Watch Virginia Trioli Grill Bill Shorten On Whether He Cares About Kids On Nauru
"Not all kids are equal, eh?"
This morning, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced that if Labor wins the next election, it will introduce universal access to pre-school education for Australian three-year-olds. “Let’s hand on a better deal to our kids,” he said of the policy.
And sure, let’s hand on a better deal to our kids. But as ABC News reporter Virginia Trioli pointed out to Shorten on ABC News Breakfast this morning, there are a few kids that neither the government nor Labor has promised to help: the 112 kids still in detention on Nauru right now.
“The next generation of kids clearly matters to you, according to that policy,” Trioli said. “But at the same time, you stand here today and you won’t promise to get 112 kids out of detention on Nauru despite the appalling mental health conditions their detention has created, despite calls from Australian doctors, the AMA, paediatricians, psychologists.”
“So not all kids are equal, eh?”
Bill Shorten’s response to that was to claim that “first of all, they’re two different issues”, but Trioli didn’t let him off that easily.
“They’re both children, Mr. Shorten,” she said. “They’re all children”.
“Yes, I understand that linkage,” Shorten said, and then went on to continue to spruik his pre-school funding policy. “I think that, whilst you make a point about Nauru, I think it’s wrong to simply dismiss it and say that unless we do one, our pre-school promise is not fair dinkum. It is.”
“Let me clarify, Mr. Shorten: it may be fair dinkum, but you’ve still got on your hands the fact that you, and the government, are prepared to let children languish in detention.”
You can watch Shorten’s fumbling answer to that one in the video below. Good on Trioli for asking the questions that actually matter.
.@billshortenmp today announced a $1.75b early childhood education plan.@LaTrioli asks how he squares this commitment to kids with Labor's policy on children in detention on #Nauru pic.twitter.com/VnCjSEgNFy
— News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) October 3, 2018