Federal election 2016: Opinion - Asylum-seekers issue a problem for Bill Shorten
DENNIS ATKINS: IT’S the issue that won’t go away for Bill Shorten and Labor, and every time this story gets attention, it’s bad news for the Opposition.
Analysis
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IT’S been 15 years since the full force of asylum-seekers was unleashed as a election issue, following the arrival on the scene of the MV Tampa, a Scandinavian cargo ship which picked up 438 desperate souls who were adrift on a leaky boat.
After this vessel entered Australian waters John Howard hit back hard. He declared, with his fist shaking, not one of the asylum-seekers would set foot on this country and he sent the crack military commandos, the Special Air Services, to the far north west to intercept and turn back the Tampa.
The rest is history. A high level bureaucratic team worked through a few nights and came up with the “Pacific solution” which sought to outsource our refugee responsibilities by sending asylum-seekers to Nauru and the Papua New Guinea island of Manus.
Howard rushed legislation into the Parliament and, after a slightly confused fit of anxiety, Labor supported it.
While then Labor leader Kim Beazley gave full backing some of his senators stood in the upper house and said if elected - the poll was due within three months - they would undo the Coalition’s laws.
So the “don’t listen to what they say, watch what they say they’ll do” charge was born and ever since the Coalition has been on the winning side of this question.
Ten months ago Bill Shorten threw everything at getting Labor’s national conference to back his support for the Coalition’s contentious “turn back” policy which allows Australian border force and naval vessels to tow asylum -eeker boats back towards Indonesia.
Labor also stands “shoulder to shoulder” with the government in its support of the Nauru and Manus Island solution - “no ifs no buts”.
Under pressure from the media, the Coalition and the Greens, quite a few Labor candidates are coming out as having a softer, more compassionate view on asylum-seekers with the last trio revealed in The Courier-Mail today.
It is an itch that won’t go away for Shorten and Labor and every time this story gets attention, it’s bad news for the Opposition.
He clearly wants to be done with this problem but can’t find a way. If this remains the case it will make winning on July 2 not just much harder but near impossible.
Originally published as Federal election 2016: Opinion - Asylum-seekers issue a problem for Bill Shorten
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