 Political Corrections
with Margo Kingston
Labor the Losers in a Race Election
I probably am deluded here, but here's a take that could be proven dead wrong on Saturday night.
Labor will always lose a race election. If it runs to the other side, it could lose by a greater margin than if it fought it on core values - and in this case, on the practical and financial idiocy of this so-called Pacific solution. This is partly because it loses both constituencies (although the humanitarians will eventually come back through preferences, they'll take their energy out of Labor's campaign and reinforce the impression to the blue collar Anglos that Labor is weaker than the conservatives on boat people).
The other reason is that the policy won't and isn't working, is incredibly expensive, and creates an atmosphere internationally where we'll get no help to solve the problem, but bipartisanship means no debate at all on its merits.
That means Labor can't slam the government for its policy failure and put up better options. It can't press home the truth that the boat people will come here anyway - as refugees or because they can't go back to Afghanistan or Iraq because those countries won't take them (and since September 11, because Afghanistan is at war).
It can't force accountability for the lies, distortions and changing tunes of the government. Instead, it gives the government carte blanche to say, do, claim anything, and is forced to acquiece to each outrage.
I heard Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton speak last Friday in Sydney, where we asked him about the policy. He said things Beazley can't say - the Pacific solution is a fraud, the places there are full up and it's unlikely more places will be found, and everyone who knew anything realised it would fall apart soon after the election. Also, Labor had a much better chance of fixing the mess.
I asked Brereton whether his candidate Peter Knott's claim that the United States had backed Iraq and helped trained bin Laden, were true or false. He refused to answer, though I put it several times. Instead he kept repeating that Knott was wrong to say that US foreign policy was ``coming back to bite them''. Politically, any engagement with the factual material in Knott's comments would have inflamed the politics against Labor. The US record is a no-go zone for the mainstream parties. It's a debate the public must have without the politicians.
The Libs picked up the comments from Knott's local rag, spruiked them in the press gallery, and a question was put to Beazley. I found that interesting because the Libs chose, for domestic political advantage, to push onto the front pages a widespread view among Australians across socio-economic lines which was not simply denied without rebuttal.
The Libs even called for Knott's disendorsement. Remember Hanson doesn't want to commit troops at all, and says its America's war.
The incident tells Australians the political class will not discuss the facts, let alone the realities, in this area. Howard and Beazley just said everything Knott said was wrong - no explanation, no engagement, so drawing of distinctions or acknowledgement of US mistakes. That could prove dangerous for the goals of both major parties in maintaining public support for the mission.
Unfortunately, the great bulk of Australians haven't had the chance to think about that because of the void created by fake bipartisanship. In other words, Beazley is propping up the Howard lie.
So on my theory, the ALP loses anyway.
And what's left? A party bereft of principle which has by default allowed a seismic shift in the acceptable norms of Australian politics and discourse (eg, I wonder what would have happened if Labor had demanded to see the evidence of the child-overboard claim?) without the Australian people having had the opportunity to hear and participate in mainstream debate on the merits.
I reckon Beazley's big mistake was not in knocking back the first border protection bill, but in getting up when Howard announced that the SAS had boarded the Tampa and pledging full support.
He should have said nothing till he got the facts and read up on the law (when he'd have found the action was probably unlawful and that Howard would need retrospective legislation), or just said no, this is wrong, it's counterproductive, and drawn the battlelines before emotions became uncontrollable.
For the record, I've picked the Coalition by 10 in the office competition.
Email: mkingston@mail.fairfax.com.au
Margo's web diary - www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/webdiary/
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