Lenore Taylor political editor

theguardian.com, Friday 17 January 2014

In an information blackout, it's hard to see exactly where Operation Sovereign Borders is going

Is any means at all justified in achieving the objective of stopping the boats? Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAPIMAGE

At the last election 78% of Australians voted for political parties that promised “stopping the boats” would be the primary goal of their asylum seeker policy.

But as the Abbott government sets about the much more complicated task of actually stopping them, a new and trickier question is arising: is any means at all justified in achieving this goal, and if the government refuses to explain what it is doing, if it refuses even to acknowledge what it is doing, how can Australians begin to judge those consequences?

The latest consequence is likely to be for the already strained relationship with Indonesia. Having insisted it would never, ever breach Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty, the navy suddenly realised Wednesday afternoon that it had, by accident, quite a few times. Putting aside the slightly disconcerting revelation that navy ships don’t always know where they are, this deeply embarrassing woopsie highlights the diplomatic dangers of deploying frigates and patrol boats along a sensitive maritime border in a “war” against leaky fishing boats.

And we now have credible reports from asylum seekers that they have been towed back to the maritime border and left there with only enough fuel to get back to Indonesia in Australian-bought lifeboats with Australian-provided navigation equipment – which apparently doesn’t amount to a technical breach of sovereignty, but which Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa has understandably said is a “slippery slope”.

(Morrison’s Lt Gen Angus Campbell confirmed the lifeboats had been bought, but he and Morrison won’t confirm widespread reports they bought 16 or how many they have left. This is apparently so people smugglers won’t know when the navy has run out, unless of course they can read, and count.)

There’s also an obvious consequence for Australia’s compliance with its international obligations, which require it not to turn away asylum seekers without considering their refugee claims. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has already voiced concerns.

There are consequences for the 2,000 asylum seekers who have been sent to Manus Island and Nauru to spend, in most cases, years in sanity-sapping uncertainty and boredom, without any prior agreements or guarantees about what will happen to them even if they are found to be genuine refugees.

And there are consequences for the more than 30,000 asylum seekers already here, whom the Coalition says will never get permanent visas and who, at the moment, are being denied any visas or work rights or certainty because of a political standoff over the Coalition’s policy to give them “temporary protection visas” instead.

Australians still seem to be behind the “stop the boats” goal. In fact, a recent poll reportedly found 60% want the government to treat asylum seekers even more severely.

But as the Howard government discovered, as boat arrivals slow and as information about the human misery filters through, public opinion can shift and pressure can mount to change tack.

And that, as much as the “on water, operational” considerations, is why we are being kept in the dark.

Coalition's ‘stopping the boats’ strategy taking on water | World news | theguardian.com