hughes, it's nice to see the little runt hoist on his own petard. I think as time goes by, all those snide little "clevernesses" of his that involved making political capital out of those least able to defend themselves will come back to sink the bastard..
The wrong side of the isolationist wedge
Charles Richardson writes:
Xenophobia is a dangerous political tactic. John Howard played with fire in 2001 when he used the Tampa affair to pander to isolationist sentiment in Australia: who can forget "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come"? Now the views that he fostered have come back to burn him.
Howard's message in 2001 was that Australia could disregard world opinion, the United Nations and international law. In his own mind, the current proposals to extend the "Pacific solution" are probably just more of the same. But the public perception is quite different, and this time xenophobia is working against him: he is seen to be kow-towing to Indonesian pressure. As opposition spokesman Tony Burke put it in parliament yesterday, "this Government decided to abandon Australian sovereignty. This Government decided that Indonesia will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."
Last night on The 7.30 Report Amanda Vanstone tried to put a brave face on the legislation: "This is an application of an existing policy, but instead of it only applying to those people who arrive on nearby islands that are Australian, it also applies to people who manage to touch the mainland." But pressed by Kerry O'Brien, she conceded the basic point: "Well, I think, as you say, it is indisputable we've taken into account the concerns of Indonesia."
Truth is, full-blooded isolationism isn't really an option. Of course Australia should listen to the concerns of our neighbours and of the international community in general. But the irony is that had we done so in 2001, we would now have an iron-clad response to Indonesian pressure: that our legal and moral responsibilities to refugees trump the immediate demands of the bilateral relationship. Having thrown away the moral high ground over Tampa, Howard is having a hard time trying to recover it.
Greg Sheridan in today's Australian endorses the pro-Indonesian line, but he thinks public opposition to it is just "an indictment of the Government's political management." He says that "The worst jingoistic nationalism ... has been called into life by the politics of this measure." But who made jingoistic nationalism a centrepiece of public policy in the first place?
