Bill use to say whatever PM Gillard says now its, I'll seek a briefing!
Tim Blair
Tuesday, May 19, 2015 (5:57pm)
Labor’s Bill Shorten spoke at a press conference earlier today: JOURNALIST:There were three Aussie jihadis trying to come home at the moment, should the Government be helping them to do that?
SHORTEN:Well first of all let me just state the principle that Australians shouldn’t be going overseas to fight in these causes or these battles. We’ll get an update about the national security and about what’s happened with these people reported in the media in the last couple of hours.
JOURNALIST:I guess our justice system is based on belief in rehabilitation and shouldn’t that apply to everybody?
SHORTEN:Well fundamentally we believe in rehabilitation, there’s the law of the land and we’ll seek a briefing from the Government.
JOURNALIST:What sort of punishment do you think though they should receive if they were to come home? A jail term?
SHORTEN:There are laws in place, I’m not going to play judge and jury and again we’ll ask the Government to update us with what’s happening with these matters that have just been coming through in the last couple of hours.
Contrast Shorten’s pathetic timidity with the Prime Minister’s more direct approach:
“We have seen with our own eyes on TV the mass executions, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the sexual slavery. This is a gruesome, ghastly, medieval barbarism which has erupted in the modern world. The last thing any Australian should do is join it.
“The Australian people expect their country to be safe and someone who has been a terrorist abroad could very easily become a terrorist here in Australia.
“If you go abroad to join a terrorist group and you seek to come back to Australia, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed.”
And Shorten wonders why Labor’s poll advantage is eroding.
