Actions by the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments in dismantling the Howard government’s policy on boat people will cost it the forthcoming election, Labor MPs have admitted. The Howard government policy of mandatory detention and offshore processing reduced the number of illegal arrivals to almost zero by 2007. The Rudd government denounced the policy as inhuman, and abolished both mandatory detention and offshore processing. Since then, about 43,000 boat people have arrived, despite fu…
