13 August 2012

The no-win situation

On the release of the Report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers I am in no position to make legal or practical judgments on what it might mean for asylum seekers, or for Australia. I did, however, laugh at the position in which the Liberals have put themselves. It isn't only asylum seekers who stand to lose no matter what they do.

Contrary to the hopes and opinions of many, there are Liberals who aren't stupid. They know full well that the patterns of refugees heading toward Australia by boat is influenced more by push factors (i.e. the reasons why people abandon the lands of their birth) than pull factors (i.e. gold and soil and wealth for toil). They know that Nauru and TPVs-in-all-but-name and all that were all just security theatre; expensive, but electorally effective while it lasted. They know that the current rise in asylum-seekers has little to do with anything the government might do - but because that government isn't a Liberal one they are happy to create the impression that they have all the answers, and that the messy compromise under which the government operates is some sort of endemic failure on their part.

When Liberal journalists like Chrisses Kenny and Uhlmann paint the background on asylum seeker issues, they ignore the push factors and contrast Coalition firmness with Labor floundering. This helps the Liberals get their message out but it also reinforces that message as though it were true. It has dampened their efforts to think through asylum-seeker policy and consider what might happen if the old ways don't apply to new conditions. This does them a disservice.

The Panel have largely recommended that the Howard government's policy for most of the last decade be reintroduced: Nauru, Manus Island, boat-arrivals being prevented from family reunion, pretty much the whole Ruddock-Vanstone deal. The Gillard government has no alternative but to swallow its pride and bringing the recommendations into being, good and hard. This leaves the Liberals:

  • Doing their usual pantomime of appearing to agree with the government, then raising a few quibbles and qualms, then eventually saying no (this strings out a story over days, which journos love); or
  • Claiming credit and noisily denouncing Labor for backing down.
Nobody believes the Liberals when they go on about UN conventions and breaches thereof. It's legitimate to attack the government and its policy on those grounds, but Abbott and Morrison have no grounds to do so. In the same way, nobody thinks Tony Abbott building a Potemkin Village in the Top End will make a blind bit of difference to Aborigines. If they take the former path above it will only reinforce Abbott as someone who can point problems out but can't solve them. 

The latter will see Labor demoralised initially, until the Coalition realise what it feels like for a government to steal an opposition's policy. If the policy succeeds, government gets credit and opposition is just me-too. If it won't, how will the Coalition scuttle away to the moral high ground (and where, exactly, might such ground be)?

If? The proposals won't succeed because:
  • Facilities in Nauru and Manus Island won't be fully operational by the election this time next year; 
  • The key role of Indonesia has been dodged altogether; 
  • There will be half-baked G4S-style execution issues; and 
  • There will almost certainly be a successful legal challenge because of fundamental sillinesses such as the cruel folly of waiting times.
Labor has room to move - an internationalist approach building on the Malaysia agreement and the re-emergence of Burma into the international community, bringing in the UN, producing a large-scale joined-up policy that the mean reductionism of talkback radio can't beat or even match. The Coalition has no room to move if when the Pacific Solution is discredited.

Gillard's flexibility has counted against her - but having come through on other issues and with room to move on international agreements, she can change policy tack without any loss of standing. Abbott is stuck with the Pacific Solution; if asylum-seeker boats keep coming in the face of such a policy he has no answer, he can't get an answer, he is finished. Gillard will get credit for trying while Abbott becomes just another whinger. Gillard lives to fight another day while Abbott is left with if-onlys an I-couldas.

If Abbott offers anything other than a return to Howard-era policy - in general, and on this issue in particular - he is finished. If he sounds like an echo of the government rather than an alternative, he is finished. This invidious position is another curse of the latter-day Coalition not thinking through policy from basic principles, and using the nostalgicised past as not just a platform but a hammock. It's the difference between creating the impression that you have the answer, and having your bluff called and watching helplessly as "the answer" dissolves before your eyes.

Chris Bowen's credibility is shot with this change in policy. He should go to the backbench and rethink things, but he won't. Scott Morrison will one day attempt to slink away from the position he's held to for years now, and he will fail too. It is the tragedy of the modern political class that they are so identified with their roles that they cannot resign to save themselves.

At a time where options appear inflexibly directed toward Liberal policy, it is Labor that loses less in this no-win situation. It means the election will turn on issues other than this, as voters turn to other issues to make their decision.

After all that, I looked up this picture and it just made me sad.

38 comments:

  1. AE wrote: "Gillard lives to fight another day while Abbott is left with if-onlys an I-couldas."

    I want to believe this, I truly do. The only problem is when the Pacific Solution 2.0 fails; it won't be because 1.0 never actually worked. It will be because of "Labor incompetence". At least that's how it will be spun and the larger electorate will be inclined to believe it.

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    1. What's changed is that the Coalition will no longer receive the benefit of the doubt that they would run things better.

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  2. Didn't Morrison loose his cool on Lateline a month or so ago and basically admit, shouting, that even if Labor turned around one day and decide to adopt 100% of what the Coalition have been calling for, he and Abbott still wouldn't support it, because 'only the Liberal Party can make it work'.

    Shameless.

    On the other hand, it's incredible how much Labor have accepted the Coalition's assumptions about asylum seeker policy. Is there another example in Australian history of a government conducting a policy debate about a highly complex issue so entirely on the opposition's terms?

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  3. ernmalleyscat14/8/12 10:22 am

    I realise the main point of this post is about the coalition's sticky situation, but where you do look at the panel's report and policy I think you completely miss the main point.
    You say "The Panel have largely recommended that the Howard government's policy for most of the last decade be reintroduced" yet there won't be towing back, nor TPVs, nor even detention (as paris Aristotle explained on Lateline last night) and most importantly there will be a huge increase in the number of refugees accepted.
    Over five years there will be an extra 55,000 refugees brought to Australia, and they won't have to fork out $10,000 and risk drowning and be detained when they get here.
    And it looks like the coalition will agree to this. I'd say that is the biggest turnaround in a party's policy in recent history.

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    1. Not sure I agree with your final assumption, and in any case being harsher-than-thou is not the vote-winner it was. The point is that they don't have the capacity to re-imagine the whole situation or question assumptions.

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    2. ernmalleyscat14/8/12 1:05 pm

      I just wish the effect of increasing the refugee resettlement numbers to 20,000 and eventually 27,000 was actually discussed.

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  4. No women with Chifley.

    fred

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    1. No, they're labourers, and migration assumptions since the Chinese in the 19th century was that you minimise the impact of immigration when you restrict women migrants.

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    2. Interesting.
      Ta.

      fred

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  5. Another great post Andrew. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on boat arrivals, if any. If the boats continue to come, which many experts and former refugees are saying, then it places the Coalition in a wicked position because it has been one of their pillar policies for re-election, and it will be road-tested prior to the election.

    Failure would push the Coalition into an area that they don't want to go: policy detail - it would be 'we tried it your way and it didn't work, so what do you say now?'. The Libs seriously can't want to start an almighty brawl with Indonesia on pushing boats back into their waters without their agreement (a country completely over Australia's antics on this issue, whose cooperation and goodwill we desperately need for various reasons) and I think that torpedoing boats would probably be a bit harsh even for many on the right (although it probably wouldn't cause much angst here in QLD).

    However, if it works the Libs will be dancing a jig around a much compromised Labor.

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  6. "using the nostalgicised past as not just a platform but a hammock"

    Brilliant just brilliant

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  7. The immigrants in that picture are white.

    People roll their eyes when refugee issues get chalked up to base racism, but it's simply a fact that white asylum seekers would be welcomed warmly.

    We saw that around Tampa time, when Liberal supporters were loudly declaring that we should be kicking the Arabs out to make way for white Zimbabweans.

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  8. I'm still angry with the government for (among other things) failing to grasp the opportunity the High Court handed them when the original Malaysia Deal got knocked back. They could have said, "Oh well, the High Court won't let us be as vicious as Howard and Ruddock and Vanstone, so we'll reluctantly do the right thing and live up to our treaty obligations." Idiots.

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    1. The problem you have there David (no relation) is how focus group driven the ALP is, and it's not just the usual suspects like Howes and Dastyari, or sock puppets like Bradbury in Lindsay. A few weeks back I caught up with a senior ALP Left figure - very close to Albanese - who bemoaned the focus group standing of Cde. Gillard and expressed a fear that continuing arrivals of refugees could hurt ALP polling. Note there the complete absence of social justice concern, international obligation or simple humanity from the great social justice bastion of the ALP. I think there is something more than idiocy going on here; complete moral bankruptcy springs to mind. But then again, what do we expect when we let the cretins that throw themselves into student politics with such inane vigour become our nation's leaders two decades later?

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    2. Well, I agree with you about the moral bankruptcy, Number One Bag, but then again I haven't voted Labor since Hawke's first term.

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    3. I completely agree, DI(nr) and was gobsmacked when they let the bleeding obvious opportunity slip to win back some moral *and financial* high ground.

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  9. I agree with you Andrew regarding the political fall out from this.

    I am just disappointed that offshore processing in transit countries wasn't front and centre. Done there we can fly (or sail) them safely to Australia as legitimate refugees. It remains that punishing asylum seekers by offshore detention is the policy.

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  10. Have any journalists actually read the report yet? Hint: copying and pasting garbage from Menzies House doesn't count.

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  11. derrida derider14/8/12 5:23 pm

    Na, this is a great day for Abbott. Of course the recommended policy manages to combine maximum malice with minimum effectiveness - but the public will only have time to see the malice, which is popular. And Abbott is now going to pin all those deaths on Gillard's "stubborn weakness".

    The idiocy was Gillard's in breaking the rule - "never hold an inquiry unless you know exactly what it will recommend". Who the hell wrote the ToR, selected the panel and provided the secretariat? This really is Politics 101.

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    1. All PMs who embrace a long-neglected solution face an initial firestorm, first of incredulity, then charges of 'hypocrisy'. Think Fraser and Aboriginal land rights, Hawke and IR reform, Howard and the GST.

      Nobody believes that Abbott's tears over the dead are anything but those of the crocodile variety, and I doubt that Abbott will win a single vote through snarling sarcasm. This is a contest where the winner is the one you hate least and Abbott has fallen into the trap of being obnoxious where statesmanship would put him on the path to the Lodge.

      Do you really think Gillard looked surprised by those recommendations? Compare yesterday with, say, the day the High Court struck down the Malaysia deal, or indeed the very day she became Prime Minister.

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    2. Indeed, Andrew. They had the legislation ready to go, and that stuff doesn't write itself.

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  12. This whole issue just makes me feel sad and helpless. As a young kid in the seventies, Fraser seemed tough and conservative and a happy face rarely found. Yet in hindsight, his treatment of those much worse off than us was breathtakingly couragous. I blame the two party system for many of the political difficulties we now find ourselves in this country. Where a handful of outer suburban swing seats will decide our foreign policy by people who are not interested, don't care and are easily swayed by a three word slogans. The 5% of Penrith, Dandenong or Ipswich do not really represent the whole nation yet, these people hold a disproportionate influence on the entire sorry area of policy developement.

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  13. People smuggling is organised by criminals. When criminal organisations flourish like this it is usually with the assistance of corrupt government officials. It seems nobodyon any side of politics can actually bring themselves to say it but it is almost certain that some of the very people in other countries supposed to be policing the people smugglers are in on the act. Authorities the world over have tried to control the criminal gangs for decades. The war on alcohol, prostitution, drugs ... all failures. Last time I looked the mafia, the triads, the outlaw motorcycle gangs and whoever else are still going strong. The Liberals will win this war? In their dreams

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    1. Yes, they should have locked up Oscar Schindler and thrown away the key, especially as the Gotto Clan, the Coffin Cheaters and those inscrutable oriental Triads are all behind desperate people trying to escape a godforsaken war zone.

      Whatever it is your smoking you should stop it.

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    2. what are you smoking? That is not my point at all. My point is that the only way to deal with the refugees (short of stopping the wars) is to establish some sort of orderly process with the co-operation of the various nations they pass through on the way. Ok. maybe I am a dreamer, but sure as shit every refugee that passes through indonesia enriches some corrupt officials. I feel really sorry for people who are so dustressed that they risk their life chasing a better one and I think the pacific solution sucks but i can't see that having a bunch of crooks make money out them is a good idea either.

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  14. that vile opportunistic scumbag morrison is out there advocating minimum five year mandatory detention for boat arrivals.

    What is wrong with this country?

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  15. derrida derider15/8/12 10:17 am

    Of course, Anonymous. But there's not much any Oz government can do about bent Indonesian coppers, especially as those bent coppers can quite reasonably tell themselves they are actually helping both the refugees and their own country.

    This is actually one of the reasons "deterrence" won't work. Prospective boat people are promised all sorts of things by the traffickers, and those promises need bear no relation to reality because these people are desperate, and desperate people will clutch at straws. We already see how shocked they are by their treatment because it is so different to what they were led to expect.

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    1. There are no traffickers doing anything. Except telling people that this is a kind and democratic country.

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  16. Abbott is already setting up his deniability if it does not work.

    "But the point I keep making is if you want John Howard-style results you've got to put in John Howard-style policies.

    “We've been saying all along if you want to stop the boats you've got to have Nauru, but not just Nauru, you need temporary protection visas and you need a willingness to turn boats around where it is safe to do so."

    (The Australian - Tony Abbott says the asylum-seeker plan won't work without full Howard package. August 15)

    It will continue to give them free rein by News Ltd to deny the Government use of Malaysia.

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    1. Isn't the logical conclusion of this that Abbott should step aside and let Howard take over again?

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    2. Also, David, there's the deniability-within-a-deniability ie. "where it is safe to do so". Therefore HE can get away, if he gets into power, with not turning any boats back at all (and looking like a saint who only has the asylum seekers' safety at heart.)
      Sometimes, watching Tones high-vis-clad media capering and fatuous sloganeering I wonder how he ever got to be a Rhodes scholar. This demonstrates the channel into which he's pouring all of his available thinking ability - being devious. Ratty taught him well!

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    3. (Of course, I'm assuming it's him that's thinking up these devious dollops of deniability, rather than a staffer which is highly likely)

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    4. Why do people here presume we are allowed to trade human beings.

      Are you stupid.

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  17. That photo of Chifley you shed tears over is of him greeting refugees who have arrived here by legitimated means, not by jumping the queue, paying criminals large sums of money, and then taking insane risks with their families, for which we, the Australian people and nation, seem to blame ourselves for when it goes pear-shaped.

    The best statement by a statesman in the last two decades" "We shall decide who comes here and under what circumstances". John Winston Howard

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    1. This is bullshit. We have made it impossible for refugees to fly here and they are allowed to come here.

      Howard just came up with a racist lying slogan.

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  18. Andrew,

    Unfortunately Abbott is going to win this particular race to the bottom.

    As David Marr has described, neither Naura nor TPVs stop boats. Only towing them back did. Malaysia = towing people back which is why the Coalition opposed it.

    I believe the Expert Panel 'no advantage' test will stop boats coming once asylum seekers see that the ALP is serious about enforcing it. Until that time, or until 'no advantage' is killed by the High Court, boats will keep coming.

    The only hope for the ALP on this issue is that Abbott and Morrison continue to behave like exultant cannibal serial killers feasting on fresh kill and keep insisting on forced tow-back, minimum 5 year detention and such.

    They just might yet repulse 1% or so of their 2PP and narrow the margin just that little bit more.

    But in the short term the boats will keep coming.

    My solution: withdraw from UN Convention Of Refugees, limit total asylum-seeker/humanitarian intake to 20,000 and process applications in Indonesia. Too many are drowning attempting the journey.

    Any boat arrivals would take to a safe UN Refugee Camp.

    In practice that 20,000 figure should never be reached. Its well above current intake.

    In the meantime I would be trying to reactive the Malaysian agreement.

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    1. It might shock you but it is allowed to do these things.

      Perhaps you serioulsy think that votes in marginal seats trump human rights but you are wrong about everything you have written.

      Refugees are people, not chattels for us to buy and sell.

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  19. As one of the readers has said earlier, if there were white immigrants on the boats, Australia would have no hesitation in accepting them, in fact they will be welcomed with open arms. It hurts to say it, but the Government is pandering to the racist minority. If they can, the parties may even start to get rid of existing non-white migrants if it will them votes. Both parties are devoid of a moral compass.

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