crean, MP
Leader of the Opposition
Julia Gillard, MP
Shadow Minister for Population and Immigration
December 2002 – PP008

Foreword

The number one priority of the Australian Government is to protect Australia. Labor has a
proud record of doing so and will always put protecting Australia first.
Labor will protect Australia’s borders with a $600 million Australian Coastguard, a cop on the
beat 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This policy paper details five new important steps Labor will take to better protect Australia.
1. Labor will introduce a US style Green Card to crack down on illegal workers and ensure
they are not stealing Australian jobs and undermining the pay and conditions of
Australians.
2. Labor will smash onshore and offshore people smuggling rings through tougher policing
including stationing more Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers in Indonesia.
3. Labor will impose harsher penalties, including million dollar fines, for people smugglers.
4. Labor will focus on eradicating people trafficking for the purposes of sexual or other
exploitation, as well as people smuggling.
5. Labor will better protect our airports and seaports.
Labor understands the concerns of Australians and shares their view that unauthorised boat
arrivals are the worst of all possible outcomes both from Australia’s point of view, as a nation
managing its borders, and from the point of view of the asylum seekers who risk, and
sometimes lose, their lives. Australians rightly want a managed and fair system.
Labor will seek to protect Australia from future boat arrivals and create a fairer world wide
refugee system by having the world adopt one processing system for refugee claims. If there
was one world wide processing system this would be the ultimate deterrent to people
smuggling and boat arrivals. Why pay a people smuggler and risk your life to get to a
developed nation if, when you get there, you have no better chance of your claim being
accepted? One system is also the only way of ensuring fairness so that the most
disadvantaged waiting in refugee camps have the same chance of having their claim
accepted as an asylum seeker who arrives in a developed country.
Advocating a new world wide system is a bold step. To lead the world requires leading by
example and, in this policy, Labor outlines the following five ways in which it will.
1. Labor will maintain the excision of Christmas Island in order to pilot the processing
regime it will advocate should be adopted globally. Christmas Island will be the prime
asylum seeker processing and detention facility.
2. Labor will put its processing regime to the ultimate test by monitoring the return of failed
asylum seekers.
3. Labor will increase funding to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) to $25 million per annum in order to better assist those who live and too often
die in refugee camps overseas.
4. Labor will boost aid to address the issues that cause people to move such as poverty,
natural disasters, conflict and environmental degradation.
5. Labor will increase aid to countries of first asylum. Such aid is desperately needed and is
important to facilitate the development of a system of return of asylum seekers.
The Australian Labor Party stands for fairness and compassion and the Australian people
share these values. A unique part of what it is to be Australian will be lost if this nation does
not nurture and protect the Australian way of treating people fairly and with compassion.

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Are you sure your bigotry against Abbott would allow you to remain be objective?