there is only 1 solution the alp must go

Another great article from Piers Akerman.

Hard to argue against facts, logic and common sense, but plenty here will do just that.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/there_is_only_one_solution_labor_must_go/

Piers Akerman
Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 07:53pm

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott is being urged by misguided souls to help Prime Minister Julia Gillard amend the Migration Act to breathe life into the dead Malaysian Solution.


He has shown no inclination to fall for their pathetic entreaties. Nor should he. Abbott has thus far managed to wrong foot the Labor Party and the press gallery by appealing to the common sense of the electorate in much the same way former PM John Howard spoke to middle Australia.

The ALP and the gallery prefer to speak to the elites, with whom commonsense is a dirty word.

The Malaysian Solution of a five-to-one refugee swap is, by any measure, a poor deal. Sending 800 people-smuggler clients to Malaysia in return for 4000 certified refugees is a bad outcome, as any child capable of running a lemonade stand would agree.

Beyond that, Malaysia has a dysfunctional refugee policy, with some 96,000 people already stretching its wretched facilities. Returning 800 people to this pool of misery is inhumane. That some of those proposed to be returned would be children demonstrates Labor?s loss of moral stature.

The High Court which ruled out the Malaysian Solution did so because of its real concerns that the Immigration Minister would be unable to exercise the necessary level of responsibility over the deportees.

Gillard has attempted to argue that sending people to Malaysia is the same as turning back asylum smuggler boats. She said she had effected ?a virtual turnaround of boats?.

That is virtual nonsense.

There is absolutely no connection between the concept of sending people to Malaysia or returning boats stopped at Australia?s international boundary back to their last port.

Overlooking the reality that the Malaysian Solution only caters for 800 people, and that most of them have already arrived here despite the possibility of being sent to Malaysia, why should the opposition support the next phase of a failed policy?

Why should an opposition bail out a government which has sunk itself?

The Gillard government is now citing various pieces of ?expert advice? in support of its proposed amendments to the Migration Act, but surely the same experts were called upon when the Rudd/Gillard government watered down the Howard government?s successful Pacific Solution and encouraged the people smugglers back into business?

It is known that security advice recommended against weakening the Pacific Solution, but if the Gillard government now wishes to hide behind the advice of anonymous bureaucrats, she should first present the advice relied upon to lower the barriers and the advice her government received before the High Court blew her Malaysian deal out of the water.

After subjecting the opposition to months of abuse, Gillard and her ministers now want Abbott to play along with them - but that?s not how government works.

The government has two choices if it cannot get its policy through parliament - work out an acceptable compromise or resign.

Reviving Nauru as a processing centre is not the opposition?s only option.

It is talking about a suite of options to stop the lethal people-smuggler business.

We now know that approximately 440 people have lost their lives trying to reach Australia since the government watered down Howard?s policies.

The Howard government managed to send the boats back to Indonesia at a time when the-then Indonesian president was largely hostile to Australia?s interests.

Despite being one of the most high-maintenance foreign ministers in Australian history, it would be hoped that Kevin Rudd should be able to bridge the gulf between our two nations and gain the co-operation necessary to turn the boats around in a real sense, not a virtual sense.

The starting point of all debate about the Gillard government must be the recognition that it is a failure.

It has not managed to develop and implement one single policy decision.

But the overarching question about supporting the Gillard government?s plan to amend the Migration Act is fundamental.

Why would an opposition intending to keep its integrity intact support a government which is so inept?

Supporting amendments which would circumvent the High Court?s decision on the Malaysian Solution is not the way out of this predicament.

Nor is it in the long-term interest of the nation to prolong this government?s existence. The opposition?s job is not to throw the government a lifeline.

Its responsibility is to change the government.