Chris Kenny: Labor must avoid repeating border chaos

Picture: Johannes Leak.

COMMENT

Our country is crying out for political leadership but instead all we get is a circular debate that wouldn’t be out of place in a university seminar. Voters expect adult government, firm decisions and practical solutions yet they get a political class obsessed with talking about its own processes and internal differences.

As if we haven’t had enough of this from the Coalition — with Liberal MPs unheard of when it comes to advocating serious policies or attacking Labor taking to the airwaves to wax lyrical about who might or might not be a “real” Liberal — now we have got Labor MPs indulging in self-referential tosh about border protection.

Border protection policies just happen to be the area that has seen the greatest national policy failure in our recent history, with an ill-advised relaxation of the regime by Labor leading to incalculable human misery; 50,000 channelled through detention, at least 1200 deaths, budget costs topping $10 billion and considerable damage to the integrity of our immigration system. Yet in the lead up to this weekend’s ALP national conference Labor MPs talk about border protection laws and policies as if this is some kind of parlour game.

It is almost beyond belief that while policies such as temporary protection visas, boat turnbacks and offshore processing have been successful in restoring order, eliminating criminal people-smuggling, ending the human misery and saving lives, Labor is obsessed with how it might tinker. Many Labor voices continue to show a complete lack of understanding of an issue they have gotten wrong repeatedly for two decades.

Given the horrors we have seen, and given Labor is in the box seat to walk into power next year, the correct stance for the ALP is crystal clear: Bill Shorten must promise not to change any element of this policy and to implement it with the same determination as the Coalition. All that can reasonably be added to that stance is a promise to work even harder to resettle those refugees still on Manus Island or Nauru (although, realistically, the Coalition is pushing this difficult process as hard as they can).

We are now taking higher numbers of refugees through orderly processes and there is just no good reason to offer any policy change — except for the intrusion of politics.

Desperate to somehow parade moral vanity and appease its own Left factions, the Greens and the green Left independents of the lower house, Labor has been lured into petty politicking. It backs a weakening of offshore protection by giving a greater say to doctors in bringing refugees to Australia for medical treatment.

It is demonstrable that there is no need for this — no one is detained in any centres offshore, only half a dozen children are left on Nauru, medical care for refugees and asylum-seekers has been good and more than 490 of them have already been brought to Australia for medical treatment, so that obviously happens when it is necessary (and clearly sometimes when it is not).

Of the 490 brought to Australia, 460 remain. The refugees know that once they get to Australia — on legitimate or deliberately conjured medical grounds — they can take legal action to remain. This is why governments need to control such decisions rather than doctors alone.

Still, to listen to this confected debate is to enter a fantasyland of virtue-signalling and political posturing. Labor’s Tony Burke has publicly argued that the government wants to “deny medical treatment to people within our care” which is terrible slur, not only against the government but against this country. Burke must know this is false.

This is one of those issues where the bias of journalists generally is aligned with the Left, so Labor MPs are seldom called to account. Burke can make such outrageous claims and not be corrected or admonished. Most journalists have been as wrong on border protection as Labor, and as often, echoing their objections to the Pacific Solution, endorsing its dismantling, agreeing with push factor excuses, accepting claims the problem could not be fixed, amplifying insistence that turnbacks were impossible and then seamlessly getting into sync again as Labor has reversed most of those positions.

Now the media/political class accepts once again that Labor MPs might be the experts of border protection and that their medical evacuation policy — which is unlikely ever to help a single person but could send a dangerous signal about a weakening in our offshore protection — is worth a try. Labor does not have credibility on these issues.

Australia provides extensive medical services — certainly better than was provided to the Nauruans before offshore processing began — including evacuations. The Coalition has only moved people out of detention, by the thousands, whereas Labor only ever moved them in, by the thousands, kids and all. Labor’s advice needs to be taken with a dose of reality.

When leadership figures such as Tanya Plibersek and Anthony Albanese say they have dropped their opposition to turning boats back, only now, it underscores how this is more like campus politics than the real world. With or without their approval boat turnbacks have been crucial for the past five years in restoring order and saving lives. No ALP factional backflips were required — this all happened in the real world when our defence and border protection personnel performed the difficult tasks we demand of them.

And the question now is not whether some arcane debate including factional wheeling and dealing at the ALP conference can make a commitment on paper to do the obvious and endorse a successful policy. The question is whether Labor, in government, can show the appropriate resolve.

The test is not adopting a political position in a media game or during a party debate. The test comes when people like Plibersek and Albanese are sitting around the cabinet table as the national security committee meets to decide on tough action against a renegade smuggling boat or how to reject a group of protesters on Nauru.

This sort of political leadership is not easy. Compassion will well in any human soul but rational thought must prevail in order to deliver an enduring humanitarian resolution.

With Labor on the threshold of government, this is the one quality I most hope for from them; sufficient strength to avoid repeating the border chaos and trauma. And to the extent that politics plays a role and Labor wants to reassure voters ahead of polling day, its MPs need to stop viewing this as a game of semantics, amendments and platforms. Rather, they must convince voters they comprehend the gravity of the responsibility and that they possess the resolve to deal with it.