September 20, 2011

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is finding strange bedfellows in his stances on the asylum seeker issue. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

ANALYSIS

Just when you think you've seen everything, you find Tony Abbott and the Labor Left cuddled up together in opposition to Julia Gillard. This is surely a wonderful sight to behold, especially when he's also holding hands with the Greens.

Both Abbott and the Left want the government's legislation redrafted. But the government is deaf to him and some of its own.

Mind you, it did a bit of redrafting itself over the weekend. Friday night's version was tossed out by Monday.

Not, according to the PM, that the new draft was really any different from the earlier one. It says the minister has to ''have regard'' to whether the country he's dispatching people to won't send them off to be possibly persecuted and will see they're processed. But if he only has a very cursory ''regard'', he can't be taken to court.

Gillard will blame Abbott when her legislation goes down in flames and boat arrivals likely increase. But the blame game will be tricky. Not just the parliamentary Left but many of the party's rank and file have been outraged by the Malaysia solution - and some are even resigning. And it was only on Friday that the PM was wanting to empower these grassroots - up to a point.

The government looks worse by the day over this legislation. Both versions strip away asylum seekers' rights. Gillard has turned her back on her words of July 2010: ''I would rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.''

Now the government is busy pointing out the convention has all sorts of dubious signatories - including Iran, Afghanistan, and Zimbabwe.

The government now knows it has to swallow bitter medicine, but what comes next is the alarming unknown for it. Will it really face an armada?

When she became PM, Gillard named carbon pricing, asylum seekers and the mining tax as problems she'd address. She'll get the carbon scheme through thanks to the Greens' help and the mining tax as well.

On carbon, Gillard is (more or less) back where Labor was before Kevin Rudd did his spectacular retreat; on mining tax she gave away billions; on the boats, she's frustrated, humiliated and worse off than ever.

Michelle Grattan is Age political editor

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