Anthony Albanese shouldn’t appeal to logic and reason when attacking the Morrison Government’s attempts to repeal the Medivac laws because it wouldn’t pass a test in a pub in Marrickville selling Albo Ale.
The Opposition leader is appealing to Tasmanian independent senator Jacqui Lambie to see through the “rhetoric of the Government” on repealing the laws that have allowed doctors to authorise the removal of asylum seekers from Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Australia for medical treatment.
Albanese combines the technique of Labor’s time lapse memory and his own masterful twisting of facts in an attempt to embarrass the government in the last week of parliament of 2019.
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In the years since the election of the Coalition in 2013 the ALP has developed a series of political one liners that are not only effective and damaging but also suspend reality and shift blame.
As the Morrison government prepares to deliver a budget surplus and start paying down the national debt — which has annual interest payments of $19bn — the ALP argues that the debt is “Liberal debt”, that the Coalition has “doubled debt” and done nothing about the debt except the raise the borrowing limit.
But, while clever, it ignores the reality that the Howard-Costello government removed national debt and created a future fund, that debt can’t even begin to be repaid until there’s a Budget surplus and debt was run up under Labor.
On Tuesday, Albanese accused the Coalition of overblown rhetoric by claiming “medivac would end border security”, “people wouldn’t get into public housing” and “people would miss out on medical treatment in hospital”. None of this happened, he said.
Governments have a responsibility to look after those in their care.
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) December 2, 2019
It’s a pretty simple proposition – but clearly the Liberals missed the memo.
Medevac is working. And no amount of fear mongering from this Government is going to change that.
But he then went on and said the “bigger issue than medivac” was “why are people still in offshore detention who’ve been there now for seven years? Why is it that the Government hasn’t both looked after the interests of those people by settling them in third countries, and looking after the interests of Australian taxpayers by doing that as well?”
Albanese ignores who put the people into offshore processing — Labor — and that steps to resettle and repatriate asylum seekers have been attacked by Labor and, most spectacularly, that more than 20 asylum seekers slated to go to the US have now been sent to Australia under the medivac laws and will not go to the US.
This latter point is the one that undermines Australia’s border security regime over time — not instantly but over time and you would think that Labor, who changed the laws and faced 50,000 illegal boat arrivals, may just be cognisant of that fact.
But anything that doesn’t provide instant gratification or an overnight solution, no matter how impossible, is fair game for Labor’s own rhetoric.
Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers was able to cut through the Angus Taylor “scandal” questions in parliament and ask: “Can the Prime Minister confirm that since coming to office the government has more than doubled Australia’s debt, meaning more than half of Australia’s debt is Liberal debt?”
Scott Morrison took the opportunity to respond to Labor’s one-liner: “Now, I know over there it is a complex sort of thing for him to understand because in the Labor Party, they haven’t had a surplus since 1989. Now, when you go into surplus, it means you’re able to reduce debt. That’s what’s happening”.
Ham, cheese, rocket and pickle toasties and a @willietheboatman #albocornale #marrickville #fridaynightin. #myfridaynightisbetterthanyours pic.twitter.com/6nwkbn3kS8
— Adam Chant (@CinemaJunky) July 26, 2019
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