Sick to the back teeth of Gillard's leadership

A YEAR marked by failure is drawing to a close for Prime Minister Julia Gillard. But, as the polls show, there are still some people who believe the Gillard-Green-independent minority government has been a success.

By what illogical reasoning they reach this conclusion is difficult to fathom. Any examination of the disasters visited upon the nation, aside from those caused by nature, clearly demonstrates that the greatest threat to the well-being of the nation is the continuance of the left-Green-independent alliance Gillard relies on to hold office. Just yesterday, in discussing the failure of the government's teen dental health program, which grants a $160 annual voucher for teenagers whose parents qualify for Family Tax Benefit Part A and was accessed by fewer than a third of the 1.2 million eligible teenagers last financial year, Dr Hans Zoellner, chairman of the Association for the Promotion of Oral Health, said it was "entirely predictable" it would fail. He said parents who knew they could not afford to pay for follow-up treatment detected by the check-up were "not prepared to humiliate themselves by dragging their children to the dentist and then tell them they couldn't afford the treatment". He described the scheme as a "bizarre act by a Labor government which has invented new ways to humiliate poor people". But it is not just the poor people that this government has humiliated. It is cattle farmers, it is apple orchardists, it is all those who believe in traditional marriage, it is miners, and it is those who were foolish enough to believe Gillard when she claimed she would never introduce a carbon tax. What Australians have seen over 2011 is a government that has created its own misfortunes ... and then tried to blame others for its failures. The classic example is the current impasse on illegal people-smuggling enterprises, which delivered more than 1000 people to Christmas Island this month alone. That the Howard government stopped the people-smuggling industry is incontrovertible. Only fools attempt to claim that the suite of measures employed did not work. They did. On March 19, 2003, then immigration minister Philip Ruddock was able to announce that the temporary detention centre on Christmas Island was to be mothballed following the departure of the last residents. They had departed for Afghanistan the previous week and the remaining three people were sent to Nauru. The Christmas Island move followed an earlier decision to mothball the Woomera detention centre by mid-April 2003. Today, after the inevitable failure of Gillard's stillborn East Timor Solution and her just as useless PNG proposition, Christmas Island's camps are full to overflowing and there are detention centres scattered around the nation in out-of-the-way locations where the government hopes they will not attract attention. Moreover, there are moves afoot to prevent television stations airing vision of new arrivals reaching Christmas Island's sanctuary. It is quite apparent that Gillard has no notion of refugee policy. Her only thought now is to attempt to make the asylum-seeker issue the Coalition's problem - but it is not their problem. They are not the government, it is the government's problem. Gillard's proposed Malaysian Solution is no solution at all. She says she wants Malaysia for offshore processing purposes, but her solution doesn't call for offshore processing in Malaysia - it calls for offshore dumping. Temporary protection visas must be a part of any solution but the government categorically ruled them out. What is called for is a naval operation, with the co-operation of the Indonesians. But, given the Gillard government's insulting handling of the live cattle export trade with Indonesia, any representative of the Gillard government will find it difficult to locate a sympathetic ear in Jakarta. Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer used to joke in parliament that Labor (under Kim Beazley) advocated the formation of a coast guard service to deter people smugglers but what it actually had in mind was a coast guide service. Labor has now turned the Australian navy into that coast guide service, with vessels deployed to help the people smugglers reach Christmas Island. The Indonesians will not be unhappy with Australian vessels cruising close to their islands but if Australian boats were setting off to Indonesia on illegal ventures it is a sure bet that the Indonesians would want Australia's co-operation to bring such criminal operations to an end. It will be ugly, the sailors will not enjoy being caught up in policing operations, but it has a better chance of working than anything being proposed now. As for the Malaysian Solution, the answer is simple. If Julia Gillard really wants it she only has to make it a matter of confidence for her government. The Greens and independent Andrew Wilkie are committed to supporting the Gillard government, so she will have the numbers to pass her legislation. The reality is that if she wants the Malaysian Solution she must talk to the Greens. She is the Prime Minister. They are part of her government. If she can't get them to agree on a matter of confidence, she has failed and has no right to hold office.