Federal election 2016: Labor falls for own sucker punch over migrants

It is hard to believe the Labor Party and the broader Left could be so idiotic and irresponsible as to deliberately inflame border protection as a crucial issue for the sixth election in a row.

The “outrage” at what Peter Dutton has said must be confected because he was only stating the obvious — many refugees (although by no means all) are illiterate and unskilled and require an enormous amount of support to adjust to resettlement and become self-reliant.

Clearly our capacity to take refugees is not limitless; we need to make sensible decisions based on economic and social considerations. The backlash against Dutton just serves to highlight the rashness of the Greens policy he was criticising.

The Greens say we should quadruple our intake to 50,000, at the same time we weaken our border protection. Madness.

For Labor to attack Dutton, saying his comments were “deeply offensive” seems to be a desperate attempt at distraction. The opposition doesn’t want people to focus on their own pledge to double the refugee intake or do deals with the Greens to go even higher.

Most cynically, they are probably talking up this issue to draw attention away from what would otherwise have been the story of the day, frontbencher David Feeney and his misplaced $2 million house. (This scandal has the potential to seriously undermine Labor’s class warfare and negative gearing assaults against the government).

Yet Labor by now, surely, should realise how irresponsible it is to play with the fire of the border protection debate. This should not be an issue at this election. The Coalition has done all the hard work to solve this terrible dilemma (again) and the best thing for the country, and any refugees wanting to come here, would be to see Labor and other parties offer solidarity and support for those policies.

Keep the borders secure, keep the people-smugglers out of business and keep the nation’s generous humanitarian program in place bringing refugees here in an orderly fashion.

Once the backlog of asylum-seekers and refugees has cleared from community and offshore processing, then we could talk about our capacity to increase the humanitarian intake.

But Labor can’t help themselves. The party tore itself apart at conference last year just to win support for the obvious, sensible and successful policy of turning boats back. But it still won’t support temporary protection visas and insists on criticising the government’s management of the issue.

After more than 20 of its candidates and MPs have been exposed criticising Labor’s policies the issue was already a running sore for them. It will be all but impossible for Labor to convince voters it could show resolve on border protection rather than seek to endear itself to the Greens, the press gallery and the refugee advocates by trumpeting its greater virtue, moral superiority and compassion on this issue.

And today it has fallen for its own sucker punch, appealing to these compassionistas instead of common sense. It will spark an ugly debate that the nation doesn’t need.

It will hurt Labor politically because it will remind voters of Labor’s lack of resolve on boats but also probably make many more voters aware that Labor is in favour of doubling the refugee intake.

This inability to footprint successful border protection policies remains an even greater weakness for Labor than its economic record. It is one of the reasons I thought that under Tony Abbott, the coalition was bound to re-elected. Now Malcolm Turnbull must demonstrate the same unequivocal resolve. He has already made the mistake of not fully backing Dutton immediately. He needs to be fix that within hours. For Labor to compare Turnbull to Abbott on this issue is a compliment he should embrace.

Apart from vanity, it is difficult to comprehend why Labor is so obtuse on these issues and why so many of its members can’t understand that orderly migration is a pillar of this nation’s success. And this success underpins a great deal, including our generous humanitarian programs. Politically, Labor should have been hoping border protection never got a mention in this campaign. Instead they are inflaming it in a wrongheaded manner. With less policy differentiation than there ought to be on economic issues, this could be a most telling issue come polling day.

*A couple of hours after his first press conference the Prime Minister did return to this issue, repairing his earlier vacillation. He strongly endorsed Peter Dutton and made many of the points above, about the integrity of our border protection policies underpinning our humanitarian programs.