The Albanese government’s response to the immigration detention fiasco has reached high farce.
It is not only a policy disaster but a political catastrophe.
At the start of the week, it would have been hard to imagine how it could have got worse for the government. Yet it has.
What were considered theoretical consequences have become a real-world dilemma.
One wonders how long it is going to take for the Prime Minister to stand up and reassure the public the government has this situation under control.
Because from where most people sit, the optics very strongly suggest it doesn’t.
The absence of the two key ministers, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, is hard to comprehend.
Not only would it be good governance but good politics for the portfolio ministers to be fronting the media to offer public reassurances. But not a thing from either of them.
A wall of silence has descended over the key personnel, including the Prime Minister himself, since it was first revealed Monday that one of the three criminal immigration detainees released by the government following the High Court ruling had allegedly reoffended within days, having gone out and allegedly assaulted a woman.
Since then, the number of released detainees who have been rearrested or charged for new alleged offences has grown to three.
Yet not a word from the ministers responsible. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten was forced to bravely run cover for the government during a media interview on Tuesday. At least he had the good political instinct to sympathise with the victims before defending his colleagues. Which was a far cry from the pithy and dismissive statement the government released on Tuesday afternoon as a formal response to its self-made disaster.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Penny Wong was trying to convince the Senate it was all somehow Peter Dutton’s fault.
In other circumstances, there might be a case to argue that the opposition was at risk of a collective hysterical breakdown by accusing the government of putting Australians’ safety at risk.
But this is serious stuff. The alleged criminal behaviour of the third person to have been rearrested for breaching his release orders after being freed by the High Court is about as despicable as it gets. A child rapist.
The government knows it has stuffed this entire thing up from the beginning. What is astonishing is how it continues to do so with every iteration.
It seems the strategy now is to run silent on the issue until the end of the week, with Albanese hoping the preventive detention legislation, which passed the Senate on Tuesday night – without Coalition amendments to force public disclosure of released detainees – will bring a close to the issue.
This may be wishful thinking.
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