Imagine if you could jet off to Nauru courtesy of a major Australian corporation, unveil a policy without any accompanying explanatory documents or costings, and generate wall-to-wall headlines in the process. That’s some bang for your buck. And that’s precisely what the Coalition has achieved over the past 12 hours. For voters, it’s also a case study in worst case scenario in terms of public policy making. And if it isn’t called out, politicians will continue to play the voters for mugs. Australia woke up to stories on Tuesday morning telling them the Coalition would create a new "tent city" on Nauru, with immediate capacity of 2,000; there would be “no guaranteed resettlement” for asylum seekers processed under the new arrangements. Generally a major policy like that might get a press release, some explanatory documents, a costing, or at the very least, a straight answer on when details might be supplied. There was nothing. Reporters not in Nauru were referred to stories published in News Limited publications by reporters invited on the Morrison trip – as if stories generated by third parties were an official record, or a transcript of some kind (an odious reflection, that – journalists are not record keepers or stenographers or megaphones, correct?) After a couple of hours, an official statement turned up. It confirmed the 2,000 capacity, which Abbott later clarified would be expanded if necessary. But the statement left the reader none the wiser on specific questions of resettlement. Tony Abbott, appearing at a morning media conference, told reporters the initiative had not actually been to shadow cabinet. Shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop told Sky News there was not actually a formal agreement or treaty with Nauru (because oppositions can’t make agreements with governments) - there was an understanding in-principle to expand processing on the island which “[opposition immigration spokesman] Scott Morrison is very confident we’ll be able to achieve.” Had Nauru actually agreed to resettle asylum seekers, David Speers from Sky News not unreasonably inquired? “That’s my understanding,” Bishop said. “I understand that’s a conversation Scott’s been having with them.” The reports of course had suggested a new settled policy reality, not an ongoing conversation between an opposition and Nauru. So what we actually had was a wink and a nod about more capacity on Nauru, and senior Coalition people being very careful to walk around the specifics of when and where the forlorn graduates of tent city might actually be resettled. Cheer up folks, as Abbott informed us this morning, Nauru’s actually quite a “pleasant” island. And as he told breakfast television in an effort to explain why this particular initiative had been dropped to a couple of News Limited reporters without consultation with the region: “We don’t need to tell them that we’re doing anything different because it’s not different – it’s the same as we’ve already done.” Abbott also confirmed the Morrison trip had been “wholly privately funded.” He was too polite to say by whom. It was, apparently, Toll – a company with a commercial interest in transport and proliferating tent cities. “There’s no reason whatsoever why (the trip) shouldn’t be funded in that way,” the man who would be prime minister reasoned. Junkets are often funded this way in this country. Whether they should be funded in this way is of course another matter altogether. Of course Labor doesn’t have clean hands either. Until we get a new economic statement later this week, we still have no idea what the regional resettlement agreement with Papua New Guinea (PNG) will cost. The fine points of that agreement, including who will pay for the people to be resettled in PNG, and whether the commitment will be open ended, is still apparently a matter of negotiation. And the accounting for the policy will doubtless be a feat of accounting magic tricks. If you assume, for example, that less people will seek asylum by boat because of your punitive deterrence regime, then the costs will appear lower than they may turn out to be in practice. It’s the price voters are paying for the ridiculously over the top political auction that’s being played out in asylum policy in the shadow of an election contest. Tabloid declarations come first, and those facts? A very poor second.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 08:16:06 +0000
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