Photo: Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop meets her Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa in New York. (ABC News)
Tony Abbott may have control over his ministers, but his control extends only to his own domain, as the Indonesians were at pains to warn him last week, writes Mungo MacCallum.
Tony Abbott promised us a grown up government.
But apparently what he meant was that he would be the only adult in it. His ministers are to be treated as children - worse than children, in fact, because while children should be seen but not heard, Abbott's team cannot even be seen in public without permission from the top.
Before they emerge they must gain a leave pass from his office, where his chief enforcer, Peta Credlin, in her new found role as Nurse Ratched, will vet their applications, check that they have washed their ears and have a clean handkerchief before allowing them out.
And even then they really shouldn't open their mouths except to paraphrase Abbott's message. Why, even his favourite choir boy, little Christopher Pyne, got it wrong this week with his talk about killing off university student unions - he was absolutely sure that was what Mr Abbott wanted him to do, but he was sent straight to the naughty corner for suggesting it prematurely. The other kiddies have apparently got the message; the airwaves have been freakishly Liberal-free ever since.
But Abbott's control extends only to his own domain, as the Indonesians were at pains to warn him last week. The newly minted Foreign Minister Julie Bishop met her counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, in New York for what she described as cordial, friendly and constructive talks, as a forerunner to Abbott's visit to Jakarta. But alas, her (or rather, of course, Abbott's) message was not greeted with the servility demanded at home.
Natalegawa commented (cordially, amicably and constructively): "Unilateral action [by which he meant turning the boats back, sending gents Indonesia to buy boats or solicit information about them] would risk the tight cooperation and trust that has been bounded in the Bali process and should be avoided."
And obviously exasperated by Abbott's continued refusal to acknowledge, much less accept, their repeated objections to a number of aspects of his Stop-The-Boats ranting, the Indonesians took the unusual step of releasing their record of the conversation to the media.
This, of course, was exactly what Abbott didn't want; he was still hoping that sooner or later the problem would go away, and if it didn't perhaps it could be sorted out in private; Bishop had already told Natalegawa that Australia would prefer to manage the issue "behind the scenes" and Abbott had deplored "megaphone diplomacy."
The point having been well and truly made, Jakarta declared that the record had been released by mistake - not an apology and certainly not a withdrawal. Abbott blustered that he would never even dream of infringing on Indonesian sovereignty - heavens to betsy no, it was absolutely the last thing in his mind.
But then Alexander Downer, materialised on the ABC's Drum program, - eschewed by Abbott and all his ministers - to put in the biff on Australia's behalf: "Let me make this point for Mr Natalegawa's benefit: Indonesian flagged boats with Indonesian crews are breaking our laws by bringing people into our territorial waters. This is a breach of our sovereignty and the Indonesians need to understand that instead of a lot of pious rhetoric about the Australian government breaching their sovereignty." And, picking up his megaphone, he retreated back into well-merited obscurity.
Natalegawa no doubt noted that there is a considerable difference between unauthorised incursions by people smugglers and an official policy which orders a country's armed forces to encroach national boundaries, but for the moment at least held his peace; perhaps he was leaving it to his president, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, to explain the distinction to Abbott during this week's visit. But Abbott is still playing down the issue; it is, he insists at worst a 'passing irritant'.
Hang on a minute: a passing irritant? A month ago the boats were a national emergency, a threat to our sovereignty, to our freeway traffic, to our very way of life. Their continued arrival constituted the greatest policy failure since, well, at least since the pink batts. Stopping them was a key policy of the new government and not effort would be spared. The nation would go on a war footing, the campaign was to be run as a military operation, with all the propaganda, secrecy and misinformation that our armed forces could command.
And now, suddenly, they are just a minor irritant, a distraction from the main purpose of Abbott's visit, to be glossed over and sidelined so that the leaders can talk about what's most important to both of them: money, or at least trade and investment. Of all Abbott's miraculous transformations from opposition attack dog to considered, moderate leader in government his is surely the most confusing, the least convincing.
And of course it won't work: having spent three years conditioning the public and media about the unparalleled, unmitigated horror of the asylum seekers, he will not be allowed to brush them aside, or pretend they no longer matter by hiding all information about them. The latter policy has already proved futile: the leaks from private and, one suspects, government sources have proved so prolific that Scott Morrison's next briefing session has already been rendered superfluous.
About the best Abbott can hope for is that the slowdown in arrivals that has been underway since Yudhoyono and Kevin Rudd put the Bali process in place -- the process which Indonesia still regards as the basis for all future negotiations on the issue - continues to the point where the boats cease to be a political problem and Abbott can quietly abandon the policies which Indonesia finds unacceptable. In the meantime, he will have to hope that Yudhoyono proves more understanding than his foreign minister, or at least more discreet.
Still more importantly, he will have to pray that the public and the media react to his policies of concealment, silence and obfuscation with the same acquiescence he expects from his ministers. For the moment at least, he is determined to press ahead with the mushroom policy: keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit.
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.
Stopping the boats is not going to plan - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
