Image: DIAC Images / flickr

08 August 2011The Gillard government and the Abbott opposition have performed an astonishing identity switch with each other over illegal immigrant boatpeople, says Greg Sheridan in The Australian..

For most of the past three months, the Gillard government has been trumpeting its hardline determination to send all new boat arrivals to Malaysia, and the opposition has been criticising the policy as inhumane.

This involves both sides of politics in a complete role reversal.

Julia Gillard is trying to become John Howard, demonstrating an iron fist on boatpeople. It doesn't matter that the Left hates it. The Left beyond Labor will never defect to support Tony Abbott. And the Labor Left is so terrified of electoral Armageddon it will accept anything.

The Labor Left also knows the choice is simple: if the boats keep coming, Labor loses office.

The Liberals, bizarrely, are criticising the humanitarian aspects of the deal. Yet the Liberals themselves in office forcibly turned back boats, containing unaccompanied minors, to Indonesia. This was presumably at least as challenging on the humanitarian front as the Malaysia Solution.

The Liberals are enjoying the chance to have a go at the Prime Minister and her hapless Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, on humanitarian grounds, but they should be very careful. If this new political dynamic were to be sustained, it would give Labor its best chance of reconnecting with the battlers in outer suburban seats who have deserted the party in droves.

For in the end, politically, only one thing matters in this area: will the boats keep coming, or will they stop?

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Photo: DIAC Images / flickr