Asylum-seekers fiasco the stone sinking Labor

Government under mounting pressure over boats

Paul Kelly says Labor faces a very serious voter backlash over its handling of asylum-seeker boats at the upcoming election.

The warning this week from Gillard supporter Laurie Ferguson, Labor MP for Werriwa, known for his ties to ethnic communities, that “we are dead” on this issue follows the ominous alert issued a few weeks earlier by John Howard.

The saga of this Labor policy failure is extraordinary.

Boat arrivals were a factor in Kevin Rudd’s removal as prime minister in 2010. He would have been taken out anyway but Rudd’s border security softening was a tangible element in poor Labor polling used against him. Arrivals then were but a fraction of their current 3000 a month.

The boats have been critical to Julia Gillard’s loss of authority as Prime Minister.

With more than a decade of warning since the Tampa in 2001, Labor now faces an election defeat where boat arrivals are a pivotal factor.

“I actually think this issue is central,” Ferguson said, calling upon Gillard to get involved because it was “blocking out everything else”.

While Gillard told the caucus to expose Tony Abbott’s policy, Ferguson was asking the PM herself to do more to carry Labor’s case.

Three weeks ago, launching Nick Cater’s book, The Lucky Culture, Howard said that in his view border protection was “the greatest policy failure” in this entire period of ALP government. Not the carbon tax, the mining tax, pink batts, the disappearing surplus, but border protection.

Howard nailed the deeper problem for Labor. More than any other issue border protection “encapsulates the internal dilemma and tension” for progressive politics. It is irrevocably divided about boat arrivals.

Labor’s pre-election agony over border protection is now a ritual. We are witnessing a repeat of three years ago.

In July 2010 on election eve, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said that one of his “greatest failures” as minister was “losing control of the migration debate” and that it was “killing the government”.

Western Sydney Labor MP David Bradbury warned colleagues at the time about the electoral consequences of boat arrivals.

This issue now transcends Labor’s failure. It constitutes a crisis of Australian governance with blame shared among the government, the parliament and the High Court.

The test is whether a transfer of power to Tony Abbott makes a difference. Any failure by Abbott will see the relentless erosion of the offshore refugee intake, a crisis of confidence in the migration intake, growing security alarms and a deeper public backlash against government for failing to protect the borders.

There is no sign whatsoever the community will accept the current boat arrivals as the new status quo. This points to the risk of political extremism.

The public culture on boat arrivals is entrenched. The 2012 Scanlan Foundation survey unpacked the issue – Australians are highly positive about accepting offshore refugees (where there is no doubt about their status) but hostile to boatpeople and their claims for permanent residence.

This offends our egalitarianism and authorised norms for migrant arrival.

The Opposition Leader and his immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, know they must deliver their pledges. But Abbott now hoses down immediate expectations from his “stop the boats” mantra of the past four years.

His language is different. Asked how long it will take him to stop the boats, Abbott said: “We will make a difference from day one.” It is the new formula. Pressed further, Abbott said the boats would be stopped in his first term, a heroic statement.

Interviewed by Inquirer, Morrison said: “We will make a difference from day one. The ultimate judgment would be made at the end of our first term.”

Reality says that boat arrivals have such momentum a Coalition government, even with an immediate and dramatic response, will need time to get results. Australia’s policy apparatus is worn down and exhausted at this challenge and its consequences.

An Abbott government will face two related crises – the collapse of security at the border and management of upwards of 30,000 people onshore wanting to make asylum-seeker claims.

This has led to a huge increase in the cost to the budget, over-flowing detention centres, a backlog in processing, confusion in enforcing the “no advantage” rule (which says boat arrivals must be denied any advantage over people coming via approved channels).

It has led to a court system burdened with claims by non-citizens, integrity alarms about the refugee determination system and a massive burden for the security agencies given the deliberate tactic of most boat-people is to destroy identity documents.

ASIO chief David Irvine told the joint committee on intelligence and security that vetting boatpeople involved a “very, very considerable allocation” of ASIO resources but this was “not a misallocation” since in the past two years it found 58 people who should not be allowed into Australia because of the potential security risk.

ASIO said plane arrivals were time-consuming but they have “a passport and at least they do not have four different dates of birth or three different names.”

Such ploys are to subvert the determination process.

Abbott and Morrison do not subscribe to the strategy embodied in the August 2012 report by the committee chaired by former defence chief Angus Houston, embraced in full by the Gillard government.

This strategy was really a trade-off: to increase the humanitarian intake to 20,000 in order to persuade the region to embrace offshore processing deals with the goal of ensuring that every boat arrival into Australia was processed offshore. The results over the past six months are a record of failure. Such hopes for the strategy are being swamped, literally, by the numbers. With Labor’s policy in tatters, the government has only one line of attack left: claiming that Abbott cannot stop the boats. Defeat is being enshrined as the only option.

The Abbott/Morrison alternative approach is based in four ideas. First, Morrison says: “Having a physical deterrence on the borders is critical. If you don’t accept that, you’re not even at the start line.” He means the navy. Abbott and Morrison will turn boats.

That requires not the consent of Indonesia but its acquiescence. It doesn’t mean the navy will enter Indonesian waters. Morrison says it means that “Indonesian vessels return to Indonesia under their own steam” the people who boarded the boat in Indonesia. It will mean repairing any damaged boat, transferring the asylum-seekers to navy ships for some time and ensuring the boat is transported back near to Indonesian waters.

Abbott has no arrangement with Jakarta. He says he will visit Indonesia immediately upon becoming PM. The Coalition is not fool enough to try to reach any deal from opposition.

Labor rightly says this is a high-risk policy. “I note a campaign to knock this option before the event,” Morrison said.

For Abbott, the atmospherics with Jakarta and management of the diplomacy will be critical. Obviously, he must offer Jakarta something it badly needs.

Second, Morrison has a different regional strategy to Labor.

He has repeatedly argued the aim must be to stop asylum-seekers entering the Southeast Asia region.

“We have found total enthusiasm from Indonesia on this issue of deterrence,” Morrison said.

Australia’s problem reflects a regional problem. Asylum-seekers are self-selecting Australia (a right they do not have in international law) by paying smugglers to travel half-way around the world to get here.

Third, the Coalition will resurrect the Howard policy of temporary protection visas. This means anybody found to be a refugee is denied a permanent visa.

A temporary visa means the visa-holders are denied family reunion rights and at visa’s expiry need to reapply and succeed on merits. The Immigration Department argues that this measure is unlikely to halt the boats.

Finally, Morrison wants a “root and branch” review of the refugee determination and appeals system because he thinks it too generous. “We have been running a ‘tick and flick’ approach where this government thinks it is easier to say ‘yes’ than ‘no’,” Morrison said. “We are not happy with how the system is working.

“We want genuine cases to get a ‘yes’ but this must not become an act of convenience.”

Referring to Labor’s internal debate, Morrison said: “The problem is not the debate, the problem is the lack of policy. When it comes to boat arrivals, push factors tend to be a constant. What makes the difference is the pull factors. This government has become a pull factor in its own right.”

Gillard’s tragedy is that she is much misunderstood on border protection. As PM, she tried to impose a tougher policy than anything from Howard.

This was the Malaysian people swap. It was vetoed by the High Court and Abbott then vetoed Gillard’s proposed laws to make the deal constitutional.

Indeed, Abbott and Morrison destroyed Gillard’s position on human rights grounds. Her boat people policy has never recovered.

As for Rudd, he misread this issue as PM, weakened Howard’s policy in an act of moral vanity and pretended there would be no consequences. For Labor, there is no redemption on boat policy. The government, divided from within and attacked from without, is broken on this issue.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/asylum-seekers-fiasco-the-stone-sinking-labor/story-e6frg74x-1226659594530