One hundred policy failures

It was, let me remind you, Julia Gillard who said on April 23, 2003: “Another boat, another policy failure”.Just one boat arrived that year.

Now the 100th boatload of asylum seekers since last years’ federal election has arrived, swelling the Christmas Island refugee population to more than 1000, all on Gillard’s watch. By her own count and determination, she has scored a century, cracked the ton, in policy failure. According to figures from the Department of Immigration, there were 4634 asylum seekers in detention at the time of the last federal election. Last week there were 5172, plus another 1233 in community detention. Christmas Island now holds 1013 detainees, compared to 814 four months ago. The latest boat, intercepted by HMAS Pirie northwest of Christmas Island, had 93 passengers and two crew on board. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison told The Daily Telegraph’s Gemma Jones that more people were being crammed into boats, with average passenger numbers on each boat jumping to 70, up from 50 last year. He also said people smugglers were taking risks to get asylum seekers to Australia before the wet season. “More and more people getting on these boats is increasing the risk of this journey, which concerns all Australians,” he said. “As long as Labor continues to cling to policy failure in the area of border protection, we will continue to see illegal boats arrive.” Since the High Court’s August 31 decision to overturn the Malaysia Solution 15 boats have arrived carrying 982 passengers. When Immigration Department head Andrew Metcalfe, now on extended leave, told a Senate estimates hearing last month that up to 600 boat people a month could travel to Australia following the decision, his department was slammed by refugee advocates and dismissed as “turkeys” by Greens leader Bob Brown. The most recent arrival was the fifth largest this year. The story was buried in today’s newspapers and did news broadcasts. Media bias? To a point. But the public know a policy failure when they see one, just as they know a liar when they see one. Come the election, they will remember.