Jesuit priest Frank Brennan says Julia Gillard has led Labor into 'moral decline'

JESUIT priest Frank Brennan says Kevin Rudd would never have advocated the "repugnant" Malaysia Solution.

Frank Brennan

JESUIT priest and law professor Father Frank Brennan says he believes Kevin Rudd would never have taken Labor down the "repugnant" path of expelling child asylum seekers to Malaysia.

Writing in the online journal Eureka Street today, the human rights activist and close friend of Mr Rudd says Julia Gillard has led the Labor Party into moral decline.

He lashes the Prime Minister's Malaysia Solution as morally derelict and tantamount to "offshore dumping".

A strident critic of the Howard government's Pacific Solution, he argues Labor would have "gone ballistic" if Mr Howard had tried a similar approach in 2001, while the UNHCR would have objected strongly.

"The Government's posturing about the moral basis for its latest proposal is derelict," Fr Brennan writes.

"The processing regime on Nauru had very serious shortcomings, but it did provide proven refugees with resettlement usually in Australia or New Zealand."

He said Ms Gillard lacked majority support for the plan in the parliament, where most MPs favoured either onshore processing or offshore processing with appropriate safeguards.

Fr Brennan, who headed the Rudd Government's human rights consultation in 2009, told The Australian Online he believed Mr Rudd would not have pursued the Malaysian Solution.

"Could a Rudd government have dropped the moral bottom line lower than that contemplated by the Coalition? I'd be pretty confident he would not have," he said.

"Even if you don't have moral qualms about exchange aspect -in sending people who engage Australia's protection obligations to the end of very long queue - you have to say that when it comes to moving children to Malaysia, that is either unprincipled or unworkable.

"I'm very confident Rudd would have looked at the children issue and he would have said it was morally repugnant and administratively completely unworkable."

Labor's proposed Malaysia Solution was struck down by the High Court last month.

Ms Gillard wants the Coalition to support amendments to the Migration Act that would put it beyond legal doubt.

But Tony Abbott, who has proposed his own amendments, has insisted he would only support the re-opening of asylum seeker processing on Nauru.