Recipe for remarkable resurgence as Tony Abbott on safer ground

PM Tony Abbott in Question Time in the House of Representatives Chamber, Parliament House in Canberra.

In the space of 18 months in office, Tony Abbott has matured a great deal as a leader and a politician. Even in national security, the area of his greatest strength, he is a better Prime Minister now than he was 12 months ago.

This is evident in the measures his government will take on removing Australian citizenship from terrorists who have dual nationality.

The recipe for the remarkable political resurgence of the Abbott government over the last few months has been to concentrate on the things that matter in people’s lives, and to run a constantly activist government.

It is worth pausing parenthetically to note how strong Abbott’s recovery has been. Those of us who thought this would require the departure of his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, have been proven wrong. She has been central to the recovery.

Everything Abbott has done in national security has been focused on concerns that Australians hold legitimately.

After Afghanistan, returning foreign fighters were a huge security danger to Australia and ­numerous serious terror attacks were thwarted involving the Australian Afghanistan alumni. People professing loyalty to Islamic State have already carried out two attacks in Australia and there are many more Australians in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State than fought for the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan.

Despite the alleged clumsiness of the initial handling of the proposal, there is now an overwhelming consensus across the Liberal Party and the Nationals, but also, critically, across the Labor Party that dual nationals who fight for Islamic State should have their citizenship stripped.

Even on process, Abbott has been somewhat unfairly maligned. The matter was initially dealt with in the National Security Committee of cabinet. Under the immensely successful John Howard, very few matters determined in NSC ever went to full cabinet for further ratification. When I interviewed Howard for a book on the US alliance, he told me he took some troop deployment decisions to full cabinet more or less as a courtesy. The decisions were taken in NSC. There is also a strong consensus that once NSC decides something, the NSC members should not re-litigate the issue in full cabinet.

This week Abbott dropped a strong hint that he is serious about taking action against Australians who do not have any other nationality but who fight for a terrorist group overseas.

In a speech on the Magna Carta anniversary, he said: “To help demonstrate that this is a national security measure (rather than a dual citizenship issue), as part of the citizenship consultation now taking place, the government will consider further measures to stop Australian foreign fighters with no other citizenship from readily returning here.

“Fighting for a terrorist group at war with Australia is a modern form of treason — and those who have left our country to fight against us may require a modern form of banishment.”

The government has not yet worked out exactly what it will do in this area but it has given the matter a great deal of thought. It is determined to do something if it can.

What it mostly has in mind is the possibility of looking at whether it would be possible to suspend some of the rights of citizenship which sole-nationality Australians fighting for a foreign terrorist group now enjoy.

The main right which could be suspended would be the right to return to Australia. A person so affected would not be rendered stateless, but would not be able to return to Australia.

However, there is a normal expectation that nations do have to accept back their nationals. This is a proposition Canberra often argues in relation to failed asylum- seekers.

The government’s thinking is not that a person who loses some citizenship rights would never be able to return under any circumstances, but that they would have to negotiate their return.

Some part of that negotiation may involve admitting fully what they were up to when they were abroad and accepting a consequential term of imprisonment.

These are undoubtedly difficult issues for a liberal state. The world has never been confronted with a global terrorist movement of the Islamic State/al-Qa’ida variety. In such negotiated returns strong intelligence information would play a part. It would be almost impossible to secure contested court convictions because it is impossible to obtain or bring witnesses from the Middle East, and for intelligence services to go on the witness stand would fatally compromise their sources.

This is a difficult area and it will require deep legal investigation. The ideal practical outcome would be that when a sole-nationality Australian asks to come home they engage in a negotiation with the government which means that if they do come home they cannot be a threat to innocent Australians.

Although Abbott is routinely denounced in the ABC-Fairfax commentariat for politicising national security, he is responding to genuine national security needs. His actions, and his rhetoric, are similar to, though in fact softer than, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s. Britain is a good comparison in these matters because it has a similar political culture and, like Australia, it has a disproportionate number of its citizens fighting for terrorism.

One difference between Britain and Australia is that the Australian Labor Party is much better on these issues than the British Labour Party. Bill Shorten has been in the wars this past couple of weeks and he has not built credible Labor economic policy. The trade union royal commission is uncovering financial relationships between companies and unions that should be much better regulated and much more limited.

However, the type of unionism Shorten represents — moderate, centrist, concerned that businesses be successful so that they can reward workers — is the best of the labour movement in this country.

More than that, the Labor Right unions, with the exception of industrial relations policy, are a tremendously beneficial influence on the party’s culture. Without the big Labor Right unions, the ALP would look like an amalgam of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and a Q&A audience on a bad night. The big Labor Right unions include Shorten’s AWU, the Transport Workers, the shop assistants, the National Union of Workers and in some states the Electrical Trades Union, as well as some others.

They are more sensible, more centrist and, especially on national security issues, much more in touch with reality than the rank-and-file ALP membership. Australian unions had bitter internal fights all through the 1940s and 50s and beyond. These were basically between the communists and the anti-communists. In Australia, the anti-communists, men like the legendary Laurie Short of the Ironworkers Union (a precursor of the modern AWU), defeated the communists in many unions. These were epic and decisive battles for Labor.

The rise of Bob Hawke in the late 70s and his ascension to parliamentary leadership in 1983 solidified these gains. Hawke, a pivotal figure in this history, brought back to the ALP unions that had split from the Labor Party in the 50s over communist influence in the party. Hawke also socialised the whole of his party into sensible national security views, especially regarding the American alliance.

Some similar struggles went on in Britain and the US, but in those countries the end of the Cold War saw all that decent trade union social democratic culture gradually evaporate. In Australia the integrity of the labour movement on those issues, its core common sense and centrism, has been much better preserved.

Today this allows Shorten’s Labor Party, notwithstanding some missteps, to provide critical bipartisan backing to key national security measures. If that strain of labour culture is ever lost, it will be a devastating blow to the Labor Party, and to Australia.