Peta Credlin: Labor MPs openly defy Bill Shorten on boats

WE’VE seen this week that it isn’t just the senior Labor leaders who lack ticker on boats. At last count 16 MPs or candidates have openly defied Bill Shorten, writes Peta Credlin.

WE’VE seen this week that it isn’t just the senior Labor leaders who lack ticker on boats. At last count 16 MPs or candidates have openly defied Bill Shorten.

If they’re prepared to go rogue before an election, there’s every chance the boats will start again if Labor is put back in charge of our borders.

If Labor wins the election, the people smugglers would quickly test the resolve of the new government.

Doubtless, there’d be a barrage of human rights activists — including some government lawyers — again claiming that turnbacks are illegal. Would-be foreign minister and deputy prime minister Tanya Plibersek says turnbacks are “something we hope we’ll never have to do”.

She didn’t even attend the vote on this issue at Labor’s national conference. I have a message for Ms Plibersek — you can’t absent yourself from tough decisions in government. At least Bill Shorten’s leadership rival, Anthony Albanese, turned up — and voted against turning back boats.

We must be in an election campaign because Labor is yet again saying it will be tough on border protection. Their record says otherwise.

If Labor wins the election, the people smugglers would quickly test the resolve of the new government.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

The result of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard dismantling John Howard’s border protection policies was that more than 1200 people drowned, 50,000 people arrived in more than 800 boats and over $11 billion was wasted on border protection blowouts.

It was a humanitarian catastrophe, a national security disaster and a budget calamity.

In 2007, the Coalition warned that Labor’s proposed coast guard would become a “coast guide” to lead people smuggler boats to Australia. That’s exactly what happened.

Once Labor announced the end of Howard’s “Pacific solution” in mid-2008 (surprise, surprise — the people smugglers heard the message, too), the boats restarted and Australian Navy and Customs vessels were routinely shepherding them to Christmas Island or on board to deliver them to the dock.

Labor leaders lined up to argue that turning boats around was impossible; that it was illegal; that it was impractical; that Indonesia wouldn’t allow it; and that the navy didn’t like it.

All along, the real problem was that Labor didn’t like it. Labor simply lacked the resolve for what was needed.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten arrives at a press conference after speaking at a Labor Party rally. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Tony Abbott didn’t just have a policy to stop the boats. He had the will to make it happen.

In opposition, Abbott and Scott Morrison promised to restore temporary protection visas so that boat people never got permanent residency; to reopen offshore processing centres so that boat people never made it to Australia; and to turn boats around so that boat people never got beyond Indonesia.

In government, Abbott added a vital new element to the old Howard policies: he procured life rafts that could be used to return would-be arrivals who’d scuttled their own boats.

This idea did not come from experts. It came from a prime minister and a government that simply wasn’t going to be overcome: not by the greed of people smugglers, not by the determination of would-be illegal migrants, not by the media commentators who said it couldn’t be done, not by the petulant nationalism of populist MPs in Jakarta, and certainly not by the defeatism of the former Australian government.

The same officials who sat around the National Security Committee table advising a Labor government that couldn’t stop the boats were the officials who advised a Coalition government that did.

It was a salutary illustration of the importance of leadership and a reminder that officials (however expert) take their cue from the government.

SUPER A THORN IN SIDE FOR COALITION’S POWER PUSH

THERE are two problems with the Coalition’s changes to superannuation. First, every candidate has to be able to explain them and super is notoriously complicated.

Second, the government looks like it is using our savings to solve its Budget problems. Why should people trust a government that raids their personal, private savings whenever it needs money?

We put our money into our super so we can look after ourselves. Claiming that the changes are not really retrospective, when they take into account contributions starting from 2007, makes the government look devious as well as unprincipled.

This week the Prime Minister had to qualify Julie Bishop’s remarks, which hinted at possible changes to the policy to deal with “unintended consequences”.

Behind closed doors, I’m sure Bishop’s attentiveness to party members would have prompted her to ask why these consequences had not been more thoroughly thought through.

Added to this anger among Liberal supporters, cancelling a planned walk through a Penrith shopping centre was a bad look for the Prime Minister. I warned here last week that Labor would try to paint him as out of touch and he played straight into their hands.

Yes he is “Mr Harbourside Mansion”, but he and Lucy bought their home after many years of hard work. He has an inspirational self-made background and he’s got to disable Labor’s attack by telling his story rather than let them define him.

New Zealand’s John Key, millionaire banker turned PM, dealt with his background head on by talking about his childhood in public housing and donating a good part of his PM’s salary to charity.

On the other side, there would have been some blistering conversations between Labor Party HQ and all the candidates indulging their Left-wing principles on border protection.

It has been a scrappy week for both sides but Labor’s failure on boats gives it to the government.

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Labor MPs openly defy Bill Shorten on boats