Australia: PM DELIVERS MORE FAILURE

Illustration by Eric Lobbecke. Source: The Australian

Graham Richardson - The Australian

THIS, Julia Gillard said, would be the year of delivery. The only item delivered this week was yet another failure, another botched attempt to fix the asylum-seeker problem.

The political management of this issue has been appalling. Just look at the recent history: first came the announcement during the election campaign last year that offshore processing would take place in East Timor. As usual, no homework had been done, and within 24 hours senior politicians in East Timor were saying it would not happen. Within two days it was stone dead.

Most of us were prepared to forgive a new Prime Minister thrust into an election campaign this one mistake. Unfortunately, it took months before the government was prepared to officially drop the pretence that ongoing negotiations with the East Timorese might prove fruitful.

Eventually came the announcement of the Malaysia Solution. Once again it was an announcement made to convince the voters that something was being done. Once again the homework hadn't been done.

It took 10 long weeks to finalise an agreement with Malaysia.

That agreement never looked too flash anyway. Unaccompanied minors would be sent to their fate: a parlous life in a country that didn't want them, that had a woeful reputation in the region for treating them poorly and that would refuse to guarantee them any rights at all. This was supposed to be the brilliant strategy to destroy the people-smugglers' business model.

Apparently no one thought about the High Court at the time. That changed when the High Court threw out the Malaysia Solution comprehensively. If you thought that might bring out a change in government thinking, you were wrong. No, the government decided to introduce legislation to get around the High Court ruling.

After an extraordinary attack on the Chief Justice, the Prime Minister ordered this legislation prepared when she must have known that she would need the support of the opposition to get it through the parliament. This was just plain dumb.

When Morris Iemma couldn't get legislation to privatise electricity through the NSW parliament, he wrote to then opposition leader Barry O'Farrell and asked him to help. It is the job of opposition leaders to bring down governments, not to save them from themselves.

It was just so easy for O'Farrell to decline the request on pretty safe grounds: you are an incompetent lot who stuff up everything you touch so I won't help you stuff this one up. I'll wait until the next election, which I will inevitably win, and fix this up myself.

Forget about what is in the national interest as far as the Prime Minister and the government are concerned. This is all about Tony Abbott's political interest. He was never going to say yes. Even to think of the Prime Minister meeting him to ask for help and quickly be told where to shove it is truly sickening. Abbott, of course, will always be able to claim piously that giving incompetent governments blank cheques to deal with countries that haven't signed the relevant international treaties, was wrong in principle anyway.

And that is what really burns me up. How is it possible that Labor could get to a point where it was out-rednecking the Coalition on refugees? Where is this great party of principle? Does any true believer think Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke or Paul Keating would have signed up to this? The only win Labor has had in the past 12 months is in this mad race to the bottom on asylum-seekers.

No wonder the Greens are pinching votes from Labor. For all their faults, and God knows there are plenty of those, at least they have some principles on this issue.

Now Labor brings in legislation that nobody wants into a parliament certain to reject it. This is a form of masochism: it is almost as if the government wants to keep feeling the pain of failure. This is a drawn-out execution of a misguided policy Labor should never have endorsed.

All of this happens in the week that Newspoll comes out and says Labor's primary vote is down to 26 per cent. I can't think of a better way to push this pathetic record low even lower.

Leadership speculation is inevitable in this climate of confusion and desperation. Kevin Rudd is the name on every journalist's lips and the lips of many voters, if the polls are to be believed. The big question is will the caucus be so panicked that it would swallow its pride and bring him back.

Rudd, of course, is doing nothing to dampen down this speculation and no doubt he will be emboldened by that stupid leak to The Daily Telegraph. If the Prime Minister or her office had workshopped for a month to find the most ham-fisted, clumsy way to leak a damaging story on Rudd's largesse on his overseas trips, they couldn't have been silly enough to come up with this. This one had the PM's fingerprints all over it.

While wholesale panic has not yet set in, there is movement at the station on the leadership question. Rudd always had some supporters and the prospect of losing 40 seats has seen that support base grow from about 10 to somewhere in the early 20s. None of the caucus big guns have jumped on board yet and I doubt they will.

The intractable problem of the three independents who keep Labor in power has not diminished. There is no sign yet that they are prepared to countenance a leadership change. The problem is that this latest mega-failure on refugees has extinguished all hope in the caucus that their poll numbers may recover in time for the next election.

This is a dilemma as awful as it is unprecedented. With no logical candidate, no agreement for change with the independents, there is a sense of hopelessness settling over the entire caucus. There is a view that like good little lemmings they have no choice but to follow Gillard over the cliff.

The revolution may not have started yet but the above-mentioned prospect means you cannot rule it out.