Juliar: you broke it, you fix it
That’s essentially what Opposition leader Tony Abbott could well be telling our PM come Monday.
OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has given the strongest indication yet that he will not support the government’s changes to migration laws to enable the offshore processing of asylum seekers.
Mr Abbott said he was troubled by proposed changes to legislation that he said would give “entirely unfettered discretion” to Immigration Minister Chris Bowen.
The government needs bipartisan support for the proposals because the Greens have ruled out supporting them.
“My difficulty with the government’s proposed legislation is that it does strip out the protections that the Howard government thought were necessary,” Mr Abbott said today.
“The Howard government and the coalition not only has the patent on offshore processing, it’s pretty obvious having seen the legislation that we also have the patent on offshore protection.”
UPDATE
That “strongest indication” is obviously coming from Abbott’s DT blog.
This week in the parliament the Prime Minister has been demanding that the Coalition support legislation to validate the Malaysia people swap that the High Court struck down.
It’s not the opposition’s job to support bad policy from a bad government.
OK, so there’s kind of an out…
Our job is to promote policy that would actually stop the boats and to oppose policy that’s already been proven not to do so.
But really?
Malaysia is not offshore processing; Malaysia is offshore dumping.
That’s not a “strong indication”, that’s a firm NO.
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