Why ScoMo and Shorten have dropped boats from election agenda
Having personally seen bodies pulled ashore after failed people smuggling attempts, I understand how devastating poor policy can be, writes Paul Toohey. I now realise why Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten have gone quiet on this.
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Boats have disappeared from the election agenda, even though it was thought that Scott Morrison might be on a winner if some started arriving, gifting him the same kind of Tampa election that helped John Howard across the line in 2001.
Two months ago, Scott Morrison said he would re-open the Christmas Island detention centre in anticipation of a wave of vessels steaming our way from Java due to the passage of the Medevac Bill.
Nobody captured the cynicism better than The Courier-Mail’s Sean Leahy, with this cartoon:
Morrison talked about boats coming. Then he did not. Christmas Island was not reopened. The whole thing just went silent.
When it looked as though there might be a pre-election surge, I deployed to Indonesia and Malaysia to talk to asylum seekers and refugees. It was definitely the case that they were receiving offers from people smugglers advising that the time was right to start taking boats, given predictions of a Labor government.
The chatter was real. The asylum seekers were watching and waiting. Smugglers were trying to source boats in new Indonesian harbours. Intelligence officers were on high alert. They still are.
But something else had happened among the potential passenger base that influenced them more than an Australian election.
Many, stuck there for years, had burned through their money; some had already lost their money to smugglers on failed ventures, or had relatives or friends who had; and while they still expressed the wish to come to Australia, the chances were unrealistic.
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They were no longer so susceptible to ludicrous pitches from smugglers of cruises on luxury vessels to Christmas Island where they would be welcomed open arms.
Most of all, they knew their chances of getting through to Australia were almost nil; and, even if they did, spending years on a remote island in the Pacific waiting for resettlement in a country other than Australia had no appeal.
Still, they were keen on a possible change of government under Bill Shorten. They still are. They are keen on anything that gives a glimmer of hope.
It is not due to anything Shorten has said. We already know the Medevac Bill did not restart the boats, and Shorten has promised to repel the boats should they come again.
The real problem is that asylum seekers associate permissiveness with Labor, given the actions of prime minister Kevin Rudd. He restarted the boats upon his election in 2007 by closing offshore detention centres.
RELATED FROM PAUL TOOHEY: Australia not prepared for Rohingya people smugglers
We all know the stats: 50,000 came by boat between 2007 and 2013, with (depending who you listen to) 800 to 1200 dying at sea.
No one knows the true figure of deaths at sea under Labor. It’s a mystery. Any number you hear is invented. No one has collected 800 or 1200 bodies from the sea, and smugglers do not keep manifestos of their passengers.
And there is a persistent myth, that cannot seem to be undone, that it was Tony Abbott who stopped the boats.
That is false. It was Rudd who stopped the boats. On July 19, 2013, as Rudd was fighting hopelessly for re-election and trying to undo the enormity of his error, he declared: “From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.”
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It was a grotesquely cynical attempt to save himself. At that point, there was a final rush and then the boats stopped coming when they realised Rudd was for real.
This does not absolve Rudd from restarting the boats in 2007, and you must wonder how he deals with it in his most restless dawns. Those unknown numbers of the dead — which are certainly in the many hundreds — who were lost at sea due to poor policy.
Having personally seen the bodies pulled ashore, having seen a Sri Lankan mother scream while holding the lifeless drowned body of her young son in the south Java seaside town of Cidaun, Australia’s misplaced compassion coupled with people smugglers demonstrating savage indifference to their passengers created the darkest point in our modern history.
Enough of the current Labor leadership team were in positions of power — and none more so than Chris Bowen, who served as immigration minister from 2010 to 2013 — throughout those bad years to surely know their mistakes cannot be repeated.
Bill Shorten seems to get it. The issue has gone quiet because on this point he and Scott Morrison are on the same page.
Paul Toohey is a senior News Corp reporter.
Originally published as Why ScoMo and Shorten have dropped boats from election agenda
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