Shit Sandwich

On Monday morning, the ALP was presented with shit sandwich and they had two choices: they could refuse to eat it (because you know, it’s made of shit) or they could do what they have always done with this particular type of sandwich, which is to eat on stage in front of twenty TV cameras, lick the plate, ask for more, and then complain about the taste to their friends and family afterwards. And you know what they did? They ate the fucking sandwich. And the only explanation I have as to why is that they’ve finally got used to the taste.

On Monday morning the ALP had an opportunity to part ways with a strategy on asylum seekers that has never worked and never will. A strategy that started as mitigation of an impending disaster at the 2001 Federal Election, but has turned into a weird permanent half-policy that MPs seem to think they have to keep to hold on to marginal seats. The opportunity was there and it was squandered.

When it comes to the refugee issue, the Federal ALP is in a perpetual mitigation strategy against a mythical electoral annihilation that is constantly on the horizon. 'Electoral annihilation' is the repeated excuse for a refugee policy that is out of step with the progressive, activist wing of the party i.e. the wing that does a majority of the legwork. You would think now that electoral annihilation is actually on the cards for an entirely different reason (ironically one that involves the party actually standing on principle and not populist sentiment) their mitigation on refuges would become moot. They would drop the bullshit and write a policy that befits the party’s progressive tradition and its base.

But they didn’t. And they won’t. And it’s sad.

On Monday Cabinet sat down to decide on a new asylum seeker policy, except they didn’t because they just went with the old one. They then took the same rubbish to caucus. The Left faction fought against it, and pushed onshore processing as a new policy, but they lost, because they are the Left. Meanwhile Tony Abbott is able put down his pitchfork and attempt to take the moral high ground. Seriously, when Tony Abbott is coming at you from the left, you are in extremely dubious moral territory.

Despite Abbott's empty platitudes on the inhumanity of the Malaysia Solution when compared to his inhumane plan, the Federal Government is now going to legislate with the support of the Coalition to overwrite the High Court’s decision on offshore processing. In doing so the ALP has officially ceded the refugee issue to the Coalition. Immigration is now a conservative owned issue (if it wasn't already), for as near to forever as is imaginable. Labor has lost the argument twice by attempting to play both sides, all so they can hold seats in Western Sydney. Do I even have to ask if all the compromise and mitigation was worth it?

It clearly wasn’t.