Boat people issue returns to Australian shores

The issue of people smuggling and refugees coming to Australia by boat has been brewing for a while. However, the latest incident — a boat from Afghanistan was intercepted by the Australian navy but caught on fire (killing at least three people) as the asylum seekers were being taken to Chistmas Island for processing — takes us back to another political time, when the Children Overboard controversy flared up and redefined Australia’s immigration policy.

Though WA Premier Colin Barnett initially said that the Afghan asylum seekers had doused the boat in petrol, the Federal government was more circumspect, no doubt hoping to avoid political fallout.

What happens next will define how much — or how little — Australia’s political landscape has changed.

Here’s what media commentators are saying:

This isn’t the vote winner it used to be. The issue will flare from here. Already opposition spokespeople are lining up to brand the Rudd Government a soft touch for illegal arrivals, a group exclusively characterised in the public imagination as boat people bobbing off our north western coast. This is nonsense, a cynical, politically opportunist projection. That people are so maddened by misfortune and circumstance that they will take to the sea in pursuit of not much more than faint hope is a tragedy, not a political opportunity. The Howard Government used boat people as an emblematic threat, a bogey that would allow it to show itself to be a hairy-chested and resolute defender of our boarders in a time of war on terror. That moment has passed. Our understanding of international circumstances is becoming more sophisticated and increasingly conditioned by many more factors than simple, visceral fear. There is a risk for the current opposition that in taking too old-school a line on boat people they will be seen as Howardite relics. There is a risk for the Rudd Government that they will bullied into being exactly the same. — yesterday’s Crikey editorial

History on repeat but will the outcome be the same? Not only did yesterday’s explosion on the fishing vessel near Ashmore Reef kill at least three people, it ripped a hole in the narrative of the event. Ten of the first 11 questions asked of the Home Affairs Minister, Bob Debus, and the Commander of Border Protection Command, Royal Australian Navy Rear-Admiral Allan du Toit, at their 2.30pm press conference could be summarised in two words: “What happened?” All were rebuffed. With the history of similar incidents so contentious, and the politics so heated, it will take time before the facts are established, if they ever can be. But the public, while demanding truth, has little patience. — Malcolm Knox, The SMH

Looking clueless trumps egg on face. Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus looked like a rabbit caught in the spotlight yesterday as he attempted to explain to journalists the latest news on the explosion aboard an asylum seekers’ vessel off Ashmore Reef. Despite claims by West Australian Premier Colin Barnett that the asylum seekers sprayed fuel on the deck and blew up their own boat in an act of sabotage, Mr Debus had few details … the very term children overboard has become an emblem for political dishonesty. So Mr Debus opted for safety first in the release of information. Sure, he looked like a goose. But as government insiders insisted, it was better to look clueless than calculating. — Matthew Franklin, The Australian

Between a rock and a hard place. Here is the stark choice. If the policy aim is for people to come here in an orderly way after processing, then action must be taken to stop people-smuggling. If the policy aim is primarily to shelter folks who are in distress or simply want to come here, then people-smuggling will flourish, and with it disasters and tragedies of the kind we have just witnessed. The politics of this are full of danger for both sides, and could run out of control in the blink of an eye. It is difficult to believe that the Indonesians, with Australian help, could not constrain this flow very considerably if they wanted to. But that’s an outcome Canberra wants much more urgently than Jakarta does. — Greg Sheridan, The Australian

It’s different this time around. Australia’s unpoliceable ocean frontiers are again the setting for a political debate on national vulnerability. But unlike the first major debate in 2001, the penetration of our other gateways is also being highlighted. Not everyone who sets out for Australia looking for a new home does so in a boat. Most of them – more than 95 per cent – fly here in commercial jets. And there is a greater national sense of concern and compassion for boat people than there was when maritime border security was a top-of-the-list issue nearly eight years ago. — Malcolm Farr, Daily Telegraph

It was never like this under John Howard. John Howard was called cruel for his Pacific Solution. But at least no one died. AT least three boat people now dead. So how much “kinder” do Kevin Rudd’s policies seem now? John Howard was supposed to be the cruel one, said Labor. It was Howard when Prime Minister who put in the Pacific Solution, whisking illegal boat people to Nauru, rather than land them here. Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

An emotional issue. The political challenge posed by irregular boat arrivals is manifest. Boat people represent no real threat to Australia’s security. Statistics reveal asylum seekers arriving by sea are much more likely to pass security checks – and to meet the narrow legal definition of refugee – than those who arrive with visas. Yet boat people touch a raw nerve here.  — Mary Crock, The SMH