Bob Brown put it best. “I get asked on this immigration question, as with others, well, why aren’t we bringing this government down? Because you get Tony Abbott.”
Politics is the art of the possible. We end up with what is do-able rather than what is desirable. In Australian politics at present, whoever owns the Bogan vote gains Federal office.
John Howard gained electoral traction with the Bogans as that demographic became less wedded to its working class, Labor origins. He reframed them as Howard’s Battlers, encouraging them to be relaxed in the mining boom promise of aspirational affluence (we’ll even help you send your kids to private school) and comfortable in their attitudes and prejudices, however ill-informed or misguided.
Howard owned the battlers in his rise to power and consolidated it through his masterful political handling of the Tampa crisis “we will determine who comes to Australia” mantra, seizing a resounding victory from the likely jaws of defeat. At this moment, Australia gave up its bipartisan humanitarian stance on refugees, reframing it as a politically divisive issue of border protection. Howard only lost the Bogan vote with his hubristic overreach on Work Choices at the hand of the master of outsider anti-politics, Kevin Rudd.
However effective at governing, clearly, the Bogans don’t like female Prime Ministers. It is also patently obvious that they don’t like ‘illegal’ asylum seekers, especially those arriving by boat. If you doubt this, the ALP polling of the Western Suburbs of Sydney showed the Gillard Government was on a hiding to nothing over boat arrivals, including, paradoxically, a sizeable proportion of immigrants descended from refugees and boat arrivals.
Tony Abbott has campaigned relentlessly to Stop the Boats and with great affect. With his latest asylum seeker policy Rudd has effectively stopped the boats. He has stolen Abbott’s thunder and neutralised the issue in the crucial Bogan demographic, leaving Abbott with nowhere to go, other than to change three letters and make it Sink the Boats.
The policy itself will no doubt be a can of worms, but ostensibly it has achieved the politically impossible. People are still free to arrive by boat to seek asylum. If successful, they will achieve settlement and citizenship in a free and democratic country, safe from persecution and tyranny. Presumably, they will be free to do as they please, including seeking employment, starting businesses, travelling to other countries (including Australia), and even seeking citizenship in any country of their choosing. And we’ve increased our official intake of refugees as part of the deal. At first blush, this solution is more humane than indefinite incarceration.
On the Left, people are outraged, and understandably so. However, the political debate is about border protection, not humanitarianism, and the party that wins that debate will likely win the coming election. The prevailing attitude in Australia towards asylum seekers has been cultivated for a decade. It seems reasonable that it will take at least as long to reverse that attitude. In the meantime, any politician who bravely stands against the tide will certainly not form government or become Prime Minister.
In the long term, the solution to the 10-40 million world-wide refugees will require a global rule-based response. I wouldn’t be holding my breath for this to happen any time soon. The Greens demographic is sympathetic to an open-borders policy. In the absence of a regulated global process, such a policy would likely result in a rapid growth in Australia’s refugee intake, perhaps increasing our population by millions in the coming decade. Regardless of whether one thinks this a good thing, it does not rest easily with the Greens’ policies concerning containing population growth within sustainable limits.
It is truly a vexed issue. Politically, for the Left, the highest priority is to prevent the ascension of an Abbott government, and the inevitable lurch to Right for Australia with respect to asylum seekers, working conditions, the environment, public services, human rights and the economy. The main game is the art of the possible.