Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Credit: djackmanson/flickr
By Rich Bowden:
The battle to gain political supremacy over the issue of asylum seekers entering Australian waters has again deteriorated.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called on Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull to discipline backbencher Wilson Tuckey over his claim to reporters today that there was a good chance asylum seekers entering Australian waters contained terrorists.
When questioned by reporters about what odds he gave for the scenario he said: “I would probably put quite a very narrow shade of odds. The favourite race is about two or three to one.”
Mr Rudd slammed the outspoken West Australian’s comments calling them “disgusting” and accused Mr Tuckey of running a “smear” campaign to deflect attention from the Opposition Leader’s leadership problems.
“To go out there and to smear asylum seekers in the way in which Mr Tuckey has done I say again is divisive, I think is disgusting,” said the prime minister.
“Since World War II we’ve had nearly three-quarters-of-a-million people make their home in Australia. We’ve had about 150,000 come to make their home in Australia in the period of the Howard Government.”
“What is Mr Tuckey actually saying about all those people?” Mr Rudd asked.
However the prime minister has himself come under criticism for his own description of the would be asylum seekers, referring to them on occasion as “illegal immigrants.”
However in comments reported by the ABC, Mr Rudd served to make a distinction.
“I stand by everything I have said because we are dealing with a combination of asylum seekers, illegal immigration … we are dealing with both those challenges,” he said.
The Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull ignored Mr Rudd’s call to denounce Mr Tuckey’s comments saying the prime minister’s reaction was a hysterical one and was an attempt to cover up the Government’s policy failure on asylum seekers.
The battle of words comes as the Federal Government seeks to implement a solution to the number of asylum seeker boats entering Australian waters by offering financial assistance to Indonesia to resettle refugees. The policy has been compared to the Howard Government-era “Pacific Solution” which sought to use Pacific countries such as Nauru as detention centres.
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