The Houston report on refuge policy could be a watershed.

By Lyle Dunne

Against all odds the “expert panel” headed by former defence force chief Angus Houston has come up with a sensible series of recommendations.

And by sensible I mean of course that they largely agree with me.

As I wrote in October 2011,

“… surely there’s room for a compromise. Without being a Constitutional lawyer, I would imagine that it would be possible for Abbott to put forward legislation (since he can’t now put forward amendments) that would allow Nauru, and allow Malaysia subject to certain additional safeguards: not necessarily signature of the UN Convention, but perhaps the provision of additional human-rights guarantees via domestic law or treaty, with a particular emphasis on the rights of minors. It would be difficult for Labor to refuse support to such a package: Gillard could hardly stand up in Parliament and say there was no reasonable prospect of getting her preferred destination to sign human-rights guarantees. This would leave the Government with a difficult process of negotiation – and Abbott with a win-win: if such concessions were extracted he could take credit, and if not, Nauru would be the only overseas-processing option left on the table.”

And in any case, Abbott would have the legislative ammunition to abandon Malaysia and implement Nauru later in government should he wish to do so.

Here I’m thinking particularly about the panel’s view that

The government’s Malaysian deal should “be built on further, rather than being discarded or neglected”, [with] a strengthening of the “safeguards and accountability” of the deal “as a basis for the Australian parliament’s reconsideration of new legislation …”

Radical options

Of course, the report goes much further than that, recommending radical new options like closing off family-reunion options for those who arrive by boat, and implementing a genuine “no-advantage” régime under which persons arriving by boat would have no advantage over those applying overseas for refugee status.

This of course would require not only delaying the processing of those who do arrive by boat — for years, in some cases — but a considerable effort in building up the mechanisms for overseas applicants.

The no-family-reunion provisions address an otherwise-intractable aspect of the problem: our more lenient treatment of minors creates an incentive not only for people-smugglers to crew their boats with minors (or those who can plausibly claim to be), but for families to send out teenage members on boats to establish an almost-literal beach-head in Australia, with a view to bringing out the rest of the family later.

Predictably this report has been criticised by those who represent what I think of (somewhat simplistically) as the “feminine principle” in politics: decision-making based on short-term emotional identification with the visible, rather than the application of principles in consideration of long-term effects and externalities. In this case, that means the Greens and others focussing exclusively on the interests of the highly visible (and telegenic) present boat arrivals, to the neglect of the interests of those trapped in overseas refugee camps, or even the interests of those people who, seeing a “generous” régime on the horizon, would hand large sums to people smugglers, board leaky boats, and drown.

Game-changer

There is the possibility for this report to be a game-changer. It certainly gives the government permission to compromise with a reduced (though still significant) loss of face – an opportunity the PM has seized with both hands, announcing that its legislation, with amendments implementing all the panel’s recommendations, would be re-introduced to Parliament immediately.

The Opposition, despite having rashly announced that they would “respectfully ignore the recommendations of Julia Gillard’s expert panel”, seem to have decided to do the opposite, and disrespectfully accede. And so the legislation has duly passed both houses, in record time – albeit after a lot of victorious crowing by the Coalition.

In this respect, they may have overplayed their hand. The Liberals were in a good position to claim victory, as their position in relation to Nauru and Manus had been vindicated. And it didn’t seem too much of a stretch to retrospectively present their opposition to the “Malaysian Solution” as more contingent and constructive than it seemed at the time.

And with perfect timing, a group of asylum-seekers managed to frighten the Captain of the vessel who picked them up sufficiently that he felt compelled to take the to Christmas island rather than Singapore, allowing the Opposition to hang tough and put on their “Remember the Tampa” Rambo headbands.

But Parliamentary politics at this point is largely theatre, and as the Opposition lined up to take their turn at running the we-told-you-so arguments, taunting Gillard for not caving in earlier, I had a feeling they were possibly losing the audience.

There comes a point where grace in victory is not just a question of The Decent Thing, but a matter of self-interest as well.

Nevertheless, the basis for an offshore-processing régime is in place. The impasse representing the worst of all worlds, with no offshore processing in spite of bipartisan support that it should proceed, has been broken. The government will face the challenge of getting Nauru and Manus up and running in the short term, and erecting a no-advantage régime in the longer term.

The government may derive some political benefit from this in the short term through its willingness to compromise, despite Abbott’s attacks on them, essentially for agreeing with him (though phrased as criticism for not agreeing sooner). Abbott may at the moment look like a man who won’t take yes for an answer.

Lose-lose

In the medium term, it looks like a lose-lose situation for Gillard: if the strategy succeeds, and the boat numbers reduce, Abbott will claim the credit for his policy; if not, Gillard will be blamed for her implementation.

In the longer term, the experts pin their hopes on a regional strategy involving countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. Commentators like Greg Sheridan think the regional strategy has little chance of success – indeed, he puts it somewhat more strongly: “This vision, I promise, has absolutely zero chance of being achieved.”

I’m a shade more sanguine. It may in fact be possible to secure agreement with Malaysia to move some way toward the recognition (at least on paper) of human rights obligations toward the refugees we sent them – especially if they’re making a massive profit on the deal, sending us many more refugees than they take.

It’s not even inconceivable that Indonesia may be convinced that if “Boat People” – or those amphibious creatures who become Boat People after flying into Indonesia and discarding their documents – can be stopped from setting out for Australia, then they will have less incentive to come to Indonesia.

(They are more likely to be convinced if Australia picks up the tab for doing the stopping.)

But the prospect of either of these diplomatic coups being achieved

a) by Julia Gillard (who, to be fair, will have other things on her mind), and

b) before the next election,

must be close to zero.

Perversely, the biggest winners out of all this are likely to be the Greens. Their position of compassionate irrationality is supported by a small minority of Australians – but that small minority is still considerably larger than the Greens’ current voter base.