Leadership rival says he has ‘real concerns’ about Bill Shorten’s plan to adopt the Coalition’s asylum policy as announcement threatens to divide party conference

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Senior frontbencher and leadership rival Anthony Albanese has criticised Bill Shorten’s last minute conversion to boat turnbacks ahead of the Labor party conference, warning the party against an appeal to the “darker side”.

Albanese said he had “real concerns about the way that [the day] was conducted in terms of the announcement on asylum seekers”.

Asylum seeker policy and boat turnbacks are breaking Labor's heart Read more

“I think that it is absolutely critical, critical that we always remember our need for compassion and to not appeal the darker side.”

Albanese, who ran against Shorten for Labor’s leadership ballot, made the remarks as party members had to digest their leader’s surprise announcement, made by the opposition shadow immigration spokesman Richard Marles in a News Corp paper on Wednesday night.

Shorten’s decision to argue publicly for turnbacks at the eleventh hour won a testy response in both the right and left caucus meetings on Thursday.

Delegates on both sides of the factional divide were taken aback by Shorten’s conference eve challenge to back the leadership on an issue that has split the party.

While rightwing powerbroker Stephen Conroy earlier predicted Shorten appeared to have the conference numbers for turnbacks, the result still remains unclear on the eve of the conference, which begins on Friday.

Albanese’s intervention gives a strong hint of his voting intention on the expected motion from the left that seeks to rule out turnbacks as an option in the party’s national platform document.

Shorten and Marles’ preference is that the platform remains silent on the issue of turnbacks, to allow the parliamentary party a measure of flexibility.

A number of MPs have come out on either side. Former speaker and Victorian MP Anna Burke and Tasmanian senator Lisa Singh have spoken out against turnbacks while WA MP Alannah MacTiernan said she would support turnbacks if it were in conjunction with the proposal to double the refugee intake to 27,000.

“The quid pro quo for this is going to be something that is immeasurably valuable,” she said.

“There is a great upside to this. If we can extract from this a doubling of our intake then I am more than happy to stand behind that policy.”

Prime minister Tony Abbott was unable to resist entering the debate and gave Shorten some credit for wanting to adopt his government’s policy. “I’m prepared to say: good on Bill,” Mr Abbott told ABC television on Thursday.



But the applause came with a swipe, as the prime minister told Labor that had the party implemented the policy in government hundreds of lives could have been saved.



“I just wish he’d done it when he was in government because ... up to 1,000 people might not be dead,” he said.



Groups campaigning for better treatment of asylum seekers were less supportive. The Refugee Council of Australia accused Shorten of “pandering to the politics of fear”.



Refugee lawyer David Manne lamented there were many cases of people being turned back who had been found to be genuine refugees.





