Labor signals a green light to people-smugglers

ON border protection, Bill Shorten talks out of both sides of his face. We’ve seen this movie before, writes Miranda Devine.

ATTEMPTS by attention-seeking refugee activists to hijack Anzac Day with their lame “Lest We Forget… Manus Island” slogan fell on deaf ears last week.

But what their protest tells you is that they will never learn. These preening compassionistas are to blame for the 750 men stranded on Manus Island, just as they are to blame for the 1200 asylum seekers who drowned trying to get here, and for the 50,000 people who came here illegally by boat in the five years after Kevin Rudd dismantled John Howard’s hard-won border protection.

It was the refugee activists, Greens and human rights lawyers who successfully pressured Labor to kickstart the people smuggling business then, and they’re still at it today.

Like every leftist nostrum, it ends up hurting the very people it purports to protect. So many asylum seekers who answered the siren call of Rudd’s moral vanity, and paid people smugglers to jump the refugee queue, have now wound up dead or wasting years of their lives in limbo.

The financial cost of managing the backlog of 50,000 unlawful ­arrivals has been upwards of $10 billion, not to mention the ongoing burden to health, education and welfare services. In 2015-16 alone Centrelink payments for asylum seekers cost taxpayers $250 million.

Judging by the border protection platform to be punted up at the ALP national conference in July, history will repeat itself soon enough if a Shorten government is elected.

Labor’s draft policy first circulated last week. (Pic: Alix Sweeney)

Labor’s “consultation draft” national policy platform, circulated last week before July’s ALP National Conference in Adelaide, is the fruit of consultation with 3,000 Party members through workshops, policy submissions, and surveys.

The policies drafted by Labor’s immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann would require any Shorten government to water down border protection and use mandatory detention only as a “last resort”.

“Labor will ensure that asylum seekers who arrive by irregular means will not be punished for their mode of arrival…. Detention in an immigration detention centre is only to be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time… Labor will strive to ensure this is for no longer than 90 days”.

This is the green light for criminal people smugglers. If Labor is saying this now, you know it will be a lot worse if they win government.

Under pressure from the likes of new Batman MP Ged Kearney who wants more “humane” party policies on asylum seekers and offshore processing, Shorten has already begun to water down Labor’s policies, while telling journalists he is as tough as it gets on border protection.

New Batman MP Ged Kearney wants more “humane” party policies on asylum seekers and offshore processing. (Pic: Ian Currie)

He has confirmed Labor will abolish Temporary Protection Visas, an essential element of the suite of measures introduced by the Abbott government successfully to stop the boats. It was Rudd’s decision to abolish Howard-era TPVs in 2008 which launched the flood of illegal boat arrivals and refilled detention centres like Manus which had been empty since 2004.

Last month, Shorten also signalled a shift on offshore immigration detention: “We don’t believe that mandatory detention has to be the necessary result of stopping the boats.”

And Labor intends to lift our already generous annual refugee intake from 19,000 to 27,000, with a proposal of 50,000 under consideration.

Even if Shorten manages to suppress the open borders instincts of his membership in July, the signal has been sent to people smugglers who stand ready to restart their trade.

Shorten speaks out of both sides of his mouth on most things and never so much as on border protection. But even his enhanced skills at political ventriloquism can’t hide his party’s recklessness.