A decided ennui has overtaken Canberra, or at least the Press Gallery. There’s a general sense that politics at the moment is truly wretched, a Sisyphean ordeal. Just as Labor is apparently condemned to roll (or perhaps rickroll), a policy rock up a hill, only for it to roll down again, and the task commence anew, so the media must exhaustively cover, and comment upon, every nuance of the repetition, over and over.
Clash of the titans it ain’t. And pace Albert Camus, there are, alas, no absurd heroes in this building. There’s plenty of absurdity, yes, but heroes? Sorry, we’re all out of them.
So the carbon pricing package debate, over ostensibly the most important piece of legislation to be debated this term, has been reduced to scenic backdrop. Instead, Labor and the Coalition are going hammer and tongs over several thousand asylum seekers — a diversion of the national attention span so manifestly disproportionate that it would be comical if there wasn’t, in the possibility of people drowning trying to get here, a deadly serious policy issue that is being furiously ignored by everyone except those with the responsibility of actually developing and implementing policy.
Everyone else — refugee advocates, the Greens, the media, Labor backbenchers, and most of all the Opposition — can play dress-ups in the clothes of compassion while the government is stuck with the task of trying to work out how to stop people drowning themselves trying to get resettled here.
For Labor, perhaps the better mythic metaphor at the moment is that of Prometheus, eternally chained to a rock and condemned to have his liver eaten over and over again. It was an eagle that feasted on his liver in the original; a turkey would be more apt round here. That’s Labor’s lot for now and the immediate future. There’s to be no escape, no salvation, so there must simply be acceptance. Even a leadership change now would be useless.
In that regard, at least, if in few others, Julia Gillard is the ideal leader. She may not be much chop as a political tactician but her resilience is impressive. No matter what body blows strike her Prime Ministership, she dusts herself off and keeps going. Keeps going the wrong way, many critics inside and outside the party insist, but on she goes, pushing that rock up the hill, certain in the knowledge that it will roll straight back down again, if only because it has every other time she’s done it in the last twelve months.
One doubts if, like Camus’ absurd hero, Gillard has found contentment in the futility of her task. But she works away at a policy agenda anyway, and a solid one — more solid than Kevin Rudd’s, although he had the excuse that the GFC substituted keeping the economy functional for any ambitious reform program.
The government’s proposed asylum seeker policy is by no means ideal. We shouldn’t be keeping people in detention unnecessarily, we should be resettling far more people than we do, and we should be providing a lot more funding for the UNHCR. But I can’t see another policy around at the moment that better marries the twin goals of fulfilling our moral obligations to assist people fleeing persecution and discouraging them from risking their lives.
It’s not the best policy option by any stretch, but it’s the least worst one currently on offer. There’s nothing particularly heroic about prosecuting the case for such a policy, but as in a lot of other policy areas, the government’s fate is to doggedly pursue second-tier policies that only have the single redeeming feature of not being nearly as bad as what their opponents are offering.
Bernard – “But I can’t see another policy around at the moment that better marries the twin goals of fulfilling our moral obligations to assist people fleeing persecution and discouraging them from risking their lives.It’s not the best policy option by any stretch” What is the best policy? I sure as hell don’t know. Surely a regional solution is the way to go, This policy does at least get 4,000 genuine refugees out of what are apparently appalling conditions in Malaysia and does provide a deterent to risking one’s life to travel here.
“but as in a lot of other policy areas, the government’s fate is to doggedly pursue second-tier policies” I look at this another way, the govt is making considerable steps towards better policy but is restricted due to an environment where the slightest move to the left is viewed as communism.
I do agree that it is farcial that we dvote so much time to preventing a few thousand boat arrivals a year when places like italy have 35,000 a month. On the plus side at least we aren’t in the US where despite a crippling budget deficit the idea of amking the ultra rich pay more than 35% tax on income above $250k is viewed as class warfare.
Alike everyone, I continue to be impressed with the calibre of journalism being produced by Crikey. Not so with this article unfortunately.
As someone with a less emotional interest in this issue, as observing competent application of scientific management, including the integrity of such application that demonstrates its applied value potential, it is obvious to me the banal considerations of political intrigue and journalistic pontification, conflated of their monocultural colonial perspective, as attending the record of this issue in Australia, serve it very poorly.
Yes, I concur competent support of the UNHCR is intrinsic of its merit toward required resolution, as is the requirement of adequate resettlement of refugees in this country, and competent ability to get to the source of the issue.
But neither driven policy intiatives of either major parties in Australia are observed competent to the task.
For example, Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention, although as a former Western colonial nation they have enjoyed considerable favour from the West for years, and for years also have accepted UNHCR support for their refugee population, further observed extensively corrupted from the ability of Malaysia to ignore the refugee convention.
Parallel may be observed of the ability of Indonesia to commit genocide upon the peoples of West Papua as practically condoned by the UN with its annexation of West Papua to Indonesia.
Simply, Malaysia thumbs its nose at the UN refugee convention, as practically condoned by the UN, because it can. Nothing more colonially parallel of such attitude may only be observed of such sheer contempt of the integrity of justice.
Therefore the policy of deportation of refugees to Malaysia from Australia, may only be observed for what it is, as entirely illegitimate, as similarly upheld by the Australian High Court.
And obviously, the squandering of extensive resources attended to this issue to date, may have been considerably ameliorated if Australian Govts had competently attended to the priorities of this issue from day one!
While conflict rages and the world continues to tolerate despotic and tyrannical Govts to create them, the refugees will continue to come. For example, while the open wound of Kashmir continues to infect the region, Afghanistan will never be settled, and while tyranny and corruption is allowed to fester within near neighbours of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia, this region will continue to be under siege.
There’s a problem with your argument Bernie … namely that people have every legal right to get themselves into leaky fishing boats and set out for Australia to claim asylum. Turning them back, “discouraging them” and “breaking the people smuggler business model” aside, are all a complete waste of valuable airspace.
Things might be different if we actually had a queue that worked – if people weren’t condemned to sitting rotting in some Malaysian or African camp for 10 or 20 years while DIAC and ASIO and all the other little faceless persons decide whether to make a decision. But we don’t. Not just our fault – the “civilised world” doesn’t want a bar of this little regional problem so the UNHCR is inadequate to the task and the rate of intake by receiving countries is woefully inadequate.
But working ourselves into a lather about onshore or offshore processing – and finding other stratagems to dodge our obligations will see us run foul of the High Court every time… not until we actually withdraw from the convention, tell everyone to bugger off and pull up the drawbridge. That’s what the critics of these policies are actually wanting to do incidentally – even if they won’t admit it.
By far the most sensible and humane way of handling this little issue is processing people in centres adjacent to their source countries and flying them in by Qantas – lots of them. That’s how we did it before and it worked a treat.
And as I said above(still off in the moderator’s holding pattern for some reason), the place to start is with a total re-orientation of DIAC – away from xenophobic white Australia racism and paranoiac “border protection” to fulfilling our obligations under law. But no one wants to hear that, do they?
A delightful analogy Bernard, but one you could extend further to that other tragic inhabitant of Hades, Tantalus. There we have Abbott, standing in a pool under low hanging branches carrying fruit. The fruit and the water ever so close, but each time it seems to be in reach, it recedes. More than a year now, but still no closer.
And over his head that large threatening stone, a rock of disapproval.
“By far the most sensible and humane way of handling this little issue is processing people in centres adjacent to their source countries and flying them in by Qantas – lots of them. That’s how we did it before and it worked a treat. ” This does seem ridiculously logical but isn’t “the malaysian solution” a step towards this? Also what to do with the people who after getting rejected from the centes adjacent to their source country )simply because we had taken our quota) then still make the trip by sea?