Western Australia not best for an ill-prepared Anthony Albanese

Anthony Albanese in Perth on Monday. Picture: AAP

Anthony Albanese picked a bad week to drag his cabinet to Western Australia.

Not that he was to know asylum-seeker boats would be arriving early to greet them or that BHP would blow a hole in the government’s critical minerals strategy by announce the mothballing of its nickel operations.

But perhaps he should have.

The tactical role of government is to be on a constant state of alert for events, pre-armed with clear and reassuring statements in response.

But having high-fived itself over the tax cuts two weeks ago, it appears Albanese’s cabinet ­believed nothing could go wrong.

Now Labor now finds the politics swinging back against the government on multiple fronts.

And once again, on the surface at least, it appears ill-prepared to deal with it. The poor political management skills that dogged Labor in the post-referendum months threaten to return.

The Prime Minister’s response on Friday to the arrival of a ­people-smuggling boat in far north Western Australia, while his Home Affairs Minister was tweeting about Tay Tay, didn’t assist.

And the timing couldn’t have been worse, considering the week the government had endured over immigration detainees and the focus on the criminality and recidivism of those released.

The fact the PM admitted to having no knowledge of the boat making land signalled on one hand a breakdown in the chain of command between department, minister and chief or, worse, an absence of concern.

On this issue, Labor must realise it can ill-afford mistakes or the perception of any deviation from the central tenet of its pledge to maintain the Coalition’s defence of borders.

In the PM’s defence, it was but one boat – perhaps two. No need to get hysterical yet. But the politics of this issue is unpredictable.

And with the Dunkley by-election less than two weeks away, Albanese’s attempts to inject his government back into the cost-of-living debate have been temporarily derailed.

Giving the Coalition the opportunity to blend community safety over immigration detention and a lapse in border protection is political kryptonite for Albanese, while his opponent is at his most comfortable in this space.

Albanese’s primary concern should be to prevent competence and trust from becoming the defining features of the immediate and longer-term political contest.

He must be alert to the potential for the politics to escalate.

And the potential for that is acute.

The maintenance of the border protection regime has been quietly emerging as a complex and dangerous policy problem for the government for some time. Albanese claims nothing has changed under Operation Sovereign Borders. In a political sense this is contestable. The Coalition would argue that abolishing temporary protection visas changed the equation.

But in an operational sense, Albanese may be correct. And ironically, this is the problem.

OSB chief Michael Outram, in testimony in October to a Senate estimates hearing, delivered a troubling assessment of Australia’s capability to defend its ­borders.

The corollary, as with ­Defence’s surface fleet crisis, was that unless new assets were brought into operation there could be no guarantee surveillance expectations could continue to be met.

Beset by piloting problems, aerial surveillance was down 14 per cent last year. Due to the ageing fleet of maritime vessels, its surface surveillance was down 6 per cent.

Just like Defence, OSB’s maritime fleet was old, ailing and short of crew, and vessels were delayed from deployment because of maintenance.

Assurances from the navy that it could mitigate must be met with scepticism, considering its ­admission it has recruitment and retention problems of its own.

“Australian Border Force, ­Department of Home Affairs, Defence and other central agencies are in conversation about the capability going forward,” Outram said.

This was less than six months ago, before the first boat arrival.

“I haven’t got any immediate solutions other than to highlight that with an ageing fleet, and an aerial surveillance contract coming to the end of life in 2027, clearly we need a plan going forward, and that’s being worked on as we speak,” he said.

So, what’s the plan? Apparently, there isn’t one yet.

Outram’s admission that he had no immediate solution to the problem only served to confirm that unless the government has a budgetary solution to upgrading OSB, and soon, then there can be no guarantee Albanese’s rhetorical commitment will be matched with action.