When earlier this week I compared Julia Gillard’s asylum seeker speech to John Howard, I didn’t realise she’d take the comparison to heart and adopt all of the former Prime Minister’s rhetorical habits. But there she was yesterday, deploying that old Howard stand-by of a casuistic explanation of her own words. She hadn’t meant East Timor at all when she talked about the location of a regional processing centre, it turns out, despite saying she’d spoken to José Ramos-Horta.
Oh — José Ramos-Horta. Sorry, we were getting confused. Perhaps in the manner of The Late Show in the 1990s, the Prime Minister wanted to ring Mexican musician Joe Ramos and ask his views on the plight of desperate immigrants, and her bumbling assistant got the president of East Timor by mistake.
We may not have had much idea what Kevin Rudd was saying half the time, but he rarely deployed the sort of careful parsing of his own words that both his predecessor and, now, his replacement, employed.
Then again, the whole Gillard policy looked undercooked right from the outset. A “regional solution” for which the preparatory work consisted of a quick call to East Timor and another to the UNHCR and the NZ Prime Minister, coupled with an announcement that, based on a UNHCR report the night before, Tamils no longer had much show of being accepted as refugees.
As Laura Tingle pointed out about the mining tax cave-in last week, for a Government supposedly rectifying the one-man band tendencies of its ousted leader, there’s not much sign of a return to due and considered process.
This is a Government in a terrible hurry to get to an election while its new leader’s glow lasts with the voters. Policy is being driven not by polling but by the one poll that matters. The imperative is not good policy or consultation but ticking the box on key issues before the trip to Yarralumla, probably next Sunday morning. Actual consequences can be managed post-election.
While Gillard was happy to invest quite some time in negotiating with the executives of the big three foreign mining companies, she gave little more than a heads-up to actual foreign leaders for a major policy initiative involving them — which Gillard insists the regional processing centre is, rather than a quick political fix. Regional leaders must be puzzled and slightly worried about their new counterpart. If she’d actually invested some time in exploring the issue with other leaders before announcing it, voters would be entitled to give her the benefit of the doubt about being genuinely committed to a regional solution to asylum seekers in boats.
As it stands, it just looks half-arsed policy from a woman in a rush to get another term.
Next week, it’ll be the third self-selected policy box, climate change, for ticking. Again, policy driven by the imminent poll, by the need to appear to have a policy. Here’s an idea — maybe she can call BHP, Rio and Xstrata back in and thrash out another deal with them. At least that looked like an actual process of consultation.
Not only was there no discussion with regional leaders about the regional solution, there was no discussion with Australian refugee organisations.
If there had been Maybe the Prime minister would learn that “processing” refugees is not the problem- there are over 600 “processed” refugees sitting in Indonesia waiting… until finally the self starters decide that a boat is the only option.
The Government refuse to divulge in the Senate just how many asylum seekers on Christmas island hold UN REFUGEE CARDS ie are “processed’ refugees. Some even hold two-having been “processed” in Malaysia and then “processed” all over again in Jakarta and are now heading for the 3rd processing care of Australia.
The problem is RESETTLEMENT. Australia took 70 people from Indonesia last year. At this rate people are looking at decades of waiting with No right to work, no schooling for kids, no future.
Adding another “processing ” centre in Timor will not solve the problem.
Just give them a place to call home can’t we? A few thousand is nothing. There is no more devoted Australian than a refugee who has been given a chance. Who do you think is doing all the dirty low paid work out there.
Why cant our politicians deliver these messages- someone might listen is they all got together.
As Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard does not have the right to have vision without substance. It is assumed that when the Australian Prime Minister opens his or her mouth that they speak with authority. Now it would appear that not only do we have an ex-member of Rudd’s kitchen cabinet who was prepared to go along for the ride and then stab Rudd in the back once his policy juggernaut went off the rails, as Prime Minister she can now utter prospective policy proposals without Cabinet consideration and resile from such propositions as soon as the going gets tough. The fact that she mentioned discussions with East Timor’s President in relation to her version of the “Pacific Solution” must be taken as an implicit policy position. No credible Australian prime minister would mention another country in a policy proposal without the concurrence of her Foreign Minister and Cabinet.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Gillard is totally out of her depth, and will resort to any trick or chicanery in a desperate bid to retain office.
She is, like Rudd, a political lightweight…too bad our first woman PM is a dud.
Bernard Keane clamours to join the majority group of uneducated so-called journalists who does not understand the word “possibility”. Listen to or read the speech and get a dictionary.
What is it about the muppets in Canberra that they always treat the East Timorese leaders with such disrespect, especially since the military intervention? The last mob treated them as fools as well, whereas they seem to me to be some of the better leaders in the region.
Perhaps Crikey could do a piece on this?