Labor played a dangerous game letting Scott Morrison remind voters of his tough immigration days
Bill Shorten gifted Scott Morrison a chance to play his strong suit which saw the PM turning up the dial on the fear around emboldening people smugglers for the first time in his Prime ministership, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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Scott Morrison made his name as the hard line immigration minister who stopped the boats and put people smugglers out of business.
And as he defiantly declared yesterday that Labor was giving a green light to people smugglers with its plans for medical transfers off Nauru and Manus Island, it was as if Canberra had a serious case of back to the future.
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In a dangerous political gamble, Bill Shorten gifted Morrison a chance to play his strong suit.
When Morrison roared in Question Time, “it’s game on for people smugglers,” it was as if we’d stepped back to 2012 when he was the relentless Opposition immigration spokesman who made the Labor government’s life a misery.
He was stepping back into the comfy shoes of the playing the strong man to Labor’s weak border record.
It was only on Wednesday that one of Labor’s savviest shadow ministers remarked to me that Morrison was playing it all wrong these days as the government limps along in the polls.
Morrison should be reminding people more clearly of his role in border protection, this Labor Minister opined.
He said of course Morrison should be reminding people the he stopped the boats and ended the rancid people smuggling trade and the years which saw hundreds if not thousands drown.
“That’s what he’s known for. If I was advising him I’d be saying to turn back to your strengths, the people loved it,” the shadow minister told me.
And that’s exactly what happened yesterday.
Labor wanted to humiliate the government as it schemed with the independents and the Greens to bring on an extremely rare political loss on the floor of the parliament for the government — the first in 90 years.
The bill they chose to put up would have hastened medical transfers off Nauru and Manus Island, requiring the support of just two Australian doctors. It would not matter if doctors who had sighted the patient disagreed that a transfer was necessary.
Labor’s idea was that if the government lost the vote on the bill, the optics would be of a parliament in chaos and a prime minister close to losing confidence.
But it was a dangerous game.
Morrison found himself able to turn up the dial on the fear around emboldening people smugglers for the first time in his Prime ministership.
“They’ll hear the people smuggler who sails up to them and says, ‘Guess what, the Australians have changed the legislation, you won’t have to stay on Nauru or Manus, all you have to do is get some doctor in Australia to sign it off and it’s all good mate, it’s all good’,” the Prime Minister said.
“And then they’ll be on their way. They’ll be selling the tickets again. I know this, I lived it, I understand the intelligence that sits behind it.”
When Morrison took to the podium for a morning press conference on the last day of parliament in a chaotic year, he was flexing not only his own muscle memory, but that of voters who remember the horrors of asylum seekers dying.
“People in this place can have some short memories,” Morrison said.
“It wasn’t that long ago that boats crashed on the rocks. Children were dragged up from the sea face down.
“I remember it. I stopped it.”
These are powerful memories to evoke — emotive language and imagery that has always made the border protection debate so impactful on the Australian political landscape.
These are stories that have captured emotions and imaginations in political cycle upon political cycle.
Ask John Howard. Peter Reith. Mark Latham. Kevin Rudd. Tony Abbott.
Asylum seekers arriving by boat is an issue that resonates with the Australian people.
It’s telling that Shorten said little on the issue yesterday. He chose not to face the cameras, instead defending himself in writing: “I’ve co-operated with three different Liberal PMs over the last five years to improve, amend and pass 15 sets of national security legislation,” he said.
As if we needed any proof that this is precisely what the government wants to talk about, almost every Dixer in Question Time yesterday was about border security.
It gave a series of government ministers the chance to cast minds back to the dark days when lives lost en masse as people smugglers traded in people on boats.
The SIEV X which sunk in October 2001, killing 353 people and 146 children.
The December 2011 tragedy when 160 people were killed when their boat sank off the coast of Java.
A boat shattering in cyclonic seas off Christmas Island in 2010.
These are powerful memories the Australian people will not quickly forget.
And nor will the politicians who tried to govern around them.
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