Maybe moving forward wasn’t such a clever way to indicate progress while infer that the opposition are a throwback- maybe it was just wishful thinking. Because the morning headlines are to do with boats and industrial reform. This could be election 2007, or 2004, or maybe even 2001. All you need to do, when writing the history, is replace key words. Tampa with… whatever the name of the latest skiff is. Over 90 boatpeople in 48 hours. This is what Labor spin monkeys might describe as a ‘headache’.
Labor had a vast opportunity in 2007. Remember those days of wine and excitement? Of apologies and hope springing Kevin? A vast opportunity which they blew. Here’s the thesis.
Every Government, so goes the popular thinking, gets 100 days. At least, that's what is said in the West Wing. And I don't remember what Jed Bartlett did in his 100, but the thinking goes that every Government can strike in that time, be as bold as a Government can be, because after that compromise and difficulty and turmoil and disaster and death are all they have to look to forward to.
So in those 100 days, Kevin apologised and signed Kyoto. He hosted the 20:20 thinkathon and flung some ideas around. And not much else. This is was before the GFC, and editorials were starting, toward the end of the 100, to point toward the lack of a Rudd narrative. We wondered, even then, what he stood for.
It was this timeframe where, I dutifully and sadly and humbly suggest, he could have done something huge and overdue. Redefine the terms by which we've come to understand the refugee issue. Clearly indicate the political game Howard played in 2001. Detail the cost, economic and emotional, of detaining those who had fled their homelands. Spell out the UNHCR doctrine, and why it exists. Explain that terror is not something that will arrive by leaky craft, but is likely to begin at home (hello 7/7 and several foiled attacks that we know of since).
I write this, friends and strangers, not just as a bleeding heart, but as a practicalist. Think about it. Look at the stats. Consider even, with your Derridian hat on, the foolishness of the language we glibly use. Illegal immigrants. These people await processing. And their illegality can only be proven once their refugee status has been denied (remember that 90+% of these who, after enduring sometimes years in these detention centres, were granted full access). They are within their rights to apply. And if their application is rejected, they are to return. This is a basic twisting of the language to reflect a Legal nonsense, and Labor then, under Beazley, couldn't battle the tide of backward fucktards who got scared when the Coalition said boo. And in those 100 days of Kevin, that period where the Australia of Howard was being forgotten and a country turned toward its new geek-in-charge and said 'alright! What now!', he could’ve so clearly and easily said 'Australia- you've been sold a lie. Here's how...’ And two things would've happened. One- the nation would've realised that this issue is a human one. And two- Labor would never have had to fight the asylum seeker issue in a campaign again. It would’ve neutralised a critical attack weapon against it. To again abuse a term of the writer I so clearly mimic here, prove that I lie.
But as we know, Kevin lacked the ability to explain the vision thing, and here we are. A boat arrives. 43 people seek asylum. Then another. Perhaps a future terrorist or a clan thereof, occupy that boat and perhaps waffle like that scribed above will look thoroughly stupid. Or perhaps these are hopeful and desperate people who should be listened to like the others and we, for not listening well and having the skill to define the argument in terms which reflect a better, smarter and more decent humanity are lessened by all this.
NOT THAT THE OTHER LOT ARE WINNING
Abbott however, isn’t doing so well himself. Even if a ‘leading academic’ cleared him of the accusation levelled by Craig Emerson re the Coalitions proposal to blah blah via blah would actually make that scrap of paper Abbott signed on Monday as worthless as everybody assumed it was anyway. Something about money and law and industrial relations. Same old. The detail doesn't matter, because the link between Abbott and IR reform is stuck the public brain now- Abbott and WorkChoices remain peas in the ideological pod. Will he shake the smell by late August?
Elsewhere, we get a Labor candidate linking Abbott to suicide. Yep. This is too stupid to comment on, even for me. Gillard should disendorse. At this stage, she hasn't. The idea, Julia, again fro the Jed Bartlett scholl of politicing, is that you take out the trash. Take it out! Not let it linger in the hallway, where it might repeat on you later.
Meanwhile, in Griffith...
His only words to the pack after those 20 minutes were these.
‘Looking at schools like this it’s terrific’
Then he went inside, asked some questions of year 3 students, and back outside
His statement, to the pack he’d requested? It was this.
“I’ll be speaking only about local issues here in Griffith…. As for national issues… I won’t be commenting on those.”
There was aggression in that there voice. And his minders, continued the ABC, made sure the bemused pack knew where he was off to next. What gives Kevin? Are things about to get interesting?
LATER THAT NIGHT
"I quite like the Julia Gillard accent," he said of the woman, Loretta 'Chat-a-lot-a-little' who was singing about incest.
And speaking about the event later, he says
"Just to be on the same stage as Kylie Minogue was really special."
I am not making this up.
At least the stupidity of this moment covered up Joe Hockey’s mauling in 730Reportland. Kerry took another scalp, and Hockey did more damage to whatever leadership aspirations he once had.
Original images from Fairfax (Rudd), News Ltd (Abbott), & the ABC (Hockey).
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