I WONDER whether you have been as frustrated as I’ve been by the federal election campaign. The two major parties have offered us slogans rather than policies. Their statements on Australia’s future response to asylum seekers have been thinly disguised appeals to voters in a small number of marginal seats, most of them in Western Sydney, who are said to be anxious about boat people. Labor and Liberals have tried to soothe the fears of those voters because, according to psephological wisdom, only the party that wins their seats will be in a position to form government.

In deference to the vacillating and ill-informed voters of Western Sydney, both the Coalition and Labor have promised they would halt the flow of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. While the coalition advocated a return to temporary protection visas and extraterritorial processing on Nauru, Labor has talked in the vaguest of terms about a regional processing centre. Earlier, in a prelude to the election campaign…