 Political Corrections
with Mungo MacCallum
John Howard's Pacific Solution to the refugee crisis was probably never meant to have a happy ending; indeed, it was probably never meant to have an ending at all. Stitched together in the middle of the election campaign, it was very much a short term measure designed to duck shove the boat people out of the way until November 10, thus giving the prime minister a chance to be seen as the great protector of our shores and all who dwell within them.
To that point it was successful; no asylum seeking foot touched our sacred soil. New Guinea, New Zealand and especially Nauru agreed to carry the can - for a little while. More recently Christmas Island, no longer Australian soil for the purpose of the exercise, has also become chocka.
But this was never meant to be a permanent arrangement - at least not by the islands involved. New Zealand, with a minimum of fuss, has processed its lot, proclaimed them refugees within the meaning of the term, and granted them residence; these, it turns out, are the lucky ones. The rest are being processed, rather unwillingly, by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and the first results are expected very shortly.
It was always assumed to be part of the deal that the successful ones, the bona fide refugees, would then be taken by Australia. But guess what? Ruddock has now gleefully announced that this assumption was a cruel hoax on the islands, the UN and most of all on the asylum seekers. We might, grudgingly, accept a few but we want other countries to take a lot. Otherwise, says Ruddock with a perfectly straight face, our ability to respond to future international crises may be impeded.
Well, just hang on a minute. There is an international crisis right now. American bombs are still falling on Afghanistan and the Pentagon is eyeing off Iraq. People are flooding out of these places at the rate of thousands a day. Neighbouring countries are copping the vast majority; Australia, from it's exalted position as number 38 out of 71 on the list of those who accept displaced people is hardly in a position to whinge.
At present there are just 735 Afghanis in Nauru; taking the lot would hardly make a dent in Australia's seldom filled annual quota of 12,000 refugee places, let alone impede our ability (or more accurately, our lack of willingness) to help out in future.
And the alternative - to keep paying Nauru to hold them indefinitely - would be very expensive and inhumanely cruel. But it would be entirely in line with the Howard Ruddock approach, which in recent days has become quite open about cocking a snook at the civilised world.
Whatever anyone says, Howard boasts, the Pacific solution will remain in place. And the Reich will last a thousand years.
The latest 30year release of cabinet documents has brought a spate of reminiscence about Billy McMahon, universally condemned as our worst ever prime minister. Indeed, Billy was so embarrassing that even really loony conservatives like former Treasury head John Stone (recently back in the news pages ranting about the need to keep Australia free of Muslims) refused to vote for him, surely the ultimate condemnation.
But, as the popular badge during the 1972 campaign adjured, perhaps it is time to Stop Laughing At Billy. It is true that McMahon, as his colleagues were wont to point out, was spiteful, malicious, disloyal, backstabbing and seriously deluded - in short, as his sometime rival Paul Hasluck summed him up, a treacherous little bastard.
But there is no evidence that he did the country any lasting harm; his numerous gaffes made us squirm at the time, but left us relatively unscathed. And indeed McMahon's mercifully brief period in office was quite relaxed and comfortable; we all knew he wouldn't last and that the future in the form of Gough Whitlam was waiting to usher us into the modern world after 23 years under the moribund coalition.
Compare and contrast, as Whitlam himself might say, the dismal present. We have an incumbent with all McMahon's bad qualities, but none of his cheerful incompetence; a prime minister who has relentlessly dragged the country down to his own level of paranoid insularity in order to maintain his hold on power And there is no end in sight.
Howard has certainly been a more successful prime minister than McMahon. I doubt that any future historian with a sense of ethics will judge him to have been a better one.
Courtesy of the Byron Shire Echo
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