At 2.38pm last Thursday in the House of Representatives, Philip Ruddock, principal political architect of offshore processing and the grandfather of the House, rose to his feet, received the call from the Speaker and asked the Prime Minister why she would not recommence the offshore processing of asylum seekers on Nauru.
At 2.39pm, Julia Gillard went for broke, responding: 'To the member's question I say not one fact asserted in it is true. The member who asked the question knows more than many others the obligation for accuracy in this debate.'
The political stakes could not be higher. Intimating that Ruddock is a serial liar about matters he knows intimately is a big call. Gillard continued:
The opposition tries to mislead and misconstrue the expert advice from people who advised the member when he was minister. He every day relied on their advice. He valued their advice and those very same people ... in whom the member when he was minister for immigration placed so much trust, are advising this government, and they have provided the same advice to the Opposition, that Nauru will not work. Those advisers have told us Nauru will not work.
I realised there and then why Labor is on a hiding to nothing on this issue. Either their advisers are naïve, conniving fools ('turkeys' as Bob Brown calls them) or this Government has toyed with their competent advice as if it were ill-conceived, and it is now way too late for the Government to ask anyone else to trust their long time advisers.
Had Labor, on coming to office, trusted those who advised Ruddock back in 2001, they would have retained offshore processing, unless they were knowingly recalibrating upwards the moral bottom line for decent treatment of asylum seekers, regardless of the advice about increasing boat traffic. They made the change, and I for one applauded them for it.
Had Gillard trusted, or even sought the most peremptory advice from, these advisers when she became Prime Minister in 2010, she would never have said in her first prime ministerial speech on these matters:
In recent days I have discussed with President Ramos Horta of East Timor the possibility of establishing a regional processing centre for