Federal election 2016: Turnbull leaves Shorten at sea over refugees

Malcolm Turnbull has captured the necessary spirit on asylum-seekers for a Coalition leader and confronted suggestions that he is “soft on boats”.

There was no lawyerly dissembling for the Prime Minister yesterday; no awkward body language nor any weasel words as he not only defended Peter ­Dutton’s unvarnished reality about the financial cost of taking refugees, but also refined and ­extended the argument.

Turnbull heartily embraced the Immigration Minister’s “brutal” and “no sugar-coated” view of ­illegal boat arrivals and the cost of caring for refugees after Bill ­Shorten tried to turn border protection into a positive for Labor.

Labor hopes to prove Turnbull inconsistent and insincere on ­social issues he once supported. But every day the main topic turns to illegal boat ­arrivals, offshore processing, ­detention centres or the cost of housing ­refugees is ­another lost day for the ALP.

Yet Labor and the Opposition Leader went out hard and early, with the Greens, hoping to get Turnbull to distance himself from Dutton’s “xenophobic” remarks about ­illiterate and innumerate refugees costing billions in care.

Shorten looked sharp in his ­attack, but Turnbull looked ­sharper and more committed in ­Dutton’s defence.

Turnbull didn’t hesitate to ­endorse Dutton’s ­remarks and facts, although his ­argument was more sophisticated, but no less critical of Labor.

There have been differences between the lawyer Turnbull and policeman Dutton before, but there were none yesterday as they acted in concert to hammer home the history of Labor failure on ­illegal boat arrivals, deaths at sea, child detention, uncontrolled borders and, finally, the budgetary cost of all of this.

After saying there was no sense in “sugar coating” the fact that there was a cost to compassionately caring for refugees, Dutton costed the Greens’ policy of 50,000 refugees a year at $7 billion. Turnbull passionately agreed refugees from war-torn zones would include those who could not read or write — even in their own language — and said “we invest an enormous amount of money into settlement services” for the refugees who come to Australia.

“We don’t begrudge the money, but it’s important to get it right,” he said.

Then Turnbull combined into a toxic cocktail for the ALP its history on border protection, pointing to the deep divisions within Labor over offshore processing, linking them to “gesture politics” with the Greens and highlighting the huge financial cost of a lack of border control or immigration.

Declaring Dutton an “outstanding Immigration Minister”, Turnbull ensured Labor’s hopes of division and any suggestion he was “soft on boats” were both dashed for another day of campaigning when the subject was all on the government’s side.

And Dutton will happily be called a xenophobe every day of the election campaign if it means the focus is on boats.