By Paul Karp
Photo: Locals help asylum seekers who survived the boat capsizing off the coast of Indonesia. (AFP)
As the Federal Government has learned, if it chooses not to speak about asylum seekers, plenty of others will step in to fill the void, writes Paul Karp.
The deaths of 31 asylum seekers at sea are an unspeakable tragedy which should cause Australians to reject cruel policies which are evidently still incapable of deterring the perilous journeys.
The tragedy and the response to it also shows why attempts to slow the 24-hour news cycle in general - and hide the failure of asylum seeker policy in particular - are doomed to failure.
Government attempts to reduce media scrutiny on boat arrivals had already got off to a poor start. First, it shifted from a policy of total blackout on the issue to weekly briefings by Scott Morrison. The early signs were that the media would still get the information in a timely and accurate manner, thanks to journalists and citizens on Christmas Island like local councillor Gordon Thomson, who is tweeting news of boat arrivals.
The second crack in the plan was demonstrated by the tragedy of a boat sinking off Java on Friday, with 24 asylum seekers perishing at sea, a toll which may rise to 50 or more. With the Government initially refusing to comment, all the Australian public had to go off was the claim that asylum seekers had been abandoned. Survivors from the tragedy said the rescue effort took 26 hours despite them giving Australian authorities GPS coordinates and being promised help in just two hours. Despite the preference for weekly briefings, Scott Morrison was forced to give two briefings in the space of two days to deny the claims.
The wisdom of not announcing the boats is debatable, although we should be deeply suspicious of any such limitation of information in a free society. Most people saw it as a disgusting ploy to escape accountability, to con Australians into believing that an irresponsible election promise had been fulfilled, not by stopping the boats but by hiding them. Some believed that while that may have been the intention of the policy, it may yet have a silver lining if it made the Australian public less fearful of boat arrivals. It might have proved galling to reward the party which has done the most to whip up fear on the issue, but if the Coalition stopped feeding the beast, we might have found our way to a more humane policy.
But the events of the past week show that radio silence is not an option. What it shows is that if the Government says nothing, someone else will fill the vacuum. This week it was the victims of Australia's asylum seeker policy, who the Government said were in Indonesia's search and rescue zone - as if any human beings are ever outside our jurisdiction when we have the capacity to protect them.
But in the coming years on this and other issues, people will be lining up to fill the vacuum: the Labor opposition (especially when they have a new leader); disgruntled backbenchers, enigmatic Nationals or former Coalition parliamentarians; and sectional interests or lobby groups, whether they be unions, rent-seeking corporations, or disadvantaged groups.
The Government is naive to think it can change the fundamentals of the 24-hour news cycle. Just because it promises to be a government of "no surprises" that will "only make announcements when it has something to say" does nothing to change the fact that column inches will have to be filled. Tony Abbott may try and cultivate a reputation like that which Barry O'Farrell appears to enjoy as a "do-nothing" (and impliedly, therefore, do-no-harm) premier. But as social and economic problems emerge and develop, inaction and failure to communicate will be criticised just as heavily as any particular policy response.
The Howard government promised to decide "who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come". The results of that mindset are there for all to see this week. The Abbott Government goes one step further - to determine what we know about who comes to this country, and therefore the circumstances in which we can talk about it.
The Australian people and the media will not be controlled in this way, and will continue to hold the Government to account. They will be forced to break their silence eventually, as Morrison was this week.
The sooner the Government focuses on real solutions to the tragedy of deaths at sea and other public policy problems, the sooner they will have a good-news story to tell. But not this week. The Abbott Government starts with the ignominious record of being both a do-nothing and say-nothing government.
Paul Karp is a freelance journalist with interests in Australian politics and social policy. View his full profile here.
Asylum seeker problem won't quietly go away - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
