Albanese forced to clarify position on offshore detention

The Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has been forced to clarify his position on offshore detention centres, insisting that a Labor government would not shut them down.

The Coalition has seized on earlier comments made by Mr Albanese to try to revive the border protection debate and claim that Labor would be weak on people smugglers.

Australia's offshore detention regime has been described as abusive and costly by leading human rights groups, but Mr Albanese insists offshore detention centres will remain open under Labor.

Albanese was asked how his government would respond if people smugglers tried to take advantage of an incoming Labor government. Albanese said people who attempted to come to Australia by boat would be turned back.

But he ended his remarks by saying that turning boats back means you don't need offshore detention. Defence Minister Peter Dutton pounced on the comments, arguing that they marked a weakening of Labor's border protection policy.

You would expect the people smugglers to be jumping for joy in the air off their couches in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and Vietnam because that's actually a very dangerous statement he made this morning.

He already doesn't support the temporary protection visas that underpin the whole Operation Sovereign Borders, and the regional processing is a key element of the policy as well.

That is a change of policy that I don't know, maybe he made a mistake in a press conference, but the wheels are falling off the Anthony Albanese bus at the moment. Both major parties support boat turn-backs and send asylum seekers who arrive by sea to offshore detention centres while their cases are processed.

Richard Marles, Deputy Labor leader, has accused the Coalition of launching a desperate scare campaign to create division that doesn't exist in the lead-up to the May election.

Labor supports Operation Sovereign Borders and every aspect of it. What is the difference between the two major parties?

Labor opposes the use of temporary protection visas because it argues that the visas keep refugees in a state of limbo, which is one of the main differences between the two parties.

The government announced earlier this year that it had taken up an offer from New Zealand — nine years after it was first put on the table to resettle refugees languishing on Nauru and others held in onshore detention facilities.

Why is this topic a sensitive topic for Labor?

Border protection and asylum seeker policy has been a controversial area in Australian politics for decades.

The ALP has tried to neutralise border protection as an issue over the past decade and the Coalition and LaborCoalition and Labor have had nearly identical policies on border protection.

The Coalition believes that the topic is politically advantageous to the re-election campaign, as shown by the statement from Mr Albanese.