Burney’s immigration woes a mess of her own making

WHERE Burney at least tried to play for advantage, the Green’s senator Sarah Hanson-Young just displayed, yet again, her embarrassing ignorance, writes Peta Credlin.

JUST how dumb do they think we are?

With the public’s trust in politicians already at a low ebb, we had two examples this week of politicians who should know better thinking they can get away with what amounts to, at best, gross stupidity; or at worst, attempted deception.

Let’s start with Labor’s Linda Burney. She’s no naive newbie — she’s a former NSW MP and one of Bill Shorten’s frontbenchers so the idea she could give a live interview on Sky News and then issue a transcript that doctored most of what she actually said beggars belief. Because she knows better than this, you’ve got to look at why she did it; or why Shorten did it as the transcript was issued by his office.

Labor is involved in a bitter internal fight over the future of border protection policies which the Left (Burney’s faction) want to water down and the Right (Shorten’s faction) want to keep.

Linda Burney’s comments have been unsuccessfully rolled back by Labor. (Pic: supplied)

Under questioning from Sky News’ David Speers, Burney admitted that she wants to see a timeline on offshore detention and that it was being worked on internally.

This is really dumb policy because any timeline would be just waited out by people-smugglers so there goes the deterrent.

But it was the political stupidity of her falsified doctored transcript that really got my attention. Changing some 800 words is not fixing a few typos but burying the truth and only amplified the ALP’s internal fight on border protection.

Now, despite what any of them might say, we know that behind closed doors, Labor is bitterly divided.

But where Burney at least tried to play for advantage, the Green’s senator Sarah Hanson-Young just displayed, yet again, her embarrassing ignorance. Hanson-Young tried to resurrect the push to change the date of Australia Day but confused the arrival of the First Fleet with Captain Cook’s landing almost two decades earlier. If Hanson-Young was just packing the groceries at my local Coles, it might not matter. But she’s a key member of the senate that decides what the government can or can’t turn into law.

Blaming her staff, by the way, was a gutless act; I worked for seven senior politicians and all, including a PM, never let a media release go out under their name without signing it off.

Originally published as Burney’s immigration woes a mess of her own making