Scott Morrison and the Australian Border Farce
Updated
What is Scott Morrison's reward for
orchestrating the paranoia about asylum seekers that is so hurting
Australia's foreign policy? The answer: a new border security force,
writes Mungo MacCallum.
It was always likely to orchestrating the paranoia about asylum seekers that is so hurting
Australia's foreign policy? The answer: a new border security force,
writes Mungo MacCallum.
happen and now it has. Immigration commander in chief Scott Morrison and
his executive generalissimo Angus Campbell have gone rogue. It is time,
past time, to confront the obvious: Operation Sovereign Borders is out
of control and running amok.
Last week Prime Minister Tony Abbott
was forced to snub the Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
who had extended an olive branch to meet him in Bali and start repairing
the fractured relationship. The official spin was that Abbott had to
stay in Canberra to prepare the budget, but the budget date of May 14
was set in stone years ago and the key decisions had already been taken.
The
real reason, well informed and (this time at least) reliable sources
insist, was that the most recent hijinks at sea of the tight-lipped duo
made the meeting impossible; they would have been just too embarrassing
for the Indonesian president.
Apparently not only had our Navy
turned back another unseaworthy vessel whose occupants had to be recued
by their Indonesian counterparts, but in the process they had added
three more detainees to the passenger list so the boat actually arrived
back in Java with more on board than it had when it embarked. At least
that it is the version being very firmly promulgated from Jakarta, and
since Morrison will not deny it (secret on water matters, of course) it
is presumably accurate.
This marks a serious escalation almost
certainly not sanctioned by cabinet and probably not even by Abbott
himself. Unsurprisingly it was roundly condemned by the feisty
Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa. You can see his point.
Turning boats back is bad enough, but it could perhaps be tolerated if
the Australian Government did not keep bragging about it and telling the
world that they did not give a rat's arse if Jakarta objected. But
using those same would-be asylum seeker crafts to deport our own rejects
constitutes an entirely new level of contempt.
Even if Yudhoyono,
previously a good friend of Australia and now seeking reconciliation in
the twilight of his presidential term, might be prepared to forgive it
as a slice of ocker realpolitik, his rivals and compatriots will not. So
Morrison and Campbell, always beyond scrutiny and now apparently beyond
accountability, have managed to trash the relationship with our huge
and increasingly powerful neighbour, the relationship that Abbott once
called Australia's most important. (Of course on various occasions he
has also said similar things about the United States, Japan and China,
and his compulsive monarchism presumably means that he personally feels
the United Kingdom is also up there; but hey, at the very least
Indonesia is in the top five).
The duo have guaranteed that
Yudhoyono's successor, whoever he may be, will be far less sympathetic
towards Australia than the benign SBJ. Indeed, the contestants for the
next presidential election will probably vie with each other to bad
mouth the great southern bully as much as possible, and in office will
feel bound to live up to their rhetoric. And it isn't only Indonesia;
via such highly respected international organisations as the United
Nations High Commission on Refugees, Amnesty and many others the word is
getting around that the new government is plumbing new depths.
But
never fear, we have our allies: Sri Lanka is fulsomely grateful that
Australia failed to join others in sponsoring a resolution for an
investigation into possible abuses of human rights during its war
against the Tamil separatists. It was, of course, a quid pro quo for Sri
Lanka's support for the policies of Operation Sovereign Borders, a
textbook case of the way the Stop The Boats obsession is distorting our
foreign policy.
All these shenanigans have allowed Morrison to
cash in on the national paranoia he has ably orchestrated; his portfolio
is now to be expanded to take in the entire Customs Department, and to
use it as a base to set up a new paramilitary body to be called the
Australian Border Force. This will, he assures us, be under the control
of a civilian; a commissioner who will nonetheless have standing equal
to that of the Chief of the Defence Forces and who will report directly
and exclusively to the newly enhance minister.
Springing this
development on a startled audience at the Lowy Institute, Morrison gave
no guarantees that his new force would be any more transparent or
accountable than his old one, and showed that he intended to maintain
the iron curtain by not informing any of those directly affected in
advance; officers of the soon to be defunct Customs Department had to
read about their new status and new minister in the morning papers.
Morrison
clearly enjoys Abbott's confidence; after all, he has stopped the
boats, or at least turned them back, which to the voters of the western
suburbs amounts to the same thing, even if Fiona Scott still has to
suffer traffic jams on the M4. And he is definitely a minister on the
make; he has revelled in speculation that he could one day take the top
job himself. Which should make the thoughtful very nervous. Allowing
politicians whose ambition and arrogance greatly outweigh their
abilities and character to acquire their own private armies is seldom a
good idea.
To take just one obvious example: when Adolf Hitler
gave his mate Heinrich Himmler control of the SS in 1929, the
organisation was a single battalion of 290. Within a year Himmler had
raised its ranks to 3,000 and by the time Hitler gained supreme power in
1933 the SS numbered 52,000. And so it went.
Yes, I know, any
mention of Hitler means I lose the argument. Gerard Henderson has said
so and Gerard Henderson is always right, or at least Right. But that
does not alter the fact that Scott Morrison has already done great
damage to Australia's reputation and to our foreign policy. And
something warns me that we ain't seen nothing yet.
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.
First posted
No comments:
Post a Comment