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Armchair_Politician
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One of the biggest traps in politics is underestimating your opponent.
And its companion error is thinking you are over the line and have won, when the campaign is still far from over.
This week we’ve seen both of these miscalculations manifest in Canberra and it is worth understanding why.
The Liberal Party has always thought Bill Shorten’s comparative lack of personal appeal would be his undoing. They’ve always expected his rival Anthony Albanese to come back and, like Malcolm Turnbull, seize office on the back of someone else’s hard work in Opposition. But that hasn’t come to pass.
Of all the polling indicators, “preferred PM” is the most irrelevant. In the end, the only indicator professional analysts ever track is the primary vote and for many months, Labor’s has slowly, but very steadily, risen. The Coalition on the other hand has struggled to hit a number with a four in front of it which is essential if they’re to have a shot at a win, such is the discipline of Greens votes ending up in Labor’s ledger, via preferences.
Underestimating Bill Shorten has been one of the Liberal Party’s worst mistakes this term; and thinking they are too far ahead to lose, has been Labor’s.
Take the fight this week over border protection. Bill Shorten has always appeared to understand the damage inflicted on his side by the arrival of 50,000 asylum seekers in the Rudd-Gillard years. He’s carefully created the public perception that he’s in lock step with the Coalition on matters of national security. That is, until some smart ‘strategists’ inside Labor appear to have told him they’re so far ahead he can now give the Left a win over the issue of medical evacuations from Nauru and Manus Island to Australia.
Otherwise, how can you explain his decision this week to do so?
This is not the move of a sure-footed opposition leader who knows that he’s playing a strategic game against an opponent with more political capital on national security than Labor could ever hope for. This is not a decision from someone who’s aware from the sensitive intelligence briefings that any signal of softness might restart the boats. Either Shorten is facing a revolt at his upcoming National Conference (and there’s reports on Saturday that the Left will push to adopt medical evacuations as a part of its binding platform) or he’s thinking he’s got the election already won, and so can do this now. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. But however it is explained, it is deadly; figuratively, in political terms; and literally, as it would start up the people smuggler’s trade yet again, and that will cost lives.
Thinking that you can play with the three elements that stopped the boats under John Howard, and stopped them again under Tony Abbott, is an utter fantasy.
Under Howard, it was the introduction of temporary protection visas, so that boat people who got to Australia couldn’t stay here permanently. It was offshore processing in places like Manus and Nauru. And most importantly, it was turning boats around so that boat people never got beyond Indonesia to mainland Australia. You might recall two days before the 2007 poll, Kevin Rudd declaring that he was tough enough to turn boats around — but he never was, and he never did.
Under Rudd’s government and that of Julia Gillard, temporary protection visas were abolished, offshore processing was closed down, and illegal boats were guided to Christmas Island. And the result was nearly 1000 illegal boats, nearly 50,000 illegal arrivals, and more than a thousand deaths at sea.
Under Abbott, the Howard policies were restored with three additional elements. First, there were only weekly reports on border protection, not announcements every time a boat appeared that had become a form of shipping news for people smugglers. Second, there was a unified operational structure, Operation Sovereign Borders, to ensure that all agencies were operating seamlessly to stop the boats (and Senator Jim Molan was key to this success). And most importantly, to overcome people smugglers who scuttled their boats, large orange lifeboats were provided so that people who set out in boats and sabotaged them, could be sent back in new boats rather than picked up and delivered here.
Already, we know that Labor have committed to scrap TPVs. They claim they’re still prepared to turn boats around but Rudd said that too and never had the guts. That just leaves offshore processing as the last remnant of the three elements of Australia’s successful border protection regime.
But not anymore.
By siding with the Greens in the last parliamentary week of the year to demand new laws to force governments to bring to Australia anyone deemed by two doctors to require medical evacuation, Labor has effectively ended bipartisan support for offshore detention and, in doing so, told people smugglers very clearly that a change in government means a change in resolve.
If Labor is elected in May next year, they’re well and truly, back in business.
Earlier this week we learnt what this medevac ruse really means. On medical advice, at the cost to taxpayers of $100,000 dollars, an asylum seeker on Nauru was flown to Australia for “severe stomach pain”, which turned out to be nothing more than routine constipation. But human rights lawyers insisted on evacuation and an injunction is expected to ensure the now discharged person is not returned to Nauru.
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If Shorten becomes PM, the boats will return!!! (Read 6738 times)
