Back to a battle of the boats

THE lines are drawn for a bitter election year confrontation over boatpeople as the Rudd government fails to stem the boats and the Abbott-led Coalition adopts a "no tolerance" deterrence.

The political ghosts of Tampa and 2001 hover over the national contest. The rate of boat arrivals during the first three months of this year exceeds the pre-Tampa Howard era.

The Rudd government has abandoned any claim that it can stop the boats, with Immigration Minister Chris Evans declaring recently: "We need to accept that irregular migration will be with us for the foreseeable future and design our policy response with that reality in mind."

This position is seen as defeatism by Tony Abbott and his immigration spokesman Scott Morrison. It is a turning point in this debate, where Abbott sounds most like John Howard.

Questioned this week about the Liberal Party's policy, Morrison said: "Our determination to stop the boats would be equal to when we were last in government and John Howard did stop the boats." Asked how this would be achieved, Morrison said: "We are not ruling anything out." He was explicit that a revived Pacific solution was not ruled out.

Abbott and Morrison believe Kevin Rudd's policy has failed and this failure is exposed. They see a horizon of more boats, with Labor having exhausted its options and without the stomach to take tougher action.

Labor is appealing to public reason on this issue. It seeks to shift the politics away from any reversion to Tampa-style alarmism.

"The Rudd government doesn't intend to head down the path he [Howard] took," Evans told the Sydney Institute in a keynote speech on March 24. "The challenge for the Rudd government in 2010 is how to respond to the increase in irregular boat arrivals effectively but humanely.

"We must accept that irregular migration is a global challenge and must be seen, and addressed, in that context.

"And we must resist the urge to discuss and debate the challenge of irregular migration in hysterical and simplistic terms."

For the Liberals, this is the language of a beaten government resigned to the boat flow and unwilling to confront harsher remedies.

"The problem is that we do not control our own borders," Abbott said this week.

"We do not determine who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come. Mr Rudd has given up that right, the right which should be part of being a sovereign country."

This is a declaration of political war. If the boats keep coming Abbott will depict Rudd as the Prime Minister unable to defend the borders.

The bigger substantive question, however, is whether Australia, in the globalised age, can protect its borders within the limits of political tolerance. This is the ultimate issue confronting Rudd. Does he acquiesce in the present flow or does he stage a new crackdown in response to Abbott?

The Coalition policy is still under development. But Abbott and Morrison have identified four core themes: a form of temporary protection visa will be reinstated; the principle of universal offshore processing will be upheld; regional and neighbourhood co-operation will be pursued; and, in certain circumstances, boats would be turned back. (This is the same pledge made by Rudd before the 2007 poll but it works only with Indonesian consent.)

At present the Rudd government is conceding that Australia has to live with the boats and the Abbott opposition is saying it will stop the boats. The rhetorical difference is great but the policy difference is not so great. It is highly dubious whether present Coalition policy would achieve its aim of halting the boats and, to a certain extent, Abbott relies on Howard's record.

If the boats continue, Australia faces another election test on refugee policy spilling into border security, humanitarian concerns and our international obligations.

This week the 100th boat arrival under Rudd was reached and passed. Morrison said on Thursday there have been 33 boats this year and four boats in the past seven days. He says the average each month for 2010 is 11 boats and 540 people, both more than during Howard's peak.

The tempo continues to mount. The 101st boat was reported to have neared Christmas Island and then dialled triple 0 in a taxi-like ritual that plays to Abbott's image of an impotent government.

Labor's policy, as Rudd said last year, was to strike a balance between tough border protection and a more humane stance. But the practical outcome is more boats.

Morrison says there have always been push factors driving refugees from places of conflict, but under Rudd "the smugglers have got a product again". Rudd's once savage attack on the people-smugglers is heard no more.

Morrison's charge is that Rudd seems to have run out of options. "Labor doesn't want to talk about it," he says. "They want to bury it."

In his Sydney Institute speech, Evans offers a reasoned analysis of the global refugee situation but his underlying theme is manifest: he will never resort to Howard's punitive techniques.

"The Rudd government is determined to respond within a framework of balanced public policy rather than opportunistically seeking to exploit community anxiety," Evans says.

His message is the challenge is not new. This is the fifth wave of boatpeople in the past 30 years. Australia needs to respond with maturity based on principle, not crude politics. That is, it is time to leave the Tampa politics behind.

Evans pleads for the influx to be seen in context: last year Australia accepted 170,000 permanent migrants, four million temporary entrants and only 2726 irregular maritime arrivals.

By its nature Australia "will always be an attractive destination". But Evans's central theme is that Howard's punitive policy didn't work.

He argues the Pacific solution, turning back a few vessels and temporary protection visas did not halt the boats and that the real explanation for Howard's success lay more in external factors, notably the fall of the Taliban and a tripartite deal involving Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan that saw 4.4 million people returned.

Afghans stopped coming because they would no longer be judged to be refugees.

Extending this logic, the post-2007 upsurge under Rudd has been driven mainly by the conflict in Sri Lanka and security deterioration in Afghanistan, not Labor's more humane stance.

Evans argues Australia's policy must tackle problems in source nations, offer support for the transit countries and co-operate with Indonesia along with keeping firm border protection at home. Yet the contradiction is apparent. Evans tries to argue that greater humanity was not traded off for less border security.

Yet this is the irresistible judgment on Labor's policy. The Rudd government, he says, is proud it dismantled Howard's edifice - the Pacific solution, temporary protection visas and punitive detention - in favour of "fairness, respect and decency".

It is true Howard's system was flawed. But the intensity of Australia's border protection does matter and pull factors do influence the number of boat arrivals.

The upshot is that Labor must wear the political consequences.

For Morrison, last year's Oceanic Viking episode was the turning point.

"This is when Rudd blinked," he says. "It was Rudd's Tampa, only in reverse. The way Rudd handled this and the special deal he offered sent a signal to the region. Half the boats under Rudd have come since this event."

Morrison argues Labor's culture links public opposition to boat arrivals with racism and this undermines its border protection resolve.

The message from Evans, however, is that Labor still retains much of Howard's system: offshore processing (at Christmas Island), the principle of mandatory detention and a cap on the overall refugee and humanitarian intake.

For Morrison, resolute border protection is justified by two imperatives. First, it is essential to keep public confidence in Australia's legal, authorised and controlled immigration intake. Frankly, it is deluded to think public opinion will not weaken on immigration if boat arrivals become a business-as-usual feature of Australia's landscape.

Second, Morrison argues that because Australia imposes a total cap on its refugee and humanitarian intake, "everyone who comes by boat literally takes the place of somebody else", which breaches the fairness principle.

Evans is deeply versed in such arguments. But he has drawn a line; he intends to resist reversion to emotionalism, fear and "simplistic domestic notions offered as solutions to complex international problems".

The coming showdown will be decisive for Australia's people movement policies.