November 25, 2023
The arrival of 12 would-be illegal immigrants in the Kimberley, off a boat from Java, could not have come at a worse time for the Albanese government.
Although the government has managed to get them to Nauru for processing, before activist lawyers could stop it, this is reportedly only the second time in nine years that illegal boat arrivals have had to be sent to Nauru.
In any event, this is not nearly as effective a deterrent as sending people back to Java in big orange lifeboats, as happened under the former government’s Operation Sovereign Borders. Any reopening of the door, even just a little, to the people smugglers, on top of Labor’s now-manifest ambivalence toward illegal migrants, could well prove politically fatal.
Misplaced compassion is not a very good basis for running a country. That’s why Labor governments usually fail and why the first place they usually fail is border protection.
Most Labor Party activists think of poor people as victims, and of poor people from poor countries as doubly victimised, first by the “oppressors” in their own country and then by the “colonisers” in ours.
This helps to explain Labor’s contortions over the past week or so in responding to the High Court decision that foreign criminals unable to return to their own countries could not be kept in detention indefinitely, even though they included murderers, rapists and pedophiles who had no right to be here.
But on this issue (as on the Voice) there’s a huge gulf between the activists who dominate Labor’s branches and the working-class people who still constitute the majority of Labor voters.
Out there in the real world, where people can’t be sure that their jobs are safe or that their bills can be paid, there’s a deep resistance to letting any murderers, rapists or pedophiles at all be released from prison — let alone foreigners who had no right to be here in the first place, who are now free and living on taxpayer welfare.
That’s why Labor’s obvious hesitations and false starts in dealing with the 111 foreign criminals so far released into the community – with the prospect of a further 200 or so soon coming to a suburb or a town near you – has created an unease towards the Albanese government that goes way beyond the normal voter disdain for governmental ineptitude.
It’s one thing for a government to struggle to bring inflation under control, for instance, but it’s quite another when it fails to keep people safe; or worse, seems to be more concerned about the rights of foreign criminals not to suffer excessive punishment than it is about the rights of Australian citizens to be safe in their own homes and streets.
After all, whose side is our government supposed to be on?
At the beginning, it was almost as if the High Court had saved the government from making an unpalatable choice between its natural inclination to free foreign criminals into the community or the public’s inclination to keep them locked up, if needs be forever, or at least until they gave up and went home.
Hence, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s initial insistence that there was nothing that could be done because the parliament can’t out-legislate the High Court.
A day later, as public disquiet grew, she reversed her position, not only introducing legislation but insisting that it was the toughest and quickest response by a government ever.
Well that big fib didn’t even last half a day, until Labor was humiliated and forced into accepting a series of opposition amendments to strengthen her weak laws and require released detainees to wear ankle bracelets so that police would always know where they were.
Only later it became obvious that behind the momentary tough talk, Labor’s instinctive softness had reasserted itself, with four sex offenders released into the WA community without ankle bracelets at all, and no reassurance that ANY of the released detainees were actually wearing the ankle bracelets that the emergency legislation had authorised.
When she finally fronted the media, the Home Affairs Minister then tried to excuse herself by claiming that it was the responsibility of her more junior colleague to assess things on a case-by-case basis, only for him to go to ground.
Finally, O’Neil had to walk back her earlier insistence the government was blindsided by the High Court decision, because the official advice had been the government would win its case — once it transpired that the opposite had actually been the case.
Last week ended with the public still in the dark about exactly how many foreign criminals would be released, the precise nature of their crimes and what precautions, if any, were being taken to ensure that the community was safe.
Put together, it’s left voters with the strong impression not only that community safety had been compromised, but that the Albanese government is both out-of-touch and not-up-to-it.
Then there was the sudden announcement that the government had given over 860 visas to Palestinians from Gaza since October 7.
The assurances that all necessary security checks had been done, obviously needed to keep out potential terrorists, seemed utterly implausible given that it’s a war zone that’s off-limits to Australian consular officials.
And, by allowing people to just apply online and no police and security checks mandatory, you can understand why intelligence experts are concerned.
Even with 18 months still to go before the next election and the electorate’s tendency to give first-term governments the benefit of the doubt, this is a very dangerous position for a PM who’s seemed shell-shocked since the loss of his Voice referendum and who’s lately seemed to be taking refuge in meetings with foreign leaders rather than taking charge of his government.
