Relativities in the balance.

“…  if our rights to our own country are limited and relative, then how much more so is the right to a place among us of those who cannot call Australia home.”

By Gary Scarrabelotti^*

Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has made the right call on turning back the boats.

Late last week Abbott took the decision – in collaboration with the Coalition’s Immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison — that, under a Coalition Government, Australia would turn back to Indonesia people-smuggling boats originating from its shores.

This is a principled decision. It is all about asserting Australian control over our borders. It is a defining act of national sovereignty.

In a world where the internationalist human rights lobby regards national sovereignty as wickedly primitive, it takes guts to stand up for the sovereign authority of one’s country.  But Abbott is a rare kind of politician.  He actually has the “the right stuff” to make this kind of decision and to see it through.

First thing to understand: Abbott is not bluffing. He will issue the command: “Turn back the boats!”  And, notwithstanding the toughness of the operation for the RAN, the order will be obeyed.

Of course, our navy personnel – along with Abbott — will be made scapegoats by sections of the media for every injury and drowning that results from resistance by the people smugglers to being returned to Indonesian waters.

Make no mistake.  An attempt will be made by the smugglers, in league with their de facto allies within Australia – refugee advocates, “human rights” lawyers, and elements within the ABC, SBS, and the Fairfax press — to break the will of an Abbott government over this matter. So gird yourself for the onslaught.

In making this attempt, however, both the smugglers and their “fifth column” will be making an error of judgement. Abbott won’t break; he’ll back the navy all the way; and he’ll have overwhelming support from Australians. He might even command reluctant support from within the ideological “Left”.  After Robert Manne’s splendidly honest article on The Drum (21 December 2011) pointing out the failure of Labor’s asylum seeker policies, the commentariat and our intellectual class might find it harder than in the past to maintain a united front against the new policy. In the end, I predict, it will be the people smugglers who will break.

Invasion

We need to understand that Australia is dealing with a little invasion. It is organised by international criminal gangs and they are delivering to our shores people who have no right to land on them. That these invaders are unarmed is not to the point. The fact that both the smugglers and the illegals are part of a systematic attempt to penetrate our borders is sufficient to constitute invasion. It must be stopped: stopped dead.

“But turning back the boats,” you might say, “will create problems with Indonesia.”

Oh, really?  And what about the problems that Indonesia has created for us by letting its territory be used by international criminals to springboard their human cargoes into Australia?

There is, furthermore, evidence that elements of the Indonesian military are involved in the people smuggling business.

Indonesia has acquired, through the asylum seekers and people traffickers, a handy little stick with which to torment Australia.

On January 18 the ABC reported that three Indonesia soldiers were involved in organising the final stages of a shipment of boat people which ended in tragedy.  Just 40 nautical miles off East Java, the overloaded boat sank and about 200 people drowned.  There are suggestions that the soldiers – filmed, after the disaster, working in military fatigues beside the smugglers — were unlikely to have acted on their own. Higher authority could well have sanctioned the venture and shared in its profits.

Whichever way you look at it, Indonesia has acquired, through the asylum seekers and people traffickers, a handy little stick with which to torment Australia. Our 1999 intervention in East Timor was a humiliation for the Indonesian military and it will not be forgotten any time soon.  There would be elements within the Indonesian intelligence services and armed forces unwilling to interdict the flow of human cargo through Indonesia to Australia. It’s a neat, deniable way of conducting harassment operations against us; and it offers, at the same time, an agreeable opportunity to relieve the desperate of their last dollars.

Moral position

We also need to be prepared to deal with the moralising and hand wringing to come about the “cruelty” of turning back the boats and our responsibility for any deaths or injuries that might occur in the course of forcing boats back to Indonesia.

We should not allow tragedy to confuse our capacity for moral judgement. On condition that the force applied is proportionate – and some force will need to be applied — then the possible death or injury of people smugglers and illegals in the course of sending them back to Indonesia will be upon their own heads. The intruder killed accidentally in a scuffle with the householder is responsible for his own sad end.  If we think otherwise, then we are deeply confused in our moral thinking and perhaps cowards as well. Cowardice and moral muddle don’t make for a good defence of legitimate interests, whether private or public.

Also we need to be ready to address the argument that we Australians have no absolute right to Australia and that we cannot, therefore, exclude others from it, especially refugees.

Now it’s true that no one has an absolute right to his property or to his country. Our rights in these matters are limited and relative. But if our rights to our own country are limited and relative, then how much more so is the right to a place among us of those who cannot call Australia home?  The old saw is very wise: “Possession is nine points of the law.”

Abbott has said that one of his first acts upon becoming Prime Minister will be to visit Indonesia to explain his policy.

Well, our Foreign Affairs bureaucrats have had fair warning: they’d better start drafting their background briefing for Abbott’s Indonesia trip. That election that seemed so far away last week has come suddenly much closer.  Over the weekend, Independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, abandoned his alliance with the Gillard government.

Julia’s sweet little victory in the Battle of the Speaker’s Chair – and the extra vote she gained thereby — has just been reversed.

^*Gary Scarrabelotti is Managing Director of the Canberra-based consulting firm Aequum: Political & Business Strategies.This article was originally published on HenryThornton.com on 25 January 2012,