Daniel Flitton Senior Correspondent
July 3, 2013
The Coalition's dud turn-back-the-boats policy is irritating our closest neighbour.
Illustration: Andrew Dyson
The slogan ''Turn back the boats'' has worked a type of political alchemy. Tony Abbott has so often chanted this incantation, and its severely qualifying coda, ''when safe to do so'', that he has managed to transform lead into gold, fiction into fact. Abbott sounds tough on protecting the borders, even though the policy is a dud.
The idea of sending the navy to chase away asylum seekers on the open ocean is a nonsense, has proved never to be safe, and serves only to annoy the neighbours. Kevin Rudd is right to call the Coalition's bluff ahead of his talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this week. Australia's relationship with Indonesia is hostage to the boats issue and this will continue until politicians stop pretending the problem can be forced back on the region.
This also panders to a persistent strain in Australian opinion that sees Indonesia as the big bad. Labor fell into this trap with its cattle export ban, an overreaction born of cultural suspicions. No wonder only 33 per cent of Australians think Indonesia is a democracy, according to a Lowy Institute poll, when the country is treated as a scapegoat for our anxieties.
Rudd certainly provoked outrage last week by wondering aloud whether Abbott was ''trying to risk some sort of conflict with Indonesia'' with the turn-back plan. Perhaps Rudd was reflecting on his own failings as prime minister first time around, trying to force an Australian customs ship to land rescued asylum seekers in Indonesia. But Coalition frontbenchers gagged at what one called this ''utterly irresponsible and reckless'' remark and accused Rudd of a diplomatic gaffe by dragging Indonesia into Australian politics. Even John Howard got in on the act, thundering at the weekend: ''What the current Prime Minister of Australia has done to that relationship over the last two days is absolutely disgraceful.''
What is it they say about pots and kettles? In 2002, leading up to the invasion of Iraq, Howard happily dragged Indonesia into Australia's domestic debate about justifying pre-emptive war. Howard mused in a television interview he would be quite willing to take action against terrorists in a neighbouring country planning an attack on Australia. ''Oh yes, I think any Australian prime minister would'' - a statement made with no qualification, no soothing diplomatic niceties to couch the hypothetical, perhaps to say, ''but only after we had sought to engage local authorities or in the face of an imminent threat'', or some other blandishment covering the fact here was an Australian leader threatening a commando raid on another country.
Howard was swiftly reproached by Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, who saw such rhetoric as a dangerous escalation. He copped it again from Jakarta during the 2004 election campaign when reviving the idea. Howard's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, sought to charm this matter away. ''Of course we haven't any intention of sending troops into Indonesia without the approval of Indonesia,'' Downer pledged. Jakarta's ambassador to Canberra also revealed Downer had given a similar private assurance the first time around.
So why cause all the fuss? Howard sounded tough at home, to the audience that counts, the voters. Indonesians, meanwhile, got the impression their objections were not taken seriously.
Abbott is employing the same trick with the turn-back plan. Whenever challenged to explain how it actually will work, given the history of vessels being sabotaged as soon as a warship appears on the horizon, the Coalition claims the finer operation details will be sorted out in office on advice from navy commanders. Never mind that in a manual on leadership ethics navy chiefs celebrate a captain defying orders from the Howard government in 2001 to turn back an asylum seeker boat.
But the damage from this phantom policy really comes in relations with Indonesia, which has made its unease abundantly clear. But the Coalition dismisses Indonesian complaints by saying the plan is understood in Jakarta - despite not being well explained at home - and that it will not impose on Indonesia's sovereignty.
When Indonesia's vice-president last month became the latest in a long line of officials to criticise the idea, the Coalition blamed journalists for asking misleading questions, which actually suggests the policy is not well understood in Indonesia at all.
It also insults the Indonesians by suggesting they were unprepared for what is an obvious question about the plans of the party tipped to take government. But at home the turn-back notion has worked a treat, giving the Coalition a simple-sounding plan while Labor has floundered from one ''solution'' to another.
Abbott had his own meeting with Yudhoyono last year, quite a feat for an opposition leader. But he didn't raise turn-backs and should dump the plan before ever meeting him as prime minister. Australia needs to drop its swagger when dealing with Indonesia, or risk a massive neighbour to the north, with an economy on track to outsize our own, looking south with disdain.
Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent.
