A deficit of leadership

This week’s decision by the Gillard government to ditch laws that discriminate between asylum-seekers coming to Australia by sea and those who come through airports could be the first step on the government’s road to redemption – even if they took it for the wrong reasons.

Labor is in a world of pain at the moment, with polls consistently showing Tony-and-friends kicking the crap out of them by 12-15 points.

The asylum-seekers issue has been a dependable loser for Labor for more than a decade. Abbot has managed to turn the issue against Labor particularly effectively. Especially when you consider that boat arrivals under Gillard’s premiership have actually decreased since their peak in 2010.The political debate consistently ignores that Australian government policy is a marginal factor affecting boat arrival numbers; rather more influential is the global refugee context.

The Coalition’s success is rooted in Abbott’s special brand of populism. He defies the polls that show the majority of Australians saying that they want people’s refugee claims to be assessed in-country. Instead he whispers to that dark corner of the Australian psyche that harbours fears of the peril flooding over the white picket fence.Abbott tickles the little bigot in all of us, the part that hopes desperately for things to stay always the same.

Labor’s (and particularly Gillard-Labor’s) failure has been their errant desire to beat the Coalition at their own game – only to find that they aren’t actually very good at it. Meanwhile they have been haemorrhaging votes to the left and the Greens are like vampire bats in a bison stampede.

The recent policy shift – or ‘backflip’ as the bloodhound media have predictably labelled it – has been precipitated by the High Court’s ruling that the Malaysian Solution is illegal under Australian law.(Does anyone else find it eerie that we have adopted Nazi jargon to describe our methods of processing “illegal” foreigners?) Having nowhere to go and unwilling to give the Coalition the satisfaction of returning to the Howard-era Pacific Solution, Labor has suddenly, gaspingly stumbled into the rarefied air of the moral high ground.

This move will be popular with many of the same voters who have supported Abbott’s hard-line stance. Why? Because we are a schizoid nation, and from our opposite shoulder we yearn to be better than we are. This part of us craves a leader that tells us “Yes, we can”. The Gillard government has been a government scared to lead, cowed by focus groups and opinion polls. It is a sniffing elitism that disbelieves in the vast potential of the Australian people. This deficit of leadership relegates us to Abbott level.

More courageous leadership will carry the political agenda, raise debate, reignite Ben Chifley’s guttering vision and (to borrow from Abe Lincoln) appeal to the better angels of our nature.

*Words and photos at karljourneylist.wordpress.com

• news.com.au: Asylum-seekers arrive by plane, not boat

EVERY day, at least 13 asylum-seekers enter Australia through airports, representing 30 times the number of boat people that are supposedly “flooding” across our maritime borders.

A total of 4768 “plane people” – more than 96 per cent of applicants for refugee status – arrived by aircraft in 2008 on legitimate tourist, business and other visas compared with 161 who arrived by boat during the same period, the Sunday Telegraph reports.

And plane people are much less likely than boat people to be genuine refugees, with only about 40-60 per cent granted protection visas, compared with 85-90 per cent of boat people who are found to be genuine refugees.

In 2007-08, 3987 claims were received and 1930 of these were approved.

But whereas boat people are detained on Christmas Island while their claims are processed, plane people live in the community and they are allowed to work under policy changes introduced by the Rudd government.

Experts say few Australians understand that the boat people represent just a small fraction of our refugee intake – and these asylum-seekers are unfairly vilified by “expedient” politicians.

Exact plane-people figures for 2009 are not yet available, but an Immigration Department spokesman said the figure was likely to have increased at a similar rate to that of boat arrivals, which grew from 161 to 1799 since last year, in response to increased pressures within the region, including the end of civil war in Sri Lanka, which has seen many ethnic Tamils fleeing persecution.

An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph of immigration records shows that Sri Lankans represented more than 28 per cent of “plane people” who successfully applied for protection visas in 2007-08, followed by Chinese (26 per cent), Iraqis (14 per cent) and Pakistanis (7.6 per cent). Of the plane people found to be non-genuine refugees, many are Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian and Chinese.

Chinese represent 30 per cent of plane people who apply for refuge, followed by Sri Lankans (8 per cent), Malaysians, Indonesians, Iraqis and then Indians.

Australia will take 13,750 refugees through its humanitarian program in 2009-10, an increase of 250 on last year.

It is expected that Sri Lankans will represent an increased proportion of that intake, which in previous years has been dominated by Burmese, Iraqis, Afghans, Sudanese, Liberians, Congolese and Burundians.

Politicians’ “expedient obsession” with boat people is clouding the truth about Australia’s refugee flows, according to migration law expert Professor Mary Crock, of Sydney University Law School.

“It’s a great mystery why people get upset about boats — and it’s disappointing that our Prime Minister is playing to the old politics,” Professor Crock said.

“We have a small number of arrivals and the ones who arrive by boat are nearly always genuine refugees.”

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/asylum-seekers-arrive-by-plane-not-boat/story-e6frfkvr-1225790981775#ixzz1f7tiZdFQ