Dozens of asylum seekers are feared dead after their boat smashed into rocks and broke apart in rough conditions off Christmas Island this morning.

Customs crews and locals are frantically trying to save survivors of the wreck, near Flying Fish Cove.

The RWDB community is showing all the restraint it’s usually known for.

John Menadue writes:

Our media, and not just our tabloid media, have largely gone missing on this sensitive issue. The ABC television news and current affairs that I watch have been unprofessional in allowing misinformation about asylum seekers to fester. They obviously work on the assumption that if there are no pictures, like asylum seekers coming as ‘tourists’ by air, there is only news if they come by boat. But the facts as reported by the Australian Parliamentary Library show that the large majority of asylum seekers come by air. Apparently many come from China, who then make bogus claims concerning religious persecution. The ABC doesn’t think that issue is worth exploring.

Where have our church leaders been — who are so vocal about the rights of the unborn, but careless about the rights of live refugees in desperate situations? What was that story about a family 2000 years ago who fled for protection to Egypt?

Where is the Jewish community — which has suffered more than any other group in history from persecution and have been forced to flee, often forced to pay people smugglers or brokers along the way?

Academics have given us their expertise on the economy and global warming, but scarcely a peep out of them on the denial of human rights to refugees. They allow the lie to persist that asylum seekers are “illegals”.

The business sector supports high migration levels, but is unwilling to face down the exaggerated claims about asylum seekers flooding Australia, and so seriously setting back the case for immigration. Only 1 per cent of our migrant intake are asylum seekers/refugees. We are not being “invaded” by asylum seekers as Tony Abbott wildly and unscrupulously claims.

The overseas development agencies ask us to help people in developing countries, but say little about the enormous burdens that refugees place on poor countries such as Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. When disastrous floods strike the outcast and marginalised have no margin of safety.

Government officials seem incapable of putting out easy to understand, factual, information, eg that asylum seekers to Australia are miniscule compared with asylum seekers seeking entry to the United States, France and the United Kingdom.

With a few notable exceptions, like the AWU, the trade union movement has also been silent.

Letter writers to newspapers trot out again and again the need for refugees to wait in the queue. But there is no queue worthy of the name. There are 42 million forcibly displaced people in the world, including at least 15 million refugees recognised by the UNHCR. If a person claimed refugee status today with the UNHCR, it would take 130 years for that claim to be considered. Some queue!

We are all naturally cautious about newcomers, people who are different, the “other”. It has not all been trouble free, but we have a proud record of settling 700,000 refugees in Australia since 1945. We can look back with pride on our acceptance of refugees and their enormous contribution to Australia. We need more risk takers — and refugees, by definition, are risk takers.

We don’t need charismatic or authoritarian leaders to make the ‘right’ decisions for us. We need adaptive leaders who can help us all support necessary but hard decisions. We need leaders of such quality across our whole community who can appeal to the better angels of our nature.

Surely we are a much better country than the present debate on asylum seekers suggests. We all have a responsibility to right the wrong that we are doing to extremely vulnerable people.

In government, we will commence discussions to establish an off shore processing detention facility in another country. This off shore facility will be the destination for anyone seeking to enter Australia illegally by boat.

That’s, to be clear, the Pacific Solution squared. There would be no detention or processing of asylum seekers anywhere on Australian territory, including Christmas Island, if I’m reading it correctly.

An Abbott government would trump the Howard government when it comes to abuse of human rights.

Update: Looks like the policy was released to the (News Limited) media before backbenchers found out about it:

Four angry Liberal backbenchers demanded a meeting with Opposition leader Tony Abbott this morning ahead of the announcement of the Coalition’s new asylum-seeker policy.

Liberal sources have told The Canberra Times that backbenchers Judi Moylan, Petro Georgiou, Judith Troeth and Russell Broadbent met with Mr Abbott at 9.30am today to vent their frustration over the tough new policies.

The quartet are understood to have been taken by surprise by the announcement of a new policy, which appeared in a News Limited paper this morning.

Update: Bernard Keane in Crikey:

Liberal MP Petro Georgiou has slammed Tony Abbott’s back-to-the-Howard-era policy on asylum seekers, saying it is “cruel” and “victimises the persecuted”.

“It does not have my support,” Georgiou said after this morning’s release of the new policy by Abbott, Scott Morrison and Philip Ruddock.

That may be why the Coalition’s response to Burke’s appointment yesterday was a repeated effort to ignore the entire issue of population policy in favour of claiming too many boat people were coming.

On the other side, Labor has read the tea leaves on population and quickly and professionally put together a decent facsimile of action. The Prime Minister can now say that he has appointed the first Population Minister. A review is under way, giving Rudd an excuse to duck the issue between now and the election, but also providing the basis for a response to the Little Australianists like Dick Smith whenever they demand action to curb the plague of people coming here and eating our food.

Bear in mind Labor’s own heritage on immigration is mixed. The Parliamentary party has long been a “big Australia” supporter, from the days of Calwell through to its recent and occasionally continuing history of ethnic branch-stacking. But trade unions have been traditional opponents of high immigration, for exactly the reason business supports it, and the urban Left fringes of the party will lean to the environmentalist view that there’s very much such a thing as too many people.

As Robert noted, the Liberals are in conflict with their own business constituency, and the Coalition’s “broad church” encompasses some fairly wild extremes of nativism and racism. It’s worth underlining that these sentiments are more profound than electoral dog-whistling; they both reflect community attitudes deeply held in some sectors, and genuinely disturbing sentiments and reflexive prejudices on the part of those who articulate them. Kevin Andrews is a good example.

So, taking into account the argument Keane also makes about Labor’s heritage, what we have is a debate that doesn’t break neatly along partisan lines, and is overwritten with conflicting but complementary scissions around race, history and culture.

Julia Gillard’s interview on Lateline last night was interesting. She made what I thought were some insightful and incisive points about a Lowy Institute survey released today on population issues. Gillard showed a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of an apparently inconsistent and contradictory public opinion, and made the important point that projections (such as those in the Treasury’s 2010 Intergeneration Report) are just that, not immutable, shapeable into the future by political decisions we collectively take. At the same time, she deftly rubbished the Opposition’s opportunism on population and refugees.

Tony Jones’ questions appeared to presuppose a premise that politicians were wary of enabling a public debate on immigration, but also that such a debate could only be one which is highly partisan.

I think there’s a certain insularity (in both the literal and metaphorical senses of the word) to the trope that immigration is best left unspoken; that it should be a matter of consensus between the two major parties, lest public sentiment upset the apple cart. There’s a paranoia among elements of the political class – a disdain for public opinion – which results in a policing of the borders of population issues as pernicious as the fear some pollies are fond of inculcating about the policing of Australia’s borders. There’s something of the Nineteenth century fear of the mob about this attitude; a parochial concern that Australians are incapable of having a civic conversation if race is at issue.

We actually have everything to gain as a nation, I would argue, in conducting a mature and reasoned debate on population and immigration. Even if some unsightly ghosts are summoned up in the process.

Labor’s tendency, after the One Nation phenomenon, and Howard’s race-baiting in 2001, was to retreat behind a fence on immigration; to soften the border control rhetoric but to leave its underpinnings intact. Gillard’s own crafting of a consensus immigration policy was part of that move. That Rudd Labor is now prepared to facilitate a responsible debate on these very same issues, and to reframe them, seems to me to be something quite significant, and something that ought to be welcomed. A truly Big Australia would be one that could craft a collective conversation with a horizon longer than that of the next day’s papers, and the next election.

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/03/29-03-2010-10-50-17-AM1.jpg"

The image of the paper’s Sunday cover comes courtesy of Crikey:

Over the weekend Brisbane’s Sunday Mail dispatched its snapper to Toombul shopping centre north of the city to pap its front-page target. But this wasn’t a celebrity. It wasn’t a crook on the run. This was a mother and her two daughters — “suspected immigration detainees” as the paper captioned them.

We don’t know their names, but thanks to the paper’s sleuths we do know what they purchased while “enjoying” their tour through Coles — “home brand Hawaiian pizza, Smith’s potato crisps and cartons of Coca-Cola.”

The Sunday Mail splashed the supermarket scoop across their front page — headlined “THEY’RE HERE” (surely not a nod to Poltergeist?) — in a story that ran prominently in all of Rupert’s rags yesterday.

And if you somehow missed the implication, Piers Akerman filled in the blanks in the Daily Telegraph this morning: this “happy Afghan women” (Piers has the inside word on her mental state and nationality) and her fellow “fast-tracked” asylum seekers with their “overflowing shopping trolleys, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer” send a “strong message” that Australia’s doors are open.

Yet, when I went to the aforesaid Toombul shopping centre today, it was still standing, the sky hadn’t fallen in, and the social fabric appeared intact.

Last week, emboldened or embiggened by his defeat in the Great Health Debate, Tony Abbott challenged Kevin Rudd to a debate on asylum seekers [h/t tigtog].

As a number of commenters on this morning’s thread about the latest Newspoll noted, any time the Coalition’s kooky plans go hay wire, the first thing they can think of to do is to shout “Brown people in boats!”.

(To be fair to Abbott, it’s not the only thing they can think of; he gave an anodyne speech on economic policy today short on any actual policy and long on warnings about the evils of Labor debt.)

Yet, what would have happened had Rudd taken up Abbott’s gauntlet? The only two things we know about the Coalition’s ‘border protection’ policy is that they’d reintroduce TPVs (or, in other words, deprive people lawfully in this country of civil rights) and that it’s all teh government’s fault!!!

Although Rudd would never have taken up the invitation, for a whole range of reasons, I think it’s a bit of a pity that he didn’t. Crikey‘s editorial bemoans the damage the sort of story the News Limited Sundays ran as destroying the possibility of a reasoned debate.

Between 2001, when John Howard started the whole ‘people on boats’ scare, and 2007, when his government came to a well deserved end, Australia granted 78 475 humanitarian visas. You can see the whole gamut of statistics at this page maintained by the Refugee Council of Australia.

For a number of those years, a massive rhetorical onslaught was launched by the Howardistas – terrorism, Australian values, “we will determine”, etc, etc., madly dehumanising its objects as it went.

Yet, the urgency of the shock tactic, and its emotional force, appeared to diminish over time. Labor’s policy on asylum seekers can still, and should be still, criticised as imperfect on humanitarian grounds, but I think the emphasis on the Coalition’s detention of children, and then Kevin Rudd’s emphasis on people smuggling, contributed to a reframing of the issue in public opinion.

While no doubt there are some hardcore xenophobes in the electorate who respond on cue every time the dog whistle blows, I’m not at all sure that other shoppers buying home brand Hawaiian pizzas at the Toombul Woolies (in Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley, incidentally) are as amenable to these sort of scare campaigns as once may have been the case.

So, then, a reasoned debate on asylum seekers might be just the ticket in this election year.

This, no doubt, is the first of the ‘philosophical’, ‘headland’ speeches which will define Abbott as the very model of a modern Liberal leaderthe ghost of Howardia.

Elsewhere: Andrew Elder.

In some quarters of the Coalition, the news that Copenhagen is unlikely to see a legally binding deal agreed has been seized on to claim that there is less political risk in voting against the legislation. Key here are the amendments Ian Macfarlane is negotiating with Penny Wong. If the shadow cabinet recommends acceptance of an amended bill, the legislation will likely pass despite masses of Liberal Senators and all the Nationals voting against it. So the Liberal right has been raising the bar for the negotiation process to ‘all or nothing’ – a position the government is hardly likely to adopt.

The open rumblings have now been spun to imply that opposition unity needs to be secured at all costs, and that it would be disastrous if the Nationals walked away from the Coalition entirely over the CPRS. (But would it?)

What are the implications of all this?

The first is that it would effectively make Nick Minchin the de facto leader of the Liberal Party. Turnbull would probably survive, but greatly weakened, and boxed in to advocacy of a series of electorally unpopular positions (above and beyond climate change). Abbott’s spruiking “differentiation”. Whether Turnbull, in good conscience, could take a hard right line to the election – and almost certainly lose anyway – is an interesting question.

It may not be evident to all Liberals that this is their plight. The media circus over asylum seekers has probably convinced them that there is political traction in reviving the whole box and dice of Howard era rhetoric and policy, xenophobia included.

But, as Rob implies in reporting on Possum’s analysis of the CPRS polling, all they would be achieving would be shoring up a base which is a small and declining portion of the electorate. Minchin, Abbott and co. seem to forget that Howard also had a strategy for reaching out to the centre ground – until the right wing dogs of war were loosed with WorkChoices and other craziness in his last term.

The shenanigans about CPRS amendments also vitiate the one half decent line Turnbull had to run with on emissions trading. (The business about Copenhagen reflects a lot more about the Liberals’ own past obsessions and divisions than anything significant in the public mind.) He’ll be unable to claim, if shadow cabinet does not support amendments which have emerged from the negotiations, that the Libs are about protecting jobs.

Ironically, that’s the line of attack which – had it been consistently prosecuted – might have cut through. The government has not really made its case on ‘Green jobs’, having been diverted by the politics of industry greed, and reluctant to fight in any case on the ground of employment. But, in America and elsewhere, many Green jobs which have replaced Brown ones are the typical jobs of new industries – less well paid and more insecure. That’s not inevitable, to be sure, but in the absence of an explicit counter policy, it’s almost the default outcome in Australia too.

So what will the Liberals be left with?

A fight over their own soul – “standing for something”, the mantra of the Liberal right, is actually code for more power within the carcass of the opposition ranks. Standing for the sorts of things Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott want the Liberals to will bring electoral disaster, but will enhance their own position – and future prospects in the next term. None of this has much to do with any sensible politics rather than the contest over the spoils of opposition and the nature of the Liberal party. It’s got nothing much to do, either, with good public policy or climate change.

We’ve seen umpteen “honeymoon is over” stories, with a sub-theme that Liberal research (no doubt being spruiked around the press gallery as we speak) demonstrates “doubts” about Kevin Rudd.

But what of this trend?

Possum illuminates the story:

Interestingly enough, while the volatility has been pretty high, the actual polling trends tell a slightly more boring and probably realistic story – the period where asylum seekers have dominated the media cycle has seen 2 points knocked off the government’s two party preferred on both the all pollster and phone pollster trend measures.

With polling showing a divided public on the asylum seeker issue (and not evenly divided along party lines), it would be wrong to infer people on boats is the reason for this relatively small movement (and even more wrong to conclude it’s just because Rudd isn’t “tough” enough). It’s equally plausible to conclude that it may be just because the government looks a bit messy – which is, in part, an artefact of the media coverage. Though that’s not to say that the Ruddster’s own messaging efforts aren’t part of the picture.

But I’d be very reticent about claiming “Liberals back in the game” at this stage.

The evidence was clear. Yet the publication of News Ltd’s poll (Newspoll) in the first place had already had a major impact. The evidence showing the ‘error’ of Newspoll was literally ignored by media discussion (e.g. the Insiders on ABC TV and the impact of the ‘rogue’ poll was allowed to run unabated).

Pollsters and those who publish the polls have a responsibility to report the facts and the truth.

Newspoll should have conducted another poll as soon as possible when they saw the dramatic change in their results — and if different, released the data to correct the misconceptions caused by their ‘rogue’ poll.

It is extremely worrying that today’s Newspoll on “boat people” clearly did include questions on ‘Political support,’ but the results from the ‘Political support’ question were not published.

A statistical analysis of the data reported on Australians’ attitudes to “boat people” issues — specifically the breakdown by ‘Political support’ — suggests the ALP vote in that poll was very strong. The percentage supporting each political party clearly should have been released.

Polls and their publishers should not seek to set the agenda by selectively releasing polling data.

Polls and their publishers are powerful but with that power comes responsibility.

Predictably tonight, the ABC and SBS news, and the 7 30 report ran with lines shaped by The Australian‘s coverage of Newspoll, with no or just a bare mention of the Nielsen results. It may be that the voting intention results will be released tomorrow, but the delayed release and the lack of context to the results on questions about asylum seekers presents a picture which is deliberately distorted, stoking the claims about “crisis” and inflaming the issue further.

This really is getting to be a complete disgrace.

Update: William Bowe on Chris Mitchell’s explanation:

Queried by Andrew Crook of Crikey, The Australian’s editor Chris Mitchell explained that “even Crikey” should be able to understand that a non-fortnightly set of voting intention figures would cause a disturbance in the force. Mitchell further invoked a Beatles-and-the-Stones style arrangement between Newspoll and Nielsen in which they have agreed not to step on each other’s releases. Yet just one month ago, on the same day that Nielsen produced its regular monthly poll, The Australian published a “special Newspoll survey” on the Liberal leadership in between its regular fortnightly polls, and was not in the least bit shy about informing us that the sample produced the same 58-42 split in favour of Labor as recorded the previous week. In fairness, it should be noted that Crikey “understands that on Sunday morning, Newspoll chief Martin O’Shannessy contacted his Nielsen counterpart John Stirton and agreed not to release the two-party preferred vote to The Australian”.

Meanwhile, all week since the Newspoll likely outlier, the tone of the media coverage and commentary has shifted. Glenn Milne, with his accustomed lack of subtlety, gives the game away in his column today, claiming that the effects of the poll are “real”, even if it’s wrong.

This claim is supported by the usual panoply of quotes from unnamed senior Liberal sources, and the press gallery line du jour – that Turnbull can succeed by making the government the issue (and by having no policy on anything – asylum seekers or otherwise – which would actually allow him to be scrutinised). That needs to be considered along with that other recurrent media theme – that they (and the opposition) perform a valuable public service by keeping the government accountable. In truth, it’s all about the drama and the sense of power.

I, for one, am still not convinced that the asylum seekers “crisis” is one. I doubt many voters are really all that concerned. Australian politics – except in the mind of the political class itself – is not stuck in an eternal loop. Howard’s use of the Tampa was exemplary of an ability he once had to exploit elements of the national mood – it worked not because Australians are inherently xenophobic, but because it channeled a set of fears and anxieties characteristic of a particular cultural moment and projected them towards refugees. In the longer view, it was in some ways the end of an era where the Hansonite outbreaks were already a last gasp.

A secular shift in the register of issues, and the particular take on the asylum seeker brouhaha, had already happened by the beginning of 2007, and was itself a harbinger of Howard’s defeat. Among related reasons for his defeat was the fact that the electorate got tired of loud, noisy symbolic political clashes and culture wars. I think Rudd knew that then, and knows that now, and that’s why his calm demeanour works.

So, I’m not at all certain that many outside the Canberra beltway are actually paying attention to the “crises”. The noise itself might be a turnoff.

And, as noted by a number of commenters on the open thread, missing in all the media talk has been not just the Essential Research poll which was taken at the same time as the Newspoll, but also Morgan on Friday – another sample taken simultaneously. It’s not at all unreasonable to believe that the message from these two polls is that all this is just a preoccupation of the Canberra elites. Which is ironic, when you think about it – because populism employed in the service of naked electoral self interest, the desire for Sturm und Drang and on the backs of the poor and dispossessed of the world is not always an electoral winner. Which is good.