Worthy as it seemed, I pre-emptivly wrote 'Go Back to Where You Came From' off, via the preaching/converted trope uttered by many. Happily, I and the other naysayers were wrong- an extraordinary three hours of TV, decent and rational. Not balanced enough for some (click on that if you enjoyed the show and want to get your anger on), but good enough to light a fire under the issue, a more detailed and complicated spark that, at worst, has done a lot to inject some thought back into the issue.
It goes well with a blog post I'd been prepping earlier in the week. Which went a little something like this.
Can we go back, just a little?
It's April 2001. Prime Minister Howard is shot- After winning narrowly in 1998, pushing a GST through, and appearing hilariously unstatesmanlike at every turn, the people are looking like giving him the boot. He's turning out to be a strangely grey, unlikeable turd. The people don't feel pride when they see their leader speaking for them- they cringe, and this tax, the one that Keating used to win the unwinnable 1994 election, still freaks voters. In a Neilson poll published on April 6 2001, Labor led the government 60% - 40% on two-party. It's the biggest lead Kim Beazley's party gains, but it comes on the back of a long run of favourable two party margins. We don't really know much of what Kim is offering us as an alternative- he hasn't defined a narrative as such, though he will roll the GST back- but we like him. He's a good mix of warmth and nobility. He's jolly, but speaks well when the circumstance requires something grave and heartfelt. We're getting ready, as a nation, to put this dalliance with the throwback nerd behind us, call it a terrible mistake, and move on with the better bits of the Keating program delivered by a warmer, gentler leader.
Then, in August, the Howard government refuses safe passage for the Norwegian tanker MV Tampa, which has picked up 438 refugee seekers from Afghanistan, whose vessel had come into troubles. Tampa was on its way to the Australian coastline, as per the protocols set down by UNHCR decree. So you can imagine Tampa and Norway's surprise when the Prime Minister, who had clawed back some points and whose government were currently polling at 47% two-party, starts the 'we will decide who enters this country and the circumstances in which they come' message and leaves Tampa in limbo. Norway cries foul on human rights, Australia stays firm. And 438 people become an effective wedge.
Beazley was under pressure from the left to condemn the action, but his 20% lead from April was now a 6% lead, and he shakily attempted a compromise deal. His lack of a bold, outright condemnation brought questions of his 'ticker'. He was 'wishy-washy'. And the Australian people don't like that. Better someone be loudly wrong than quietly considerate.
Then, a month later, 9/11 happens. The next Neilson poll, taken on September 21, gives the government a 14% point lead over Labor. A 34% turnaround from just four months prior. Labor gains ground up until the election in November, but as we know, they fall short.
And so the creation of this refugee seeker malaise is now set in the national mind. Howard, in refusing entry of the Tampa, showed 'leadership and strength'. The attacks that came a month later confirmed the worst fears of the most exclusionist elements in the country, not to mention a bunch of more moderate minds who suddenly preferenced the safety of their nearest above that of distant others, especially those from the places who also bred those who crashed those planes. And didn't the government run with it?
In 2011, the more things change the more they etc. And we might blame a decade of Coalition bleating and cruelty for the refugee situation, should we be that way inclined (the bleeding heart brigade, us). But now, if we're to look for a reason as to why we're still having this conversation, this ludicrous 'debate' filled with such Orwellian black-hilarity (the queue-jumpers when there is no queue, the use of the word ‘illegal’, the whole thing about boatfolk being vastly overwhelmed in number by planefolk, so on), we should look one K. Rudd in the eye, and ask the big questions.
All the talk of the Rudd return these past few days (and Annabel Crabb, as is her custom, has written a first rate piece about that here) has reminded us of the 'bond he had/has with the Australian people'. Seems true, even now. We've moved on from the very real discomfort we were feeling at the start of 2010, as his weasel words and annoying affectations began to grate with the national ear, before he lost us with the back-down on that great moral challenge (as Hartcher pointed out quite well, Rudd's appeal was that he acted as a moralist- hence, a conviction guy). He believed in stuff. So it seemed. So when he ditched the ETS because the polls were quivering (ever so slightly at that point, barely a ripple), so went the morality, so went the conviction. And what we saw was a mealy-mouthed nerd. A worse kind of nerd than Howard post Tampa.
Which makes Rudd's failures so so much worse. because he held the ear of the nation in 2007 and 2008, and had an opportunity to do the right thing- to put some facts into the game re asylum seekers. To explain that there was no such thing as a queue. That boatpeople consisted of 2% of the intake. That 93% of those detained at Nauru were eventually found to be legit (Yes, Rudd did use this line. But he used it in isolation, as a justification to close Nauru. Not as part of a bigger truth ceremony).
Rudd could have changed the circumstances of the debate with effective, real communications. In doing so he would've shone a different torch onto the Howard legacy. He would've crushed anyone associated with the Howard take on boatpeople (Mr Abbott included). He could have pointed out just how wrong, how inhumane that party and the commentariat who supported it, were. A little communication, some resolve, and you change the terms of the discussion.
But even when his approval rating ran at 70+%, Rudd moved carefully. He was the guy who kept buying his girl flowers and kept asking her if she loved him as much as he her. And she did for a while. But everyone will get tired of such a needy doofus who seems to exist only for the approval of another. Rudd lacked backbone. And we're all the worse for it. Gillard has done no better on refugees- indeed, the discussion is back where it was in August 2001. In an excellent piece Mungo Macallum calls it bullshit on both sides. For this continuing ugly mess that demeans all of us, Rudd must take a big slice of blame.
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