Labor Can Win in Difficult Times - 13th May 2013

Firm steps towards an unlikely Labor win

·       THEO THEOPHANOUS

·       HERALD SUN

·       MAY 13, 2013 12:00AM

A boatload of Sri Lankan asylum seekers arriving  in Geraldton. Picture: Graeme Gibbons

THE Gillard Labor Government faces three monumental negatives in the lead-up to the election: a huge Budget black hole, a credibility problem and its failure to stop the boats even after committing $2.5 billion to do so.

Call me an optimist, but I believe Labor can still win the next election, but it must reclaim its credentials as an economic and financial manager and innovator.

Labor's heritage is replete with examples of tough reforms in financial deregulation, compulsory superannuation, the Medicare levy and strategic investments in nation building - most recently the NBN.

Beyond a NDIS levy it must collect real money from the big miners, introduce a super tax on the big banks, close down tax loopholes that benefit foreign investors and introduce GST on all internet purchases to help local industry. Simultaneously it must deliver on Gonski, restore tertiary and research funding levels and announce nation building infrastructure projects.

It must deliver on those and other measures to balance the Budget over time, deliver on social policy and stimulate economic growth.

Labor should dump the carbon tax and immediately establish an Emissions Trading Scheme.

The carbon tax has allowed Tony Abbott to unfairly but effectively cast Julia Gillard as a liar. It is no longer a debate about climate change, but about the PM's credibility.

Labor needs a circuit breaker. Dumping the carbon tax for an emissions trading scheme would wrong-foot Abbott. He would have to face the substantive issue as many in his team, including Malcolm Turnbull, support an ETS.

Labor should also dump Australia's obligation to process boat people under the UN Refugee Convention as part of a strategy to stop the boats. That may mean that we have to remove Australia as a signatory - at least in the short term - from the convention altogether.

But even that is more honest and humane than detaining families offshore for years in excised parts of Australia or on Manus or Nauru.

Let's be clear, the UN Refugee Convention is outdated, introduced in 1951 to deal with those escaping Communism in Europe. It is in need of review in a world where there are 19 million asylum seekers who may be political refugees but who, in many cases, are seeking a better life.

In removing Australia from the convention, we should make clear that we will still accept big numbers of refugees, but we will send boat people back immediately without processing them.

That will send a powerful message to the people smugglers that if they manage to get people to Australia they will not be processed, they will be sent back. If they come from a holding country like Indonesia - as most do - they may be given a choice to be sent back to rejoin other asylum seekers waiting to be processed in Indonesia or to their country of origin. Once two or three boatloads of people are sent back as soon as they arrive, the people smuggler trade would be killed.

Of course, sending boat people back to Indonesia will require Indonesian support. That will not be difficult if we offer assistance to Indonesia in patrol boats or village programs or other measures to stop the trade while increasing our intake of refugees by 15,000, with a big proportion of those to come from Indonesia.

The approach is dramatic, but less costly and more humane and it will stop the boats. Abbott's way will not stop the boats because people will still risk their lives even if they are going to be treated more harshly than they are now. Turning back the boats in international waters using our Navy is costly and won't work. Desperate people will simply sink their boats and force us to pick them up.

Quite simply, Labor's way should be to save lives by making it clear that if you come by boat, you will not be processed, you will be sent back, and by offering a better life to an extra 15,000 refugees.

These three actions amount to Federal Labor drawing on its rich heritage of achievement in providing security, prosperity and a fair go. But even if it does that, Labor still faces the fight of its life.

Theo Theophanous is a former Victorian government minister