Throughout its history, the ALP has had a habit of getting on the wrong side of major high court decisions — think of the Bank Nationalisation Case, the Petroleum and Minerals Authority Case and the Political Broadcasting Case (ACTV v Commonwealth). The Coalition has had better luck, with the Engineers’ Case, Koowarta v Bjelke-Petersen and the WorkChoices Case.
But at least in earlier cases, Labor was trying to implement its own policies. It may have been foolish or misguided — indeed I think it usually was — but its MPs were doing something they believed in. Defeat is much easier to bear when you’ve got the consolation that you were trying to do the right thing.
Now we can add Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, decided on Wednesday, to Labor’s list of High Court failures. But here the consolation is absent; only Labor’s own stupidity, aided by the media’s eagerness to promote that narrative, makes this decision a defeat for Labor at all.
What the High Court has invalidated is fundamentally the Coalition’s policy: the obsession with offshore processing was entirely a creation of the Howard government, and under Tony Abbott it has become ever more strident and ever more central to the opposition’s identity. The Labor government, to its eternal shame, has allowed itself to be dragged along with it.
There’s no reason it had to be like this. Kevin Rudd’s moves to wind back the Pacific Solution did not provoke popular outrage; they were generally accepted as reasonable reforms for which Labor had a mandate. The opposition’s complaints gained traction only when the government itself started to back-pedal.
Once you accept that policy should be driven by a desire not to help the vulnerable, but to punish those who assist them, then you’re engaged in a race to the bottom as to who can be more bloody-minded. Labor was never going to win that race. The Coalition, pushing its island prison of Nauru and the sheer vindictiveness of temporary protection visas, has that ground locked up.
Yet even now, with both sides pushing this demonisation, the public is not convinced. AC Nielsen last month found 53% support for onshore processing; since presumably a large part of the rest are never going to vote Labor anyway, it makes obvious sense for the government to adopt that as its policy.
If it made sense then, it makes even more sense now, for two reasons: first because the High Court has effectively closed off most other options, and secondly because the government’s manifest incompetence makes it clear that it needs to do something to signal a change of direction, a break in continuity.
So why not announce a firm abandonment for ever of the idea of offshore processing, commit to secure, temporary detention of asylum seekers in Australia — in community-based reception facilities, not in prisons — and devote enough resources to rapid processing to ensure that detention is relatively brief. In short, why not appeal to the public’s humanitarianism rather than its paranoia?
It’s not likely to happen; Labor’s powerbrokers will tell the Prime Minister that it would be political suicide. But since the evidence for that is thin at best, and Labor’s prospects are not exactly rosy if it continues on its existing track, something more than ordinary incompetence is required to explain their position.
It’s in neither side’s interests to point it out, but the truth is that Tony Abbott and the people who run today’s Labor party are coming from the same place on this and indeed on most issues. They share the same ideological background, rooted in xenophobia and devoted to a mythical “ordinary Australia” that loathes the very idea of international humanitarian obligations
Julia Gillard, wittingly or not, has become their prisoner. She, or some alternative leader, needs to break free — not just for Labor to have a chance of winning, but for it to retain some shreds of dignity in defeat.
It won’t happen because it won’t play well in the outer suburban seats that help decide governments.
Some of the fiercest, if not so loud opponents of illegal entrants trying to beat the system comes from those who emigrated into Australia and their firsdt generation children.
They jumped through all the appropriate hoops to emigrate here and usually become Australian citizens, they don’t like others seemingly getting the red carpet treatment who otherwise would never have qualified for Australian citizenship.
You may not like it, but that’s how it plays in outer suburbia, and those seats choose the Government.
But Charles, I doubt it is 53% in Lindsay.
The Right whinges about the Greens holding the government hostage even though they have 12% and 1.5 million votes but it is really a handful of spiteful bogans in outer city electorates that hold the whole country to ransom.
‘…Labor’s powerbrokers will tell the Prime Minister that it would be political suicide.’
Gillard has nothing to lose – nothing she hasn’t already lost. So, the government should, as the Nike ad exhorts, Just Do It.
I agree with Zut. you’ve got to die of something – even politically. The government seems to be dying politically of everything. On reflection, I don’t think it will happen. the PM and her cabinet have pawned their values in the hope of attracting people who would never vote for them anyway. All they achieved was to annoy everyone.
Michael, I get what you say about bogans, but if pandering to these people in order to stay in power results in ethically dubious and insincere policy delivery, I ask what is the point?
As someone essentially on the left on social issues, I feel betrayed by the continued frustration of the resounding outcome of the 2007 election and no longer see the reason for the Labor party’s continued existence. Perhaps an equally resounding defeat at the next election will allow for either the wholesale reformation of the party or the creation of a new centre left party altogether. Then they could win back from the Greens those disaffected supporters who have been unable to cop what is effectively “Abbott lite” from Gillard.
Gillard is a political dead woman walking. She has lost the trust of every section of the electorate, across the whole political spectrum and will never get it back.