On Monday Kim Beazley was “to axe AWAs in backflip”. On
Tuesday that had become “Unions push ALP for more”. Wednesday saw “Beazley to
risk pay cuts.” And this morning Beazley had become “another Latham: business.”
The Opposition Leader’s plan to make industrial relations the key election issue
was certainly captivating The Australian with four front page leads in a row;
every one of them putting a negative slant on Labor’s plans.

Prime Minister John Howard, meanwhile, was facing the
potentially biggest embarrassment of a Liberal leader since goodness knows when.
His changes to immigration law designed to ship any would-be refugees to
Pacific Islands were stalled in the face of opposition from within
his own party. And where was that on The Oz’s front pages? No appearance your
worship.

Right across the Murdoch press there is a reluctance to
expose the danger of the Prime Minister being humiliated by his own
backbenchers. The Daily Telegraph this morning has NSW Labor in an “etag
farce.” The Courier-Mail, understandably enough, is full of “Maroon Magic”. In
Melbourne, the Herald Sun had a widow facing a $1m probe and The Adelaide
Advertiser is saving teenage girls with a cancer vaccine. Down in
Hobart the “trees deal faces axing” while Jana Pittman fits a baby
into her plans. Up north the NT News sticks to its local “desert mystery deepens
as NT survivor’s car found”.

Unreported it might be, but potential humiliation it is.
This morning in the House of Representatives, the Government postponed debate on
the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 so that
talks with potential rebel members could continue. Immigration Minister Amanda
Vanstone has the unenviable task of trying to find acceptable amendments to a
bill that a Senate committee has declared unamendable.

Complicating the situation for Mr Howard is the presence
in Australia of an Indonesian parliamentary delegation. The MPs
from Jakarta are here evaluating the sincerity of our Government’s attempt to
show that accepting 42 Papuan as refugees in need of protection from persecution
does not imply criticism of the Indonesian Government’s actions in Papua.
Explaining the inexplicable is proving as hard as amending the unamendable.

The political embarrassment for the Government at home
here in Australia is the well-founded belief of many people that the real reason
for a new way of dealing with designated unauthorised arrivals is purely and
simply the appeasement of the Indonesian government. Mr Howard denied yesterday
that Indonesia had anything to do with it but Senator Vanstone was
honest enough on last night’s 7.30 Report to admit it was. No amount of
backtracking by the Senator on AM this morning can change what she so honestly
said last night.

The early release yesterday of terrorist leader Abu
Bakar Bashir after a token period in an Indonesian jail makes this quite the
wrong time to be accused of kow towing to Indonesia and Mr Howard well knows it.
He must now be regretting his foolish decision to introduce such controversial
legislation without first checking whether a significant minority of his own
members would accept it.