Anthony Albanese has declared the Labor Party has “learned the lesson” on the importance of border protection after years of bitter debates in a revealing interview on the ABC’sKitchen Cabinet.

Mr Albanese’s mea culpa on immigration policy comes on the eve of this week’s ALP conference and the continued rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the polls.

Over a decade ago, the ALP conference was the scene of a political civil war regarding boat turnbacks.

Mr Albanese led the front bench rebellion against Bill Shorten’s push to embrace the “turn-back” boat policy – and lost.

He famously told the Left faction that the idea was a “red line we cannot cross”.

But the Prime Minister offers a very different take eleven years on in a new episode of Annabel Crabb’s Kitchen Cabinet program.

“You learn, and you can change your position,’’ Mr Albanese said.

“On border protection, for example, we said, that we would keep the mechanisms in place and indeed we’ve expanded a range of them, because people feel like they have to be in control of their borders.

“If you want to run a migration system that’s respectful of the contribution that migrants make, it has to be orderly.

“And that’s the lesson that the British Labor government is dealing with at the moment. It’s a lesson that the US Democrats should have learnt but didn’t. And it’s something that we have.”

Crabb asked the Prime Minister a hypothetical: if he was sitting down with the 2001 version of himself, would he regard his current position on border protection as a “sellout”.

“We would have been having a disagreement,’’ Mr Albanese replied, “No question about that.

“But the other thing that we haven’t done though is we’re respectful.

“We haven’t used people like, during Children Overboard. You know, it was just an attempt to divide people by saying things that were not true.

“So, we have engaged respectfully, we have an orderly migration program, a good refugee program. You won’t hear from me a distinction between Australians and migrants, like we heard from Angus Taylor in his budget reply.”

Asked to comment on the rise of anti-semitism and Islamophobia, Mr Albanese said that some of what currently passes for political debate was “wild”.

“I think there’s a range of factors, economic turbulence,’’ he said.

“We have had the global financial crisis. Then we had Covid, a land war in Europe with Ukraine, now we’ve got the Middle East conflict. It’s been a whole series of disruption that I think has created a sense of frustration and, yes, anger in some.

“And then that’s fuelled by what’s happened with social media. With algorithms pushing people toward polarisation.

“And I’ve said so many times, yeah, turn the temperature down.”

Mr Albanese’s Kitchen Cabinet interview coincides with Pauline Hanson’s insistence that she is not calling for a return to a White Australia policy.

The controversy kicked off last week after British far right commentator Stephen Yaxley- Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, asked Senator Hanson about Australia’s immigration policies, and she mentioned the abolition of the White Australia policy.

“How have you ended up with Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems with violent Africans? How has that happened when you have such a strong immigration policy?’’ Robinson asked Ms Hanson.

“Well, it started in 1973 with Gough Whitlam. So they opened up and got rid of the White Australia policy,’’ she said.

“Then they started bringing in the different migrants. We had a lot of people came out after the Second World War. So Italians, Germans, Polish, and these people, but they integrated into the system, and … a lot of them couldn’t speak English, but they learnt to speak English. They had to go and work.

“But these people who came in really assimilated. And … now, they’re Aussies. They love the country. But over the decades, as the governments have changed and different people they’ve brought in, and a lot of people come into Australia purely for the welfare system, or to get on our NDIS.”

Ms Hanson later released a video accusing the “leftist” media of misinterpreting her remarks as an endorsement of the White Australia policy, arguing she was simply outlining the historical trajectory and wasn’t backing a return of the policy.

“Not the case. Never ever have I advocated that. And I don’t believe it, at all,’’ she said.

Speaking on Sunrise, Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek insisted that what Ms Hanson was saying about the White Australia policy was clear.

Asked if he supported “mass deportations” for illegal immigrants, One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce said if people had no right to be in Australia, they should leave.

“Actually, Nat, literally everybody agrees with that. If you’re here illegally, you should be deported, no questions asked,’’ Ms Plibersek responded.

“Barnaby was the deputy prime minister. There were people who were here illegally when he was deputy prime minister. What did he do about that then?”

The new season of Kitchen Cabinet starts Tuesday 21 July at 8:30pm.

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