Joe Hildebrand: ALP’s wing of reason gets it right on releases

After days of inertia on the issue of releasing foreign detainees, the Government’s Right took the lead and made a stance for community concerns, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Last week’s immigration omnishambles has panned out to be a masterclass in what not to do for the Albanese government – so much so that this time it was actually a good thing the PM was out of the country.

In fact, Albo’s absence turned out to be critical to the crisis being resolved, but we will come back to that intriguing little titbit later.

First let’s get to the heart of the issue. As we all know, 93 foreign detainees, including some with appalling criminal backgrounds, have been released from indefinite detention by the High Court.

That decision is the fault of the court, which is obliged to uphold the letter of the law — if not, as it would seem in this case, the spirit.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil made this point in noting that the decision was unexpected and overturned 20 years of legal precedent. She was also correct in observing that the government is obliged to follow the law.

Fair enough.

But we are all obliged to follow the law. The difference between the government and the rest of us is that the government has the power to change the law.

Indeed, that is ultimately the government’s only purpose. If laws are never going to change, why have governments? If there is no need to produce new legislation, why have legislators? If the system simply exists in perpetuity, why have elections?

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles struck a deal with the Opposition to bring in new security measures in the wake of the release of foreign detainess. Picture:Morgan Sette

These fundamental questions seem to have eluded the otherwise intelligent O’Neil as she seemed to fight a scrappy defensive day-to-day war against the obvious.

As for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, one has to wonder what the point of his role is at all if not to prevent outcomes such as this.

Thus the vibe of the government’s response to a clearly ballooning debacle was the standard kneejerk and utterly wrong response of the besieged – that it wasn’t so bad, that it wasn’t their fault, that there isn’t anything they can do and that everything will be OK.

The first two defences are a form of gaslighting – telling the electorate that their concerns are imaginary and thus by implication that they are foolish to have them.

The second two simply render the defendant impotent – like the sort of thing you’d say to the person sitting next to you as a plane went down.

Again, if there is nothing the government can do, then what is the point of it?

And indeed every time a government or organisation attempts this type of defence against an obvious problem, it always ends up in disaster. Think Qantas. Think Optus.

A week ago chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was untroubled enough by the Optus outage that she was doing a photoshoot – one of the few cameras she faced on the day.

Literally in the middle of writing this, I was interrupted by a news alert that she had resigned.

Instead, governments should heed the advice of the godfather of the Labor right Graham Richardson, who says that at the first sign of an error – at least the first public one – ministers should immediately own it, apologise for it and fix it.

Thus it was telling that after days of the government swinging in the breeze on this issue, it was Acting PM Richard Marles, the senior figure of the resurgent Victorian Right, who swept in and cleaned up the mess by hurriedly doing a deal with Peter Dutton and pushing through a raft of security measures.

Even more tellingly, he pointedly brushed aside all the tangled and tokenistic semantics and legalese that had crippled the response until that point and said that it was clear the government needed to address community concerns.

Minister for Home Affairs Clare O'Neil during for Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture:Martin Ollman

Well yes, quite.

That is effectively the government’s entire job definition.

After the listing directionlessness of the Voice campaign and deer-in-headlights haplessness of the immigration fiasco, this was a sharp relief example of the Right of the Labor Party at its best.

Whereas the Left is typically obsessed by pet issues that transcend all rules and boundaries while being crippled by systemic inertia in all other areas, the Right, when it’s working as it should, lives in the real world, responds to mainstream concerns and has a default position of just getting things done.

Indeed, it was jarring to contrast the initial government response that there was nothing it could do but wait for the High Court reasons with the incandescent comments of Treasurer Jim Chalmers – another leading Right figure and prime ministerial heir apparent – published in the Good Weekend on Saturday: “Even if you are here for a relatively long time, you still don’t have any time to waste. I am petrified of that. I’m petrified of getting to the end of the day and not having made the most of it.”

Or indeed the bombshell report on the front page of the News Corp Sunday papers that Bill Shorten – once the king of the Right – was going to wholly overhaul the NDIS, one of the most vital and fraught reforms facing the country.

For all of these reasons, it was probably good for everyone that Albo was out of the country, including Albo himself.

To the nominally Left PM’s credit, he has already been acting in the tradition of Labor Right leaders before him. He has now received a masterclass in how to act like those alongside him.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: ALP’s wing of reason gets it right on releases