Delaying the 'grand bargain' an unforgiveable betrayal

THE Houston report has smashed any excuse for delay and deadlock. It will be an unforgivable betrayal of Australia's national interest if the parliament does not legislate this week.

The panel headed by former Defence Force chief Angus Houston has done an adroit job. It has outlined a "grand bargain" plus a short-term fix that gives Australia a chance to stem the boats, devise a regional processing framework and take more genuine refugees.

Intransigence should now be mercilessly punished. This report defines compromise as the required political virtue. The Houston report demands immediate concessions from Labor but long-run concessions from the Coalition.

The report is a political lifejacket for Julia Gillard that she grabbed yesterday. The Prime Minister has retreated to accept the Nauru solution with Houston's report as her justifying face-saver.

The panel, in effect, gave Tony Abbott a short-term victory on Nauru that helps to break the impasse. Yet its entire regional strategy rejects the Coalition policy of refusing offshoring processing to nations that have not endorsed the Refugee Convention.

With the panel insisting its report be treated as an integrated whole, this will become the ultimate sticking point. The risk is that Coalition dogmatism will destroy the Houston strategy.

While the Houston panel says Labor's Malaysian agreement must be renegotiated to improve human rights protections, it sees the Malaysian principles as the foundation for its grand bargain.

The heart of the Houston report is the trade-off whereby Australia offers an olive branch to the region by raising our humanitarian program to 20,000, and possibly to 27,000, while the region co-operates in offshore processing such that all boat arrivals are processed offshore.

This is its "make or break" long-run diplomatic strategy. Dismiss any delusion it thinks Nauru alone is an answer. While offering a combination of incentives and disincentives to stop the boats, the core Houston philosophy is tough: to apply a "no advantage" policy to boat arrivals in terms of settlement in Australia and family reunion benefits. This guarantees a hostile reception from the Greens and the refugee lobby, yet leaves them more isolated than ever.

"I believe this package, if implemented in full, will significantly slow the flow of boats to Australia," Houston said last night.

While unlocking the Nauru-Malaysia impasse, the Houston panel has devised complementary incentives and disincentives at a hefty cost of about $4.5bn across the forward estimates. Australia will pay to halt the boats. The alternative is worse. Immigration Department estimates are $5bn over the same period to manage 450 arrivals a month, but current arrivals are four times that figure.

Knowing she must halt the boats and operating from weakness, Gillard made the right move yesterday. She endorsed the entire Houston report in principle. This maximises Labor's changes of getting Coalition co-operation, but the party suffers the humiliation of embracing the essence of Howard's Pacific Solution.

The Houston panel unlocked the parliamentary impasse by requiring that offshore processing destinations be specified by disallowable regulations on a case-by-case basis. It is a tricky but neat formula. It decouples Labor's previous stand of tying Malaysia and Nauru together, the position the Coalition refused to accept.

The beauty of Houston's report is that it allowed Gillard to accept Nauru without the precondition that the Coalition accept Malaysia. Labor will introduce amendments today to begin offshore processing as soon as possible on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

There is no reason why the Coalition should not pass such provisions. Such consent was signalled yesterday by opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen put boat arrivals on notice yesterday that from this moment, they risked being consigned to offshore processing. He assumes parliament will act this week. Australia cannot tolerate any further delay or deadlock.