Tough talk Julia, now walk the walk

ON immigration the PM is caught in a classic Labor wedge.

IF Julia Gillard's gait starts to look a little awkward over the coming weeks, put it down to her feeling the discomfort of the classic Labor wedgie.

It's hard walking the line between the inner-city white-collar Labor voters who favour soft borders because they don't have to deal with the consequences of immigration and the battlers in the outer suburban seats who favour stronger borders because they do.

When, on the weekend, the new Prime Minister called for an end to political correctness stifling an open debate about immigration, it was immediately denounced as dog whistle politics. The Gillard government was taking the "low road", said Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

What will the reaction be to Gillard's even stronger rhetoric yesterday as she set out new immigration measures at the Lowy Institute? After all, Gillard's long-term goal to pursue a regional processing centre through co-operation with East Timor and New Zealand sounds like Labor's version of John Howard's Pacific Solution.

Well, just watch the Labor wedge go to work on Gillard.

Cleverly, yesterday she spoke directly to living rooms of middle Australia, to the people who determine elections.

They will be receptive to the Prime Minister's call for a real debate about immigration, for strong borders, an orderly immigration process and "wrecking" the people smuggling business.

But then these same voters believed Kevin Rudd when, before the 2007, election, he said he would be tough about border protection. Then he changed tack, loosening up immigration policy and boats started arriving at record levels: the number of boat people rose from 161 in 2008 to 3000 in 2009 and almost 5000 by the time Rudd left office.

And middle Australia duly turned away from Labor.

Given that concerns over asylum-seekers are hurting Labor in key marginal seats, Gillard has said she will ignore the self-appointed moral guardians of the Australian conscience.

People such as Julian Burnside, who said this week that Labor should forget about the marginal seats, those that house a "redneck contingent" who "would love to send [the boats] back at gunpoint". Burnside, who loves the limelight, will enjoy his moment in the sun by being mentioned by Gillard but the special mention signalled his irrelevance in this debate.

The question is not what Gillard says. The consummate political communicator is very good at talking. The question is what she does. And when it comes to implementing stronger border protection policies, Gillard will confront Labor's familiar political wedge.

Last year when head of the Australian Workers Union Paul Howes questioned whether tougher border protection discouraged boat arrivals and suggested "we should put out the red carpet" for illegal immigrants, he summed up Gillard's problem.

Remember that Howes is a vocal and very public Gillard backer. He relished his role in installing the new PM. And while, in a predictably neat twist of irony, the union leader doesn't speak for his blue-collar members about border protection, he does echo the inner-city sophisticates who are so disconnected from the rest of Australia.

Urban elites never understood the significance of Howard's assertion in 2001 that we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. For them, assertions of national sovereignty about border control are just the ravings of Burnside's marginal seat rednecks.

Alas empty moral posturing about open borders is not compassionate policy. As Gillard said yesterday, compassionate policy means shutting down the ghastly trade that leads to tragedies on the open seas. It means recognising that softer borders bolster the risk-reward trade-off for canny people smugglers who respond to lax immigration policies in the same way any savvy businessman looks for regulatory arbitrage. Compassionate policy recognises the competing claims of the voiceless refugees waiting in camps with no access to salivating activists in the media.

More importantly, compassion means encouraging higher immigration. Accordingly, if Gillard is as smart as she sounds, she will ignore the likes of Howes and instead follow the long tradition where prime ministers dating back to Ben Chifley understood that encouraging increased immigration depended on a well-managed and controlled immigration policy. The moment voters think a government has lost control of the country's borders and immigration is being determined by industrious people smugglers, voter support for immigration dips.

Indeed, when members of the so-called progressive Left talk about compassion and red carpet open borders for boat people, they forget their own complicity in the rise of hot-headed Hansonism. The arrival of some 8000 people aboard boats in the late 1990s - not to mention the stifling political correctness that rejected an open debate about immigration - undermined support for increased numbers of immigrants. Enter Pauline Hanson.

For all the emotional hysterics directed at Howard about immigration, it was never founded on facts. The former Liberal prime minister defused Hanson with a sensible, non-discriminatory policy that allowed Australia's immigration intake to double from 70,000 in 1996 to almost 140,000 by 2007. But that increase depended on an orderly immigration process and strong border protection measures: the Pacific Solution and temporary protection visas drastically reduced the number of boats arriving on Australian shores.

Gillard is a smart political operator busily defusing Labor's hot button issues in the lead-up to the election. Solve mining tax dispute? Tick. Deal with simmering immigration concerns? It's too early to tick that box. Gillard may have delivered a polished, nuanced speech yesterday but she was just tinkering at the edges of Labor's existing policy with her announcement that Labor will lift the suspension of processing claims for Sri Lankan refugees, work on a return home policy for Afghani asylum-seekers and increase penalties for people smugglers.

Gillard's bigger policy - her Timor Solution - is a long way off. No quick fix, as she said. The question is whether Gillard, unlike Rudd, has the guts to buy into a real fight with deluded human rights activists and misnamed progressives within her own party by adopting a sensible, controlled immigration policy demanded by middle Australia, a policy that lasts longer than an election campaign.