Kevin Rudd is a former Prime Minister of Australia. In 2013 he took the decision to stop the flow of asylum seekers who had been arriving on often unsafe boats from Indonesia. Asylum seekers arriving by boat would be sent to Papua New Guinea. If found to be legitimate refugees, they would be resettled in Papua New Guinea.

The decision was heavily criticized by Rudd’s opponents.

‘It is clearly a policy that penalises the most vulnerable of all, the refugees, because people don’t really flee by boat from choice; they flee because of some terror in their country of origin’, said one of his opponents. Rudd’s decision was ‘an abdication of our basic humanity’.

Another opponent: ‘This is a day of shame.’ (…) This is really an appalling performance (…) Australia is a very rich country which is prepared to pass the buck to a very poor country because a Prime Minister doesn’t have the courage or the moral authority to do the right thing by refugees.’

A third opponent: ‘What we see here is a policy designed not only to deter asylum seekers from coming and seeking refuge in Australia, but one that also proposes to shift our responsibilities on to others. To not shoulder the responsibility of protecting refugees but to shift it and to deflect it on to others.’

This next video shows how Rudd explains his decision.