Tony Wright
September 20, 2011
Leader of the pack: Bronwyn Bishop prepares for a ride around Canberra as part of the annual Federal Members and Senators Motorcycle Ride. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
In Canberra, some laws are immutable:
The Gillard government, given the choice between a broad highway and a cul-de-sac, will invariably find itself up a blind alley; the Abbott opposition will likely close off the exit and send in a hit squad … and Bronwyn Bishop's hairstyle can withstand a thermo-nuclear strike.
We have no actual proof of the latter, of course, though we can report that Ms Bishop donned a motorcycle crash helmet yesterday, rode pillion through the streets of the national capital aboard a monstrous Kawasaki and emerged with not a hint of what is known among bikers as helmet hair.
The second annual Federal Members and Senators Motorcycle Ride - designed to prove people of all stripes ride motorbikes - proved the single harmless political event of the day in Canberra.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, having tried to be tougher than the Bandidos on border protection, looked as if they'd been subjected to a kicking by a chapter of the Hells Angels by late afternoon.
And Tony Abbott? Why, he was feigning to be a Vespa sort of guy, a friend of the inner-city Left. Having finally subjected Ms Gillard's desperate wish to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia to a fatal stomping, he presented himself as a champion of human rights.
Up to a point. He'd send would-be refugees to Nauru instead of nasty Malaysia, but he'd also reintroduce temporary protection visas and he'd endeavour to ''turn around the boats'' and send them back to Indonesia. But didn't that bit about turning around the boats undermine his own argument that Ms Gillard was wickedly misguided for wishing to send asylum seekers to a country like Malaysia because it wasn't a signatory to the Refugee Convention? Indonesia, after all, wasn't a signatory either.
Not at all, Mr Abbott blithely declared. Why, the boat people would still be at sea, so Australia's obligations to them wouldn't be triggered.
With logic like that, Ms Gillard's argument that her wish to return asylum seekers to Malaysia was simply to prevent people smugglers from putting lives at risk on the high seas sounded almost plausible. But her assurance that Malaysia would uphold all its obligations to do the right thing by the asylum seekers?
It seemed a long way from Paul Keating calling the former Malaysian prime minister ''recalcitrant''.
By the end of the day, the only absolute certainty in Australia's extremely weird Parliament was that Bronwyn Bishop's hairstyle would remain serenely flawless.
At a time like this, you need reassurance that some things will never change, whatever happens.
Tony Wright is Age national affairs editor.
