The Hazards of Followship

The Malaysia deal is over, sanity has prevailed, and what's more, it's prevailed in a way that should give many people comfort that there is still judicial oversight in this country. It gives me comfort, but it is completely soured by the knowledge that no one will learn anything from this whatsoever. On immigration, the Gillard Government will continue to fall, continue to walk the low road, and continue to drink the poison milk suckled from the breast of internal party polling in the seat of Lindsay.

Nothing, it seems, will stop their inexorable trajectory towards complete moral oblivion. Not even this international level embarrassment will convince them. It's taken less than a day for someone to mention a legislative response to the HC's decision, like that will somehow improve the Government's standing. What's hidden within that suggestion is that the Government will have to legislate WITH the Opposition on immigration, because the Greens will certainly have no bar of it. That would be the ultimate humiliation, the ultimate defeat and the ultimate betrayal of progressive politics.

There's also mention of a return Temporary Protection Visas and of course, Nauru. It would be funny, except that it's not.

There is, of course, the possibility that the Court's decision will hamper all offshore processing, but we'll have to wait for better legal minds than mine to assess the judgement before we know that. If legislation becomes the only avenue to persist with this nonsense, I have no faith in cooler heads prevailing.

The only positive, and I presume that it will be a small percentage of people that will view it as a positive, is that the Government will still have to take the 4000 refugees currently located in Malaysia. This, combined with the Court's decision, is actually a fantastic result: The intake from Malaysia will come by plane, so I suppose by some sort of punch drunk logic that will make it acceptable to the boat hating residents of this nation. It makes no sense, at least to me, but whatever.

By now, the Government must know they are going to lose the next election. It is only a matter of by how much. Isn't it time to just dump this political folly and fight against the 'prevailing' view on asylum seekers? If you're in an arsehole contest with Tony Abbott, you will lose, so why even participate? I for one am sick of this chicken-shit kowtowing to opinions based on myth and fear. If this government had spent the political capital they had in 2008 to educate the public and work to change opinions they would not be in there current mire, at least not on this issue.

That is the lesson. Don't follow, lead.

But that is obviously too much to ask.