Time to stop passing the parcel

JULIA Gillard has absolutely no one to blame for the failure of her government's people smuggler legislation but herself. Try as she might to shift the blame to the High Court, or to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, she is the author of this disaster.

She and her predecessor Kevin Rudd attempted to smear the Howard government's successful Pacific Solution and traduce Nauru as a viable offshore processing centre even though it had been an essential part of the suite of policies which very effectively halted the flow of illegal people smugglers' vessels into Australian waters. Together, they weakened the Howard government's border protection regime and precipitated the current and increasing flow of people smugglers' vessels. Seeking election last year, Gillard proposed the East Timor Solution. It didn't get past first base. Then she proclaimed the Malaysian Solution. It sank when it ran up against the law, which the High Court upheld. The Opposition did not weaken the border protection regime, Labor did. The Opposition did not propose the East Timor Solution or the Malaysian Solution, Labor did. Yet, miraculously, Gillard and her sycophants in the Canberra press gallery have attempted to blame Abbott for the failure of her border protection policy. Just a week ago she dispatched bureaucrats from the Immigration Department to Melbourne to brief Abbott on the amendments she proposed to introduce in an attempt to paper over the holes which the High Court had shot in her plan to send offshore arrivals, including unaccompanied children, to Malaysia. Abbott was to examine the proposed amendments over last weekend before meeting with Gillard in her Canberra office on Monday. But by then the increasingly spooked Gillard had totally rethought the proposed amendments - and surprised Abbott with a completely new set of amendments. The proposed amendments he had discussed with the departmental officials did not survive the weekend and, in Abbott's opinion, the proposed new legislation was not as good as that presented earlier. Little wonder, then, that the meeting she had called in her office did not last long. As fruitless as the talks were, though, Gillard did say on Monday that the amendments would not be debated until next month. But that timeline was dumped on Wednesday after opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison questioned Labor's intentions at a press conference. Gillard's strategists moved quickly to bring on the debate now because they believed it was better to get the whole mess out of the way before parliament rose last night for a two-week break that would have given voters time to think more deeply about the disastrous, rushed legislation. Their message was simple: Kill this issue, get it off the screen, bury it and blame Abbott for everything. The rushed debate began yesterday morning, with Abbott posing what he said was "the fundamental question". "Who does this country trust to stop the boats? Do you trust the party, the Coalition, that did stop the boats, or do you trust the party, the government, that started them up again?" Gillard's response, made during Question Time, was extraordinary. She said the Opposition would have blood on its hands if her last-ditch amendments failed to pass. In taking this approach she has opened herself to the obvious criticism that she - not the Opposition - failed to seek or receive a briefing on the deaths that have occurred on the lost and sabotaged boats that have attempted to reach Australia since Labor weakened the Howard government's border protection laws. It is not Abbott who told the people smugglers to "start their engines", as claimed by former union boss - and now Gillard government attack dog - Greg Combet. There were just four people in immigration detention when the Howard government left office. More than 12,000 people have arrived by boat since then - and more than 400 are estimated to have died. Common sense would dictate that it is not Abbott but Gillard and her government who have the bloody hands. Yet Labor is attempting to deny this reality. Abbott has asked that Labor finds a solution that meets the humanitarian guidelines of the United Nations. He is asking that the government find a clean solution, not the bloody-handed disaster that it has created through its incompetence. If Gillard wishes to apportion blame for deaths at sea, she must accept it. If she wishes to find someone to blame for the loss of border control, she should look in the mirror. But the big question being asked in the corridors by Labor MPs is not about the authorship of the government's failed border protection policy. It is about the leadership of the party. Inevitably, Gillard's increasing erraticism and her crashing popularity have sparked a new round of speculation, none of which, sensibly, canvassed the possibility that her deputy, Wayne Swan, risibly named Treasurer of the Year by Euromoney magazine, could replace her. Although some in the Labor side, notably Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese, claimed that the leadership talk was no more than a Coalition-inspired dirty trick, Labor MP Shayne Neumann's refusal to confirm or deny that he had been speaking to the obvious prime ministerial stalker, Kevin Rudd, about the leadership, fuelled speculation that Rudd was canvassing his support. Depending upon exactly who in Labor is doing the talking, Rudd is now within five or seven votes of Gillard. The support for Rudd is undoubtedly growing - although it is begrudging. Many on the Left have never stopped supporting him, and they have become more aggressive in recent days - particularly on immigration policy. A Victorian MP is Rudd's de facto campaign director and, as unpalatable as it might seem to those who initially supported Gillard as Australia's first female prime minister, there is now growing recognition that she has been an unmitigated failure. Gillard's desperate embrace of the Malaysian Solution reveals more than a government that has profoundly lost its way. It demonstrates her personal loss of moral authority.