Federal election 2016: Asylum divisions derail Bill Shorten pitch

Bill Shorten’s election campaign has been derailed by internal divisions over the ALP’s tough policy on asylum-seekers.

Labor candidate for the seat of Herbert Cathy O'Toole. Picture: Evan Morgan

Bill Shorten’s election campaign has been derailed by internal divisions over the Labor Party’s tough policy on asylum-seekers, damaging the Opposition Leader’s credibility on the hot-button issue of stopping the boats.

The schism within Labor ranks was starkly exposed yesterday with Mr Shorten sharing a platform with north Queensland candidate Cathy O’Toole, who attended a protest opposing her party’s border policies only three months ago.

Although Ms O’Toole, Labor’s candidate for the seat of Herbert, offered “100 per cent” support for her leader’s policies, she struggled to deflect questions about her personal views, prompting Mr Shorten to intervene and stop further questions about the embarrassing ideological rift.

“We will not be lectured (to) by an opportunistic government who are actually sending a message to peoples-smugglers that somehow there is any division in Australian political government after July 2,” the Mr Shorten said.

While he promised to support the turning back of ­asylum-seeker boats whenever border officials deemed it appropriate, his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, said repelling boats and offshore processing might never actually be needed.

“It’s something we hope we’ll never have to do, but we have it in our policy in case it’s necessary,” Ms Plibersek told ABC radio.

The deputy Labor leader ­opposed turnbacks at last year’s “very fierce” ALP national conference. Other Labor figures to ­express concern about the policy in recent days include frontbencher Lisa Singh, senator Sue Lines, Victorian candidates Eric Kerr and Sophie Ismail, and retiring MPs Melissa Parke, Anna Burke and Jill Hall.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said Labor MPs were in “open defiance” over asylum-seeker policy.

GRAPHIC: Labor’s asylum dilemma part 1

He criticised Labor’s rhetoric of an “option” for turnbacks and offshore processing as “pretty weak”.

“The trouble for Labor is they can’t hold that position in government and Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese — all of these people would be sitting around the national security committee and they would be arguing against the prime minister of the day, Mr Shorten, and the policy would fall apart,” Mr Dutton told Sydney’s 2GB radio.

The Immigration Minister said it had been 650 days since a ­people-smuggling vessel had successfully arrived in Australia and only the Coalition had turned back boats.

“We’ve turned back 26 boats since the start of Operation ­Sovereign Borders,” he said.

Mr Shorten insisted voters could trust him to rebuff the Left faction’s demands for a softer ­policy because “unlike Mr Turnbull, I run my party”.

“Unlike Mr Turnbull, who doesn’t have a united party, we ­debated these issues out at our ­national conference,” the Opposition Leader told ABC radio.

GRAPHIC: Labor’s asylum dilemma part 2

“People of goodwill have different views about the best way to, one, defeat the people-smugglers and stop the drownings at sea and, two, make sure that we’re not putting people in a situation of semi-indefinite detention.”

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen, a former immigration minister, acknowledged his colleagues “want to do the right thing” by asylum-seekers, but his “moral compass” told him to ­ensure the refugee program was safe and orderly.

“Those of us who have served in the portfolio, who have served in the cabinet, who have spoken to survivors of the capsizing, boat sinkings, know the human cost, just as the frontline servicemen and women who pulled people out of the ocean do,” the opposition Treasury spokesman told the ­National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.

“My moral compass — our moral compass — points us very clearly to inviting more refugees to Australia in a safe and orderly process, so that we never have to go back to the situation where an immigration minister is taking the call at two o’clock in the morning when another boat is sinking. We cannot countenance that.”

Mr Albanese, who opposed turnbacks at the national conference and is fighting the Greens in his inner-west Sydney seat of Grayndler, said the ALP’s offshore processing policy was “not that different” from that of Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young, who advocates checking asylum-seekers’ claims in Indonesia and Malaysia. Labor has promised to almost double the refugee intake to 27,000 a year, increase funding to the UN Refugee Agency and establish independent oversight of welfare in offshore detention centres.

In February, Ms O’Toole protested outside the office of Ewen Jones, the Liberal MP for Herbert, holding a placard that read “Let them stay”, the slogan used by ­activists who oppose the Rudd government’s policy of banning boat arrivals from being resettled in Australia.

Asked if that jarred with her new-found “100 per cent support” for the ALP’s policies, she said: “What I was saying at that point in time is very clearly, and I’ll say it again: I support the humane treatment of people, regardless of whether they’re refugees or not; we treat people humanely.

“I’m really here today to talk about education with Bill Shorten and (opposition education spokeswoman) Kate Ellis, but what I will say is, and I’ll be really clear, I support Labor’s policy; it is the best ­option that we have.”