Greens refugee policy riles Coalition and Labor voters alike

REFUGEE policy is one of the most fraught in Australian politics. By siding with the Coalition, Labor has only itself to blame for creating an ideological vacuum the Greens are poised to fill.

WHO would have thought watermelons could be so political?

Last year melon growers voted on a levy on the gorgeous summer fruit so the AMA — that’s the Australian Melon Association, not the doctors’ mob — could fund research and development.

Then last week Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull kicked off his campaign at a Brisbane fruit market where he praised the melon and the labourers who haul them.

And then there’s the old dig at the so-called “watermelon party” — the Australian Greens — who, conservatives snigger, are really class-warring commies under a thin cloak of environmental concern. Green on the outside and red in the middle. Get it? So witty.

I wonder if the metaphor extends to the smooth, cool exterior and soft, sweet insides of this much loved fruit? Better rethink the insult, guys.

The Greens have had a knack of annoying both sides of politics on everything from climate change and renewable energy to transport and the future of coal mining.

But it’s their refugee policy — opposition to boat tow-backs and offshore processing — that really riles Coalition and Labor voters alike.

Yet so much of it is political expediency. Labor learnt at the 2001 election there are more votes in being tough on asylum seekers than in being humane. Leader Kim Beazley was twice mauled in that campaign — held weeks after 9/11 and the Tampa and SIEV IV boat incidents — first for taking a compassionate position, then for adopting the Coalition’s harsher, more popular line.

Kim Beazley and Labor learnt at the 2001 election that there are more votes in being tough on asylum seekers than in being humane. FILE PIC

But keeping up with the political Joneses means being out of step with the Browns or, in this case, the Greens, who have profited from product differentiation. By siding with the Coalition, Labor can only blame itself for creating an ideological vacuum on the left in inner urban electorates. You can’t blame the Greens for wanting to fill that space.

It also highlights the sheer hypocrisy of the major parties. Labor long courted Greens’ preferences but, with the Greens threatening them in inner Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, ALP loyalists label the Greens “Liberal lapdogs”. Similarly, after years vilifying Greens as extremists, Victorian Liberals now chase Green preferences, saying the environmental party are “not the nutters they used to be”.

But the hypocrisy goes further. The Liberal and Labor parties have long boasted they are broad churches in which a range of ideological positions not only exist but are freely expressed among members.

In a few cases that’s true. Women’s control over their own bodies and medical ethics are usually given conscience votes in parliament.

So why isn’t refugee policy granted the same luxury? Why are Coalition MPs salivating in their demands that Bill Shorten disendorse candidates who dissent from a party line wholly separate from their own organisation?

Disunity in politics is so often electoral death but there are exceptions, and refugee policy is one — a point Turnbull understands in his refusal to support his Liberal colleagues’ call for Labor scalps.

Turnbull knows there’s very little kudos in attacking Labor over disunity on this issue. For one, the Liberals are supposed to champion free speech. To pillory free expression is just more hypocrisy. For another, a number of Liberal candidates and MPs oppose their party’s asylum-seeker policy. And third, there are votes for a party that at least sounds like it has a compassionate conscience, even if it behaves otherwise.

Turnbull gets it and so should his colleagues. To what extent Labor MPs get it is not clear, but if they want to stem the flow of votes to the Greens, they will allow — perhaps praise — candidates who speak freely in and outside the tent.

A fair go for even the most unpopular views is simply what Australian voters want and expect.

Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Humanities.