PNG merely a political quick fix
* by: GREG SHERIDAN, FOREIGN EDITOR
* From: The Australian
* August 03, 2013 12:00AM
IN the past few days two new boats of illegal arrivals have come to Australia. You may not have noticed as the Rudd government, like the Gillard government before it, is adept at announcing these arrivals as late in the day as possible. This means the day's main news cycle, the evening television news and the morning newspapers unless it's a huge event, is gone.
One of the government's chief skills is short-term management of the news cycle and it's got to the stage where, unless there are drownings, most boat arrivals can be effectively hushed up.
Yet you have heard a lot about the two groups of illegal arrivals the government has sent to Manus Island, under Rudd's PNG solution.
One reason you haven't heard about the boat arrivals is that they contained more than twice as many people as the government sent to Manus.
The PNG Solution does not add up in terms of arithmetic and capacity.
It is unravelling. The government hopes it can keep the appearance of the PNG Solution going until election day, which is one important reason the election will be sooner rather than later.
ta daaaaa.... he got that one right.
Since Rudd announced the PNG Solution two weeks ago, just a tick under 1600 boatpeople have arrived in Australia. Immigration Minister Tony Burke talks of increasing the capacity at Manus - now 464 - to 3000, with 1000 of these in a permanent facility.
Burke won't give a timeline for this increase because, he says nonsensically, to do so would aid the people-smugglers. But a capacity of 3000 for Manus is months away at the very least.
PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says substantially fewer than 3000 people will go to PNG all up. He also says he doesn't envisage any new PNG facility beyond Manus.
Last month, 4000 boatpeople arrived in Australia. If August resembles July, as it so far shows every sign of doing, then the
PNG solution is sunk. It's likely that the bulk of arrivals will either never be transferred to PNG from Australia, or will not be transferred for years.
While they are held in detention in Australia there will be the normal test of wills with the government through riots and burnings. So far, whenever this has happened, the government's will has broken, with negligible punishments and accelerated release into the community. The government have been pathetic on this...
There is no sign the PNG Solution will work, or even that it is really meant to work as advertised in the long run. It is certainly meant to work politically for the election.
The question thus arises as to whether the problem is just too big now, and no government can possibly stop the boats, that the 50,000 who have come so far are just the beginning of many tens of thousands more, and that Australia will be forever and fundamentally changed and there's nothing we can do about it.
I think that judgment is wrong. But certainly any Australian government is going to need long-term commitment, and a multi-layered and flexible suite of policies. Above all, it's going to need determination and the effective harnessing of Australia's capabilities, across many agencies, domestically and internationally.
In six years in office, Labor has had four immigration ministers. None has had any success in slowing down the boats, which have been on a continuous acceleration path, with July the record month so far. labor has failed
What of the opposition's policies? There is absolutely no guarantee that Tony Abbott can stop the boats.
However, in this case, the opposition's policies are far more coherent and sophisticated than the government's, and have a much better chance of success.
When Abbott and immigration spokesman Scott Morrison released their Sovereign Borders policy, and when Morrison subsequently announced a commitment to increased offshore processing in Nauru, there was tremendous scoffing and chortling in much of the media,
but almost no serious analysis. typical of labor and their media mates.
One specific innovation in Sovereign Borders was to bring the 12 separate government agencies involved under one central command, to be headed by a three-star military officer, either a lieutenant-general, a vice-admiral or an air marshall. The idea, entertained in much of the media, that this would provide a constitutional problem is
nonsensical. If that is the case, how was it that Major-General Dave Chalmers headed the Northern Territory intervention, or that Major-General Mick Slater headed Queensland flood relief?
The disparate government agencies desperately
need much better co-ordination. The Australian military has a culture of getting the job done. Senior soldiers are experienced at complex, multi-agency operations, with extreme implementation difficulty, diplomatic sensitivity, human rights and safety problems, and much else.
There was even some truly contemptible scoffing at the fact that the Coalition had been advised by the retired major-general Jim Molan. This immensely distinguished and accomplished Australian commander has been portrayed by government partisans as some dithering Colonel Blimp. One journalist covered himself in ignominy by mocking Molan for having once suggested that tanks could be useful in Afghanistan.
The provincialism of the Canberra press gallery is justly epic, and this particular journalist forbore from pointing out that the US Marine Corps, the Canadians and the Danes all deployed tanks in Afghanistan and that numerous serving Australian soldiers favoured and requested tanks.
Of course, correctly obeying their civilian government, serving soldiers would not depart on the record from the government's view that tanks were useless.
It was Molan, as defence attache in Indonesia, on whose judgment John Howard relied when deciding whether to send forces to East Timor. For a year, Molan was commander of operations in Iraq, overseeing a force of 300,000, including 150,000 Americans. But what would fools like the American military, or Howard for that matter, know about military competence compared with the Olympian reaches of the Canberra press gallery?
Molan has much experience with the Indonesians.
A three-star officer in charge would also allow the Coalition to appoint people of very senior rank and capability to the specific border patrol and Australian Federal Police elements within the operation. The enhanced co-ordination, and intense focus on the job, which would come from three-star leadership,
is bound to be an improvement on the shambolic, ad hoc responses of the past six years.
Because the Coalition's policy has many different dimensions, developed by Morrison and Abbott and their colleagues over four years, the laziest way to caricature it is to pit one part against the other. If you're going to turn around the boats, why do you need offshore processing; if you have offshore processing, why do you need temporary protection visas?
In truth, if a government is to succeed in what has become
a diabolical challenge to our national sovereignty, it needs to operate across many policy fronts. The Coalition's policies involve at least four separate strands - taking the "sugar off the table" (that is, removing the prospect of permanent residency in Australia) for those who do get to Australia; using offshore processing and detention as much as possible to help prevent people getting to Australia; putting the maximum effort into a regional approach which is overwhelmingly focused on deterrence of people from outside the region; and finally, turning back boats where possible and safe.
Each of these areas is immensely complex and the Coalition's plans well thought through. Take one example. If boats are turned back into Indonesian waters and then scuttle themselves, obviously the Australian navy would then rescue them. But they would therefore be carrying out such rescues in Indonesian waters. Under normal maritime practice, such people would be returned to Indonesian ports. If Jakarta agreed to that, and it should, the deterrent effect would be colossal. 
Illegal boats are a complex challenge. Nonetheless, they can be beaten.
