Scott Morrison banks on boats as Labor tries to shift conversation

Just like the stranded Indonesian refugee boat, left, made the Tampa crisis the headliner of the 2001 election, border security has trumped Ken Hayne’s, right, banking royal commission in 2019.

Boats trump banks.

The Opposition did its level best to shift the conversation from “our nation’s borders” back to the banks during Question Time today.

It was a total bust.

The boats are back, at least in spirit, certainly as the key election issue, which is what everyone with a brain said would happen, if this legislation passed.

And in Morrison’s defence — yes, it’s dirty work, but somebody’s got to do it — he’s not even responsible for starting the conversation.

The new independent, Kerryn Phelps, demanded action on refugees held for years on Manus and Nauru.

The bill got up in the Senate, and then passed the House.

The Morrison government tried not once, not twice but three times to stop it.

And now, slowly, it’s dawned on everyone how magnificent this is for the Coalition.

Let’s be generous and assume that nobody wants a leaky boat to appear on the horizon, crammed with women and children.

Certainly nobody wants a death at sea.

But a conversation about boats? A debate about borders?

The Coalition can’t believe its luck. This is precisely the issue on which it wants to fight an election: border security.

We stopped the boats, and we shut down the people-smugglers.

They’re providing the equivalent of the Royal Flying Doctor’s Service, direct from Manus to a hospital near you.

Morrison’s decision to re-open Christmas Island for processing is about as cynical a move as we’ve seen in federal politics this millennium.

Are we to believe that an armada exists just beyond our horizon? That the hordes are upon us? That we need an immediate, emergency response?

We don’t.

But the voting public is concerned about boat arrivals, and about deaths at sea. Also, nobody wants a repeat of the situation where 50,000 people were living behind razor wire, awaiting processing.

Again, this isn’t Morrison’s doing. He didn’t bring this argument back to parliament. He was merely looking around for something to belt the Opposition with, to try to ameliorate the damage likely to be done at the May election … and look just like the Tampa in 2001, it’s arrived, right on time.