The next federal election is due in 2013 – but will such a dysfunctional and bitterly divided government survive so long?

By Gary Scarrabelotti^*

It is the most extraordinary article to be published on Australian politics for a long time.  I’ve taken a weekend to digest it.  In fact, I cannot remember anything like it: an almost blow-by-blow account of a traditionally secret cabinet meeting – and this perhaps the most important in a lifetime.

The Sydney Morning Herald carried on 15 October 2011 an article by its political editor Peter Hartcher entitled Undone by their own tactics.

The piece reports a cabinet meeting which took place on 13 October.  Its purpose was to decide how the government would respond to the political reality that proposed amendments to the Migration Act, designed to save the “Malaysian solution”, would be defeated in the Parliament.

The problem

The amendments were a response to the High Court ruling of 31 August which found against sending refugees to Malaysia under a deal to swap up to 800 of Australia’s illegal refugees for 4000 genuine ones camped in Malaysia.

The amendments would have given the Immigration Minister power to send refugees overseas for processing while leaving possible destinations undefined.

Whatever one thinks of the “Malaysian Solution” — and I don’t think much of it — these amendments merited the support of the Parliament.  That the Opposition refused to support a measure which would have proofed the off-shore processing of refugees by a future Coalition government against a High Court strike, is a breathtakingly high-risk strategy.  It puts a higher value upon the destruction of a bad government than upon preservation of the national interest.

Anyway, what we see in the Hartcher article is a government in disarray and a Prime Minister who has abdicated leadership.

Spooked

First, Hartcher depicts a government wanting in “ticker”: the toughness of mind needed to call the policy shots in the national interest as the government of the day sees it.

Instead of debating the national interest question, cabinet’s preoccupation seemed to have been the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, and how he might react to any government decision.

If you are in government, who cares — when it is all said and done — what an Opposition leader thinks or does?  Obviously he can’t be ignored, especially if he is effective.  But governments are elected — come what may — to judge what is right and in the national interest, and to do it.  The Gillard government, however, appears to have the greatest difficulty focusing its collective mind on Australia and its interests.  It is so spooked by Abbott that its thoughts are only of him.

Secondly, Prime Minister Gillard undermined her Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, in a stunning way.

Bowen had brought to the table a realistic, statesmen-like proposal.  He recommended an alternative amendment that would specify Malaysia, PNG, and Nauru as possible refugee destinations.  According to Hartcher’s report, Bowen argued

“We’ve reached an impasse over whether it should be one or the other — let’s do both.”

Bowen reasoned that although Abbott was likely to find some new excuse to reject the plan, it would make it harder for him. To scream for Nauru for ages and then to suddenly reject it would expose him as a phoney.

Bowen also proposed that, if off-shore processing proved a success, Australia should increase its humanitarian refugee intake.

It beggars belief that a minister would take to cabinet a submission without having first cleared it with the PM and secured prime ministerial support.  Or, to turn it around, it beggars belief that that a PM would let a cabinet submission go forward without prime ministerial support. Either way, Bowen’s submission was defeated in the cabinet room with the PM — after an adjournment called to consider her verdict – announcing that she could not support a policy that included Nauru!

The older I get the less I understand about public affairs.  But I cannot imagine that Julia Gillard will get Chris Bowen’s vote when her job comes up for review – which now it must.

Julia goes home

Thirdly, the cabinet meeting must surely have completed the alienation of Gillard’s right wing support base: of the very people who deposed Rudd and tipped Gillard into the leadership.

The Hartcher story indicates that the NSW-Victorian Right backed their man, Bowen, solidly: Burke, Conroy, and Shorten showed vigorous support. But the Left — Combet, Macklin, Carr – spoke against with equal fervour. Emerson, a genuinely independent character, and Rudd, existentially alienated from the factional heavies who overthrew him, also opposed.  Finally, with startling political cynicism, Albanese backed Bowen.

So, in the final analysis, it all came down to Gillard.  She decided to abandon the people who made her Prime Minister and return to her intellectually comfy home on the Left.  Gillard no doubt was being true to herself in this; but she has just kicked away the strategic foundations of her Prime Ministership. She’s finished.

Vanity

Finally, on the evidence presented in the Hartcher story, one might think that the Rudd comeback is over.

The article, obviously, could not have been written had not someone systematically breached cabinet confidentiality and leaked.  Given that the person most damaged by the story is Gillard, the finger points to Rudd.  In any case, Hartcher is said to have excellent professional connections with Rudd and has been the beneficiary of some spectacular leaks about the inner workings of the Rudd government.  These, when unleashed during the 2010 federal election campaign, all but derailed Labor’s 2010 re-election bid.

Well, if Rudd is the leaker, his vanity appears to have carried him a bridge too far.  Given that the story details the humiliation of Bowen and the Right, and Rudd’s powerfully argued part in it, it’s hard to imagine that the Right would go cap-in-hand to Rudd in any leadership switch.  To top it off, Rudd has identified himself, more firmly now than ever, with the electorally untenable policy of on-shore processing of refugees: a decision that has stripped Australia of control over its borders. This ought to be just too much for Labor’s Right to swallow.  But swallow it will – or so say wiser heads than mine.

No matter how they detest him, I am told, the Right will be constrained to re-install Rudd in a desperate bid to reduce the scale of Labor’s expected rout at the next federal election.  It’s due in 2013 – but will such a dysfunctional and bitterly divided government survive so long?

Instinct says, No.

^*Gary Scarrabelotti is Managing Director of the Canberra-based consulting firm Aequum: Political & Business Strategies. This is an edited version of an article originally published on HenryThornton.com on 17 October 2011.