Meanwhile, as the Gillard government plans to introduce legislation to restore offshore processing of refugees, the same poll finds 54% believe asylum seekers should be processed onshore.

Update: Peter Brent argues that a Labor leadership switch would lead to Tony Abbott’s demise as Liberal leader, a scenario I canvassed here.

Maybe rather than extravagant displays of state intervention, streamed into Asia on YouTube, the Government could think about streaming some basic information into the lounge rooms of Australia on more sophisticated communication platforms – like the TV.

Still, if the poll is right and fact would lower the number of “very concerned” Australians from 43% to 33%, it’s still a rather stunning figure. The beast seems to have taken on a life of its own.

Charitably, one might assume that at least some of this concern might be around a desire to avoid such horrors as happened near Christmas Island around Christmas last year. The government’s rhetoric seems to acknowledge that. But, really, how could you go about changing attitudes which both draw on older anxieties about porous border and appear to have had just about everything else which might possibly inspire fear projected onto them over the last decade?

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/04/asylum21.jpg"

<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/files/2010/04/asylum11.jpg"

In the latest Overland, Mungo MacCallum laments the turn to the right in the Rudd government’s border protection policy over the course of this parliamentary term. He also laments the insanity of the fear of the wretched of the earth washing up on our shores in leaky boats, and traces its history.

Australia’s refugee problem is a trivial one: in the year 2008–09 the number of asylum seeker claims in Australia rose by about 33 per cent, to just 5304. Most of these came by air: just 992 arrived by boat, 0.0045 per cent of our present population. To regard such a figure as a threat is clearly irrational; to fly into a political panic or, worse still, encourage the population to indulge in an orgy of fear and loathing is almost psychotic, and those who follow this course should be instantly removed from power, if not from society as a whole.

The question those of us who are in the minority on these questions face is: how to wrestle with irrational fear?

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.

Rudd’s political style, whether his prolixity or his obsession for control, was always destined to be viewed more harshly when the politics became tougher.

Eventually it might work, but it’s not so far, because Abbott, blemished as he might be, is seen as ”authentic”, just as people are starting to ask ”will the real Kevin stand up?”…

But the dynamics have changed, the government is worried and the public, for the moment, seem to be hoping the underdog makes it a contest.

There’s lots, lots, more, and in fact the whole piece is something of a mind dump rather than a considered analysis. But what’s worth highlighting is the elision between “the public” (referenced anecdotally), the polls (alluded to) and “people”. The story is largely written in the passive voice beloved of such authoritative pronouncements – stuff just happens, and it’s unclear who thinks that it has, and who has been doing the doing. Who is doing the viewing of Rudd in the para I’ve excerpted? What is this destiny?

What it really adds up to is a picture of the commentariat-bot at work.

Not everyone is as artless as Alexander Downer, claiming to detect a sea-change in public opinion on the basis of random airport encounters, quickly morphed into “people think”, and “people say”, but the underlying illogic is the same. Public opinion has changed because the commentariat says it has. The absence of much hard data, or even reference to such data as exists, only serves to highlight the constructedness of the narrative.

For a corrective, one might try Possum.

How popular is Kevin Rudd? It’s the question on the tips of the lips of political commentators everywhere. The exciting answer is that he’s on the nose, he’s doomed, the honeymoon is over, his popularity is plunging to new lows – add exclamation marks for effect.

But the boring – boring and correct – answer is, “about as popular as he was last time there was an Opposition leadership change”.

And on the federal polling from the same Galaxy sample as the horror poll for Anna Bligh, headlined as “Coalition surges to poll lead” by the Courier-Mail:

Effectively, these polls suggest a net loss to Rudd of 1 seat in Qld at the moment compared to the 2007 election results applied to the new electoral boundaries.

Compare that to Stephanie Balogh’s story:

SUPPORT for Kevin Rudd in his home state has crashed as Tony Abbott’s new-look Coalition powers ahead of Labor for the first time since the 2007 federal election.

Abbott’s been addressing some business functions of late, no doubt because he has to build some bridges and mend some fences on economic issues, and raise some campaign dosh. It’s had nowhere near as prominent a part in reporting as his remarks on virginity and ironing, but I did notice that he’d been preaching the virtues of “flexibility” in industrial relations. No detail, but it’s not hard to deconstruct the message he’s sending.

Update: Via Andrew Reynolds in comments, a link to the poll.

Update: Abbott wants to scrap penalty rates and bring back statutory individual employment agreements.

I’d like to see what folks like Possum make of the claims about potential vote switching, and of the changed context from when the poll was taken, but this should nevertheless certainly concentrate Liberal minds as they contemplate whether or not to dump Malcolm Turnbull, and also put all the guff this week about the “Liberal base” in perspective. If there’s any truth to that, and it wasn’t *just* a campaign orchestrated by the likes of Bolta and the Parrot, the Liberal party membership is very seriously out of touch with an awful lot of Liberal voters.

Could this be the game changer Turnbull has been waiting for?

Update: SBS news is reporting that Malcolm Turnbull, at his Sydney press conference this morning, has asserted he has Joe Hockey’s support.

Elsewhere: Ken Parish on constitutional issues and the prospects of a double dissolution, and Trevor Cook asks if the Liberal Party can survive.

Update: Turnbull’s latest press conference via SBS News. He’s confident he will remain leader, and urges passage of the CPRS.

Update: Turnbull surrogate Senator Gary Humphreys says that Liberal internal polling replicates the newspoll story; a wipeout if they go all climate change denially.

Update: New post on the latest thrills and spills.