tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/alp-national-conference-2015-18792/articlesALP national conference 2015 – The Conversation2015-08-05T03:57:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/455812015-08-05T03:57:33Z2015-08-05T03:57:33ZSpot the difference: Labor vs the Coalition on asylum seekers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90728/original/image-20150804-11984-1xf65hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor, like the Coalition, would retain the offshore processing framework and the option of turning back asylum-seeker boats. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Eoin Blackwell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At the ALP national conference in July, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten unveiled a <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-reveals-suite-of-asylum-seeker-measures-45209">suite</a> of measures on asylum seeker policy. This included some that addressed the protection needs of asylum seekers and refugees, such as: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>improving conditions for asylum seekers in offshore detention;</p></li>
<li><p>fast-tracking offshore asylum claims;</p></li>
<li><p>improving procedural safeguards for processing onshore asylum claims; and </p></li>
<li><p>making a substantial contribution to reducing the regional and international refugee burden by doubling Australia’s annual humanitarian intake.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Shorten won an internal battle against the ALP’s Left faction to leave open the option of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-27/bill-shorten-survives-alp-conference-as-leader/6649320">turning back</a> asylum seeker boats if Labor wins government. So, are there any differences left between Labor’s asylum policies and the Coalition’s?</p>
<h2>What has the Abbott government done?</h2>
<p>The respective parties’ national platforms differ in their content on refugee policy. The <a href="http://lpaweb-static.s3.amazonaws.com/FederalPlatform.pdf">Liberal Party platform</a> has one reference to refugees: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… provide international aid and assistance, including a safe haven for refugees, within the limits of our national resources. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, the ALP platform has <a href="https://lab15.org.au/files/Draft%20National%20Platform.pdf">seven pages</a> stating its position on refugees, asylum seekers (which the platform provides are not to be called “illegals”) and migrants.</p>
<p>The Liberal Party’s sole paragraph does not reflect the full range of legislation and policy that it has introduced since winning government in 2013. In addition to retaining then-prime minister Kevin Rudd’s July 2013 <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">announcement</a> of no resettlement in Australia for asylum seekers who arrive by boat, the Coalition government has introduced a range of measures concerning both offshore refugees and onshore asylum seekers, including: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>a reduction in the annual humanitarian intake that Julia Gillard adopted on the <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/thebordercrossingobservatory/files/2015/03/expert_panel_on_asylum_seekers_full_report.pdf">recommendation</a> of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers;</p></li>
<li><p>the introduction of boat turnbacks in international waters under <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/28/australia-confirms-15-boats-carrying-429-asylum-seekers-have-been-turned-back">Operation Sovereign Borders</a>; and</p></li>
<li><p>restrictions on family reunion for onshore and “unauthorised maritime arrivals” (asylum seekers who arrive by boat).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There are also allegations that Australian officials <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-19/indonesia-believes-illicit-payments-made-to-people-smugglers/6559676">paid</a> people smugglers on intercepted boats to return their “human cargo” to Indonesian waters, though the government <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-does-not-deny-australia-paid-people-smugglers-to-turn-back-asylum-seeker-boats-20150611-ghm5ru.html">refused</a> to confirm or deny this.</p>
<h2>So what are the differences?</h2>
<p>Both Labor and the Coalition will permit turn-backs and tow-backs of unauthorised maritime arrivals. Both will continue to direct those who manage to enter Australian waters to offshore processing.</p>
<p>One difference appears to be the conditions of detention for arrivals in offshore detention under a Labor government. Although Labor has said it will not provide resettlement, it appears to have agreed to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-25/marles-promises-border-protection-transparency-under-labor/6648150">provisions</a> to ensure that treatment will be more humane. It will provide an independent advocate for children in detention and require the mandatory reporting of abuse. </p>
<p>Labor would increase co-operation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the resettlement of asylum seekers found to be refugees. It would provide more assistance to countries of “first asylum” – such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia – if they agree to resettle people the UNHCR determines to be refugees.</p>
<p>There appears to be an expectation by both parties that transit countries such as Indonesia will continue to co-operate with boat turn-backs. However, Labor is placing an emphasis on regional co-operation and burden sharing. Shorten <a href="http://billshorten.com.au/speech-to-the-australian-labor-partys-national-conference">referred to</a> a renewed commitment to regional co-operation, with specific reference to strengthening the 2011 <a href="http://www.baliprocess.net/regional-cooperation-framework">Regional Refugee Framework</a> that had been developed under the <a href="http://www.baliprocess.net/">Bali Process</a>.</p>
<p>Labor also said that its aim of increasing the humanitarian intake to 27,000 by 2025 was part of an effort to provide more options to refugees, reduce the need to rely on irregular maritime travel and encourage resettlement in countries of first asylum. </p>
<p>The Coalition government reduced the humanitarian programme from 20,000 resettlement places promised in 2012-13 to 13,750 places in 2014-15. Of these, 6000 were available for <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e487af6.html">UNHCR-referred refugees</a>. </p>
<p>There are some proposed differences in the onshore programme – that is, for those arriving on valid visas, often by plane, and then applying for protection onshore. For those found to be refugees, Labor said that it will remove <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-future-on-temporary-protection-visas-17316">temporary protection visas</a> (TPVs). However, there is no further detail on what will happen to those presently on TPVs, those undergoing processing, or whether permanent residence would be granted in place of TPVs. </p>
<p>The ALP has also said that it would restore the Refugee Review Tribunal and reinstate references to the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49da0e466.html">UN Refugee Convention</a> in the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/">Migration Act</a>. The Labor platform also proposes a 90-day rule for processing onshore protection visa applications.</p>
<p>Overall, Labor’s proposals would result in measures that would improve procedural and processing safeguards under the onshore programme. But, like the Coalition government, it would retain the offshore processing framework and the option of boat turn-backs. </p>
<p>Relating to the continuation of offshore processing, Labor said it will commit to deeper regional co-operation on a refugee humanitarian intake scheme. It will increase the annual intake under Australia’s humanitarian programme to address the regional need for more resettlement places. </p>
<p>The policy of boat turn-backs and tow-backs, now supported by both main political parties, does not meet Australia’s <a href="http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/%E2%80%98turning-back-boats%E2%80%99">obligations</a> under international law. The action is dangerous to all involved. </p>
<p>Placing Australia in a global context, it is worth noting that in 2015, with 137,000 refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea between January and June, the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/5592bd059.html">European Union</a> opted not to proceed with a boat turn-back or tow-back policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Darling is affiliated with the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service as a volunteer migration advisor.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Davies receives funding from Australian Government (Australian Research Council).</span></em></p>Following the Labor conference’s decision to leave open the option of turning back asylum seeker boats, are there any differences left between Labor’s asylum policies and the Coalition’s?Emily Darling, PhD Candidate and Sessional Academic, Queensland University of TechnologySara Davies, ARC Future Fellow, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452332015-07-30T20:14:31Z2015-07-30T20:14:31ZReviewing an anachronism? Labor to debate future of socialist objective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90220/original/image-20150730-10344-10nkvmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">NSW Labor leader Luke Foley moved a motion for Labor to review its 'socialist objective', which dates back to 1921.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2015 ALP national conference <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/alp-conference-2015-1921-socialist-objective-under-review/story-e6frgd0x-1227457897644">agreed</a> that there will be a review of the <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">Labor platform’s</a> so-called “socialist objective”. The review follows calls from the likes of NSW Labor leader <a href="http://www.lukefoley.com.au/wran_lecture">Luke Foley</a> to revise the party’s objective, given that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… no-one in the party today argues that state ownership is Labor’s central, defining purpose.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How the socialist objective has evolved</h2>
<p>The socialist objective dates from a more radical time in the ALP’s history. When it was written in 1921, the Labor Party was responding to a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_Little_History_of_the_Australian_Labor.html?id=rsIcQ4M1yMkC">period</a> of industrial unrest and economic uncertainty following the first world war. </p>
<p>However, even then the party’s original 1921 commitment to “the nationalisation of banking and all principal industries” was quickly watered down to suggest that collective ownership was necessary only where such industries were being operated in an <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_Little_History_of_the_Australian_Labor.html?id=rsIcQ4M1yMkC">exploitative and socially harmful way</a>. </p>
<p>That important proviso remains in the party platform’s current socialist objective, which reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words already leave a convenient loophole for those modern Labor Party politicians who argue that a healthy private sector is essential for economic growth and employment; that capitalism is not inherently exploitative; and that some basic government regulation, good industrial relations legislation and active unions – rather than nationalisation – is all that is needed to prevent problems of exploitation.</p>
<p>It is well over half a century since a Labor government attempted to nationalise an industry. In 1947, the Chifley government <a href="http://www.chifley.org.au/ben-chifley-bank-nationalisation/">unsuccessfully attempted</a> to nationalise the banks – a move which was found to be unconstitutional. However, Ben Chifley only resorted to nationalisation after Labor’s previous attempts to bring in increased government powers over private banking had failed. </p>
<p>Far from being part of a radical socialist agenda, Chifley’s attempts to have more government control over banking arose from his belief that the private banks were resisting Keynesian-style financial stimulation policies and were not adequately funding the development of Australian manufacturing industry. </p>
<p>With the exception of the banks, Chifley was generally very <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8497.1986.tb00339.x/abstract">supportive</a> of private industry, particularly manufacturing. </p>
<p>So, while <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-08-20/interview-steve-austin-612-abc-brisbane">Tony Abbott</a> and <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/freedom-of-speech-media-diversity-and-the-nbn-address-in-reply-speech">Malcolm Turnbull</a> may occasionally accuse the Labor Party of being fundamentally socialist, it is many years since Labor governments attempted any form of nationalisation. </p>
<h2>Why the calls for reform?</h2>
<p>The national conference decision is not the first attempt to remove or substantially water down Labor’s socialist objective. There was also a concerted attempt in the early 1980s, in which Gareth Evans played a leading role. He published key <a href="http://www.gevans.org/pubs.html">arguments</a> critiquing the objective. Some of the 23 <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">sub-paragraphs</a> that modify and explain Labor’s current objective date from that time.</p>
<p>Consequently, the ALP’s socialist objective now has much less political significance than British Labour’s equivalent, <a href="http://www.labourcounts.com/oldclausefour.htm">Clause IV</a>. Tony Blair <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/New_Britain.html?id=KgCij_4NSqYC&redir_esc=y">argued</a> that the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… ideological refoundation of the party took place through the revision of Clause 1V. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blair saw it as a central part of the modernisation process that separated <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/uk/labour/941004blair-new-labour-speech.shtml">“New Labour”</a> from its socialist and, in his view, overly trade union past.</p>
<p>Years before Blair revised Clause IV and trumpeted New Labour’s arrival, the ALP under prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating had been moving in a <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2002/00000030/00000001/art00002">similar direction</a>. The ALP began placing an increased emphasis on the positive role of markets and private enterprise in achieving the party’s aims of economic growth, full employment and equality of opportunity. </p>
<p>Hawke and Keating had introduced their economic rationalist policies with the support of the trade union movement. They had even increased private profits by <a href="http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:195374/JQ4031_J64_2000.pdf">trading off</a> real wage increases and some working conditions in return for providing superannuation, education and welfare benefits. </p>
<p>The Rudd government did not embrace such economic rationalism as enthusiastically as Hawke and Keating had. Nonetheless, both the Rudd and Gillard governments still saw a healthy private sector as having a crucial role to play in achieving <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8497.2011.01614.x/abstract">Labor’s aims</a>. Kevin Rudd and – contrary to popular opinion – <a href="http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/121064/20111205-0008/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/labor-australia-movement-address-chifley-research-centre-canberra.html">Julia Gillard</a> both saw the ALP as already being a modern social democratic party.</p>
<p>So, given that retaining the socialist objective hasn’t prevented Labor from developing pro-market policies, why is it still seen as such a significant issue? Why does it still generate passionate debate? </p>
<p>The objective’s <a href="http://www.lukefoley.com.au/wran_lecture">opponents</a> argue that it is time to make a definitive and symbolic break with Labor’s more radical socialist past. They claim Labor needs to reformulate its social democratic objectives given that nationalisation is no longer on the party’s agenda.</p>
<p>Since that clearly is the case, why are others still wanting to hold on to the objective? One reason is that the objective does reference a time when the ALP still had a critique of capitalist markets, even if a somewhat qualified one. </p>
<p>Also, vague references to “democratic socialisation” – and only when essential to prevent “exploitation” and “anti-social features” – can potentially include a variety of regulatory measures or forms of public sector provision, not just nationalisation. The sub-paragraphs explaining the objective make that clear. Many left-wing ALP members are concerned that Labor’s embrace of market-based solutions has gone <a href="http://www.challengemagazine.com.au/our_socialist_objective">too far</a>.</p>
<p>After all, if there are no significant problems with relying on markets, why do we even need social democratic parties like the ALP? Consequently, Labor’s socialist objective has a much deeper significance than appears to be the case at first sight. Rather than just being an anachronism, it still raises issues about the ALP’s fundamental nature and political mission.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Johnson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Given that retaining the socialist objective hasn’t prevented the ALP from developing pro-market policies, why is it still seen as such a significant issue?Carol Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/453152015-07-30T02:52:34Z2015-07-30T02:52:34ZBuffett rule a proxy for real tax reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90231/original/image-20150730-10358-1cgga6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Warren Buffett: "When a country needs more income they should get it from the people that have it."</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fortune Live Media/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2011 investment guru and billionaire Warren Buffett wrote an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=2&hp%20in%20which">opinion piece </a> revealing he pays a lower rate of federal tax than most of the employees in his office. Although other commentators disputed this as a point of fact, the moral principle was set out clearly: tax breaks are available for the rich that are not available to those without the resources to take advantage of them. </p>
<p>This led to a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/Buffett_Rule_Report_Final.pdf">2012 proposal</a> from US President Barack Obama to introduce a minimum tax rate ensuring a person does not pay less than a specified percentage of their income in income tax. The US proposal applied to households that earn more than US$1 million, and set a minimum tax rate of 30% of household income. </p>
<p>The proposal for the “Buffett Rule” did not make it into law as the Senate voted it down at the first opportunity.</p>
<h2>Australian proposals</h2>
<p>The proposal for a Buffett rule has been added to the tax reform agenda here in Australia with the <a href="https://www.laborherald.com.au/economy/how-the-warren-buffet-rule-became-an-official-alp-thing/">ALP voting</a> to include it in its platform. The ALP proposal would apply to people with a gross income of more than A$300,000.</p>
<p>The proposal has not been ruled out by the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, despite it not being included in the tax discussion paper released in March of this year. </p>
<p>Around the world there is evidence that inequality is rising. A redistributive tax and transfer system can moderate inequality through application of progressive tax rates. In a progressive system wealthy people should be paying more tax but as a proportion of their income, middle income earners may carry a higher tax burden than some high income earners, because of the availability of tax expenditures and business structures that allow high income earners to reduce their taxable income.</p>
<p>Data in the <a href="http://bettertax.gov.au/publications/discussion-paper/">Re:think Tax Discussion Paper</a> shows that taxpayers in the highest tax brackets access a higher value of tax expenditures, although it represents a lower proportion of their total income.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90213/original/image-20150729-30854-nnwcqh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://bettertax.gov.au/files/2015/03/03_Individuals.pdf">Treasury estimates based on ATO 2014, Taxation Statistics 2011-12, ATO, Canberra.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is difficult to argue against a proposition that high income earners should be paying a higher average tax rate than low income earners; and generally that is the case. Although it is true that in 2012-13 55 millionaires paid no tax, overall there are only a small number of Australians that earned more than A$180,000 in 2012-13 who paid a marginal tax rate less than 30%.</p>
<p>This does, however, represent erosion of the tax base.</p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/TC7cc/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="472"></iframe>
<h2>Buffett tax v base broadening</h2>
<p>A Buffett rule is a proxy for base broadening. It can be compared to the adjusted taxable income that is used to calculate access to a range of transfer payments. Average tax rates are a very crude measure of inequity in the system. In the Australian context we need to remember that the transfer system is the main tool for redistribution, and the means testing applied for eligibility to many benefits is based on a broader income base than taxable income.</p>
<p>The political argument to adopt a Buffett rule is much easier to sustain than other arguments to expand the tax base. The government has ruled out changes to negative gearing and superannuation concessions, which would have a similar effect to the Buffett rule in ensuring the tax base is broadened. The difference is that these tax shelters are also utilised by middle income Australians, and would have a much broader impact.</p>
<h2>Complexity</h2>
<p>It is not good policy to extrapolate from one tax system to another without fully understanding the nuances of each system; such as the different taxation treatment of dividends, property and capital gains. The introduction of a Buffett rule also brings other complexities into the tax system. </p>
<p>The United States has had an <a href="http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc556.html">Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)</a> since 1969, specifically designed to address the problem of high income earners not paying their fair share of tax. The AMT is a flat rate of tax applied to the taxpayers income, <a href="http://example.com/">recalculated</a> to reduce access to certain deductions and tax shelters. For example, the AMT rate of 28% that applies to couples with income greater than $182,500 (2014 rate) is lower than the normal rate of 39.6%, but on a higher alternative income base. However it has been <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/fixing-alternative-minimum-tax">criticised</a> as it requires a double tax calculation, and still does not address the concessional tax rates on capital gains and dividends. </p>
<p>I will leave the <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/warrenbuff412766.html">last word </a>to Warren Buffett:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15% of GDP (US), I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Hodgson was an Australian Democrat member of the WA Legislative Council from 1997 to 2001. She is not currently a member of any political party. She is currently a member of the Taxation Institute of Australia, CPA Australia and the SMSF Association. </span></em></p>Why is there a tax policy named after the world’s third richest man?Helen Hodgson, Associate Professor, Curtin Law School. Curtin Business School, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452342015-07-28T01:30:26Z2015-07-28T01:30:26ZALP demands ‘marriage equality’, but it’s possible to be equal but different<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89770/original/image-20150727-28907-9xjz9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In a marriage, a man and a woman beget children who are ‘flesh of their flesh’.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-62050450/stock-photo-newborn-baby-girl-right-after-delivery-shallow-focus.html?src=Zr3dSXsST099wwVc2mA3ng-1-55">Shutterstock/Kati Molin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Much of the debate at the weekend ALP conference on the motion related to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-26/labor-party-national-conference-same-sex-marriage-vote/6648834">“marriage equality”</a>. If only the issue of same-sex marriage was that simple and straightforward.</p>
<p>Does equality mean being the same, or is it possible to be equal but different? </p>
<p>Those committed to redefining marriage to include same-sex couples argue the first part of the question. For them, equality means giving gay and lesbian people the same right to marry as held by heterosexuals. That the current Commonwealth legislation <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma196185/s5.html">defines marriage</a> as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life” is seen as promoting inequality.</p>
<p>But if it is possible to be equal but different, then such an argument carries no weight. Women with young children who decide to stay at home rather than enter the workforce are no less equal than those women employed in the workforce. All should be respected and be treated fairly and equally.</p>
<p>Young people who undertake a vocational education and training course in years 11 and 12 and go on to an apprenticeship or TAFE course, while different to those who complete a professionally oriented degree at a university, also deserve equality.</p>
<h2>Rights under the law</h2>
<p>Contrary to the impression that same-sex-attracted couples are discriminated against, the reality, for all intents and purposes in areas like the law, superannuation and dealing with financial matters, is that they have the same rights as heterosexual couples, both de facto and married.</p>
<p>After a <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/sexual-orientation-sex-gender-identity/projects/same-sex-same-entitlements">review</a> by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the then-Rudd government passed legislation that, the parliamentary library <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook43p/samesexmarriage">records</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… significantly changed the legal status of same-sex couples, recognising them on an equal footing to de facto couples in areas as diverse as taxation law, social security law, immigration and superannuation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also legal for same-sex couples to adopt children in most states and territories.</p>
<p>As detailed in a pastoral letter <a href="http://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2015/2015528_1872.shtml">written by</a> the Catholic Bishops of Australia, it is also the case that same-sex-attracted individuals are equal to heterosexuals in the eyes of God.</p>
<p>The pastoral letter, <a href="http://www.sydneycatholic.org/pdf/DMM-booklet_web.pdf">Don’t Mess with Marriage</a>, begins by arguing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Catholic tradition teaches that every human being is a unique and irreplaceable person, created in the image of God and loved by him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While some try and silence the church by arguing it is homophobic, the truth is that the bishops’ letter states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Catholic Church opposes all forms of unjust discrimination. We deplore injustices perpetrated upon people because of religion, sex, race, age etc.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The argument that defining marriage as between a man and a woman is unfairly discriminatory is also wrong. It is possible to discriminate for just and valid reasons.</p>
<p>For instance, and with the exception of some British migrants, only Australian citizens are allowed to vote in elections; faith-based schools have the <a href="https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2015C00275">legal right</a> to say “no” to employing staff who would offend or injure the “religious sensitivities of people of the religion”; and many women-only clubs have the right to exclude men.</p>
<h2>A union ‘in one flesh’</h2>
<p>True, defining marriage as between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation does discriminate against same-sex-attracted people, but for justifiable reasons.</p>
<p>While often seen as the elephant in the room, same-sex couples are not able to conceive and bear children in the same way that the overwhelming majority of heterosexual couples do. In terms of physiology, men complement women and women complement men, the way nature intended.</p>
<p>As noted in the Catholic Church’s pastoral letter, it is also true that the union of a man and a woman, as opposed to a man and a man or a woman and a woman, represents a unique and distinctive relationship.</p>
<p>The bishops argue:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their physical, spiritual, psychological and sexual differences show they are meant for each other, their union makes them whole, and through their union ‘in one flesh’ they together beget children who are ‘flesh of their flesh’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such is not to deny that same-sex-attracted individuals can experience a deep and lasting love for one another and that they have the right to live together free of unfair and unjust discrimination. Rather, it is to argue equality can be achieved while accepting difference.</p>
<p>The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines marriage as “the action, or an act, of marrying; the ceremony by which two persons are made man and wife”. Over thousands of years, and with one or two minor exceptions, cultures have defined marriage as involving heterosexuals as opposed to same-sex couples.</p>
<p>This is why Western culture, in art, music, literature, ballads and popular songs, treats the love and intimacy between a man and a women as one of the highest and most profound expressions of a union between two people.</p>
<p>Poems like Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, sculptures like Rodin’s The Kiss and D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, plus much of opera, place the love of a woman and a man centre stage. As written by the English playwright John Ford:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth,</p>
<p>Life’s paradise, great princess, the soul’s quiet,</p>
<p>Sinews of concord, earthly immortality.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Donnelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The reality, for all intents and purposes in areas like the law, superannuation and dealing with financial matters, is that same-sex couples have the same rights as heterosexual couples.Kevin Donnelly, Senior Research Fellow - School of Education, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452612015-07-27T11:07:47Z2015-07-27T11:07:47ZAbbott’s $60 billion cost for Labor’s renewables goal came from ‘back of envelope’<p>Tony Abbott encountered some heavy weather on Monday as he sought to discredit Labor’s goal of having 50% of Australian’s electricity from renewables by 2030, and to conjure up the spectre of a Labor electricity tax.</p>
<p>As Abbott and his ministers attacked Labor on various fronts after its national conference, Abbott said the 50% goal “will mean a massive bill, perhaps A$60 billion or more, that will have to be carried by the consumers.</p>
<p>"So you’ve got two big hits on families, two big hits on consumers, coming out of the Labor conference” – the other being “their renewed commitment to an electricity tax.</p>
<p>"In fact, the ETS [emissions trading scheme] that Labor keeps talking about might as well be called an electricity tax scam” that would be scamming consumers for “decades and decades”, Abbott said.</p>
<p>When asked the basis for the $60 billion figure, the prime minister’s office referred to an <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/renewable-energy-glut-of-supply-will-raise-prices/story-e6frg9df-1227453225244">article in the Australian</a> last week, quoting ACIL Allen Consulting’s chief executive Paul Hyslop, who said that if the Labor goal were to be met by wind power it would require 10,000-11,000 extra turbines, with capital costs for these alone of $65 billion.</p>
<p>But on Monday, Owen Kelp, a principal with ACIL who specialises in the energy sector and leads projects analysing Australia’s electricity, natural gas and renewable energy markets, told Sky TV that the $60 billion was a “fairly simplistic, back-of-the-envelope calculation”, based on the capital cost of wind technology.</p>
<p>In other words, Abbott seems to be using the cost of apples (constructing turbines) to say what would be the cost of pears (the burden on consumers of Labor’s goal). And the firm that did the calculation says it was rough anyway.</p>
<p>But, right or wrong, Abbott achieved his aim of getting a big number out there.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Malcolm Turnbull was fogging up Abbott’s description of Labor’s proposed ETS – of which we have no detail yet – as an “electricity tax scam”.</p>
<p>Asked whether an ETS was a tax, Turnbull chose to be precise rather than polemical. He said there were two answers to the question.</p>
<p>“There has been a distinction drawn in the debate about methods of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions between a fixed price cost on carbon which people have typically called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits”, with the price depending on supply and demand, “and that’s an ETS”, Turnbull said.</p>
<p>“And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’re talking about the virtue of a tax versus the virtue of an ETS. But either way they are both a cost so yes, you can call them both generically a tax.”</p>
<p>Abbott prefers a blunter formulation – that Labor’s planned scheme is a tax, floating or not.</p>
<p>Turnbull also pointed to the home truth that “there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions … as long as emissions intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low emissions forms”.</p>
<p>“As long as that’s the case, then whether it’s a regulation, whether it’s a renewable energy target, whether it’s an ETS or whether it’s a carbon tax - a fixed price – all of those can be seen to be a cost on the business of generating energy, therefore a cost on households purchasing energy and therefore in that sense a tax”.</p>
<p>So everything is a “tax” if you choose to look at things that way.</p>
<p>Labor was quick to recall that Turnbull and Abbott had history on the ETS – Turnbull was turfed out as opposition leader after a massive upheaval over his support for the Rudd government’s ETS, and Abbott replaced him.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on another front, Victorian Liberal backbencher Sarah Henderson has urged that the government back off its direction to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation not to invest in wind farms and household and small-scale solar.</p>
<p>Henderson told the ABC she had written to Finance Minister Mathias Cormann asking him to consider that emerging technologies in wind and small-scale solar be included in the new investment mandate the government has given the corporation.</p>
<p>“It’s very important not to exclude small-scale solar and also wind, because there are new and emerging technologies in these sectors as well,” Henderson said.</p>
<p>Henderson has been a strong advocate for renewables. They are popular with her constituents in her marginal electorate – as they are in the seats of a number of Coalition colleagues.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-anthony-albanese-and-richard-marles-from-the-alp-national-conference-45217">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Labor’s Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
<iframe id="audio_iframe" src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/pq6r5-5799a0?from=wp" data-link="http://www.podbean.com/media/player/pq6r5-5799a0?from=wp" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Tony Abbott encountered some heavy weather on Monday as he sought to discredit Labor’s goal of having 50% of Australian’s electricity from renewables by 2030, and to conjure up the spectre of a Labor electricity…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452422015-07-27T06:36:25Z2015-07-27T06:36:25ZForeign policy and the ALP national conference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89775/original/image-20150727-7662-1m39og3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Foreign policy occupied a surprisingly prominent and controversial place at the ALP national conference. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the most contentious topic was asylum seeker policy – an issue that invariably serves to remind us that domestic and foreign policy cannot either be neatly compartmentalised, nor insulated, from deeply felt moral concerns within the Labor caucus. </p>
<p>As Alex Reilly <a href="https://theconversation.com/alp-national-conference-experts-respond-44655">points out</a>, the conventional wisdom among the Labor hard-heads and the commentariat more generally has rapidly become that this is a potentially toxic political issue and one in which the ALP’s head must rule its heart. It is a message that Bill Shorten has clearly taken on board, as it were, as it supposedly gives him a chance to both enhance his languishing poll numbers and shore up his authority within the party.</p>
<p>While asylum seekers may have grabbed the headlines, other issues were noteworthy for being canvassed at least, even if they have not led to dramatic changes in policy. The ALP is flirting with the possibility of putting some policy space between it and the Coalition on both the status of the US alliance and relations with Palestine – and, by implication, Israel. </p>
<p>Given that all these issues have been virtual no-go, no-differentiation areas of foreign policy for both the major parties for as long as most people can remember, this is not insignificant. </p>
<p>However, it is striking that once in power it is actually less likely that there will be significant change. It is only in opposition or after having hung up one’s political boots that deviations from policy orthodoxy seem to be even thinkable, never mind actionable.</p>
<p>Another case in point may prove to be China. In the hurly-burly of a union-dominated conference, drawing attention to the possible shortcomings of trade deals with China or the pernicious impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will go down well with the rank and file, no doubt. </p>
<p>Once in office, however, the prospect of trying to unpick an operational trade agreement with our principal economic partner that was years in the making looks rather implausible. This is especially likely to be the case in the all-too-likely event that the tentative mutterings about redefining the strategic relationship with the US turns out to be something of a conference-inspired thought-bubble, rather than a carefully calibrated attempt to critically reassess the nature of “Australia’s national interest”.</p>
<p>If the ALP conference has done nothing else, though, it has provided a rather compelling illustration of why what may seem to some a rather precious academic affectation is actually merited. The sometimes heated, unresolved and contested debate about what policy should actually be reminds us why the employment of inverted commas is sometimes necessary.</p>
<p>The “national interest” is frequently just what the most powerful political party of the moment says it is. A mature recognition of, and debate about, that underlying political reality really would set the ALP apart. Whether the Labor Party is ready for that is another question. </p>
<p>To pretend that there is seamless and unproblematic coherence about foreign or any other policy is hardly credible, though, in an era of closely monitored and reported national conferences. The public increasingly recognises the gap between rhetoric and reality, even if the major parties still like to pretend otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Foreign policy occupied a surprisingly prominent and controversial place at the ALP national conference. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the most contentious topic was asylum seeker policy – an issue that invariably…Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/448252015-07-26T20:12:37Z2015-07-26T20:12:37ZNational conference subdued about Labor revival as Shorten gets his way<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89718/original/image-20150726-8461-1am6yxz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten took on some members of his party at Labor's national conference on contentious policy issues – and won.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After Labor <a href="https://theconversation.com/tasmania-election-aftermath-what-now-for-the-apple-isle-24218">lost government</a> in Tasmania last March, the ALP was in opposition federally and in all states across the country, with the sole exception of South Australia. Sixteen months later Labor has returned to power in two more states, <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-labor-triumph-or-coalition-disaster-or-neither-34364">Victoria</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-on-the-brink-of-a-shock-election-win-in-queensland-36983">Queensland</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/turc-choppergate-roughly-cancel-out-in-polls-44990">leads consistently</a> in federal opinion polls.</p>
<p>One might have expected, then, more jubilation at its national conference than seemed to be the case. My impression was of being in the members’ section of a football team that was down on its luck but determined to keep up its spirits at all costs.</p>
<p>At a time of declining party loyalties, Labor’s national conference is a rallying point for the true believers. It is a chance to reassert their commitment both to a vision of Australia and the election of a Labor government.</p>
<p>Cynics argue that Labor is wedged between the left purists of the Greens and the populist right represented, if only fleetingly, by Clive Palmer. But given the constraints of a gathering of 400 delegates, the ALP’s national conference is a remarkable event.</p>
<h2>Shorten wins on turnbacks</h2>
<p>As I was leaving the conference hall after the asylum-seeker debate, the woman next to me said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well, now maybe I should join the Greens. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To which her neighbour responded: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But aren’t you proud to be in a party that is able to hold a debate like this?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The debate, which became a test of Labor leader Bill Shorten’s commitment to keeping the option for boat turnbacks, was the conference’s emotional and political highlight. Large numbers of Labor members are deeply troubled by Australia’s record, and struggling to find a more humane solution.</p>
<p>In making boat turnbacks a test of his leadership, Shorten was gambling that he could take on many in his party – including three of his most senior federal colleagues in Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese – and win.</p>
<h2>Lost opportunity to debate foreign policy</h2>
<p>Unlike other potentially contentious issues, that of turnbacks could not be resolved by a compromise. Shorten’s opponents went into the hall knowing they would lose and accepting the need to rally behind the leader. </p>
<p>This was very different to the question of Palestinian recognition, where a compromise was hammered out behind closed doors with a more critical stance towards Israel than Shorten’s supporters wanted.</p>
<p>The vote on Palestine was delayed while powerbrokers argued over wording before presenting a motion, which passed without debate. Frontbench MP and right-wing powerbroker Tony Burke spoke to both this and the asylum issue. This might suggest he is being groomed as a future Labor leader.</p>
<p>Shorten did not discuss foreign policy in his opening address. Even in the session devoted to it there was little criticism of the broad directions of the Abbott government – except around development assistance, which Plibersek has made her major theme as shadow foreign minister. </p>
<p>As Australia is a major participant in the campaigns against Islamic State, one might have expected more debate on Labor’s support for this commitment.</p>
<h2>Where now for Labor?</h2>
<p>Conferences are about solidifying the leadership, mobilising the base and providing opportunities for a new generation of leaders to present themselves. Fairfax Media’s Adam Gartrell <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-national-conference-the-oppositions-five-rising-stars-20150725-gikah0.html">identified</a> five rising Labor parliamentarians: Terri Butler, Pat Conroy, Ed Husic, Clare O’Neil and Tim Watts. I’d add Andrew Giles, who moved the left motion to oppose turnbacks.</p>
<p>At times there was a weird disjuncture between the parliamentary leaders, all of whom were senior ministers in the Rudd/Gillard governments, and the determination of the conference organisers not to remind us of the recent past. There was no former prime minister in the audience to be applauded. </p>
<p>But in the invocation of an emissions trading scheme and his emphasis on jobs, education and health, Shorten was establishing continuity with the past – even if no-one was wearing Kevin ’07 T-shirts.</p>
<p>National conferences, as Senator Kim Carr told me, lay down broad directions rather than policy. Predictably, the conference reaffirmed opposition to university deregulation. Carr insists that claims Labor won’t adequately fund higher education are, in his words, “bullshit”. Universities might anticipate hard questions about the “massive expansion of their senior management” if Labor wins government.</p>
<p>Over the weekend several thousand people passed in and out of the conference. They attended the open discussions organised through the Labor Fringe, taking materials from the 20 or so stalls carrying everything from EMILY’s List tea towels illustrating Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech, to yoyos and free water from the health promotion booth.</p>
<p>Around the booths area one could see a remarkable cross-section of Australia. There were rusted-on party veterans alongside large groups of young supporters, many of them wearing the green T-shirts of Labor for Environment, the red of Labor for Refugees or the multi-colours of Rainbow Labor. </p>
<p>The Labor Party’s future depends on its ability to steer its vision for a more progressive Australia through the twin obstacles of public suspicion and the still-powerful party oligarchies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Labor Party’s future depends on its ability to steer its vision for a more progressive Australia through the twin obstacles of public suspicion and the still-powerful party oligarchies.Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452172015-07-26T11:19:25Z2015-07-26T11:19:25ZPolitics podcast: Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles from the ALP national conference<p>In a special episode recorded live at the ALP national conference, Michelle Grattan sat down with infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese to discuss the conference itself and then with immigration spokesman Richard Marles to talk about the ALP controversially adopting asylum seeker boat turnbacks.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michelle Grattan speaks with infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese about the ALP national conference and then with immigration spokesman Richard Marles about boat turnbacks.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/446552015-07-26T09:04:33Z2015-07-26T09:04:33ZALP national conference: experts respond<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89713/original/image-20150726-8465-1owbx44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ALP's national conference, held in Melbourne over the weekend, was Bill Shorten's first as Labor leader.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bill Shorten survived an internal push for a future Labor government to ban turning back asylum seeker boats at the ALP national conference.</p>
<p>The party’s three-day national conference, which concluded in Melbourne on Sunday, also resolved to recognise Palestinian statehood “if there is no progress in the next round of the peace process”, committed federal MPs to a binding vote in favour of same-sex marriage after another two parliamentary terms and made small progress on internal party reform.</p>
<p>The Conversation’s experts were watching the conference with an eye across key policy areas. Their responses follow.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Asylum seekers</h2>
<p><strong>Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School at University of Adelaide</strong></p>
<p>As a result of the ALP national conference’s failure to ban turning back asylum seeker boats, there is nothing to distinguish the architecture of Labor and the Coalition’s asylum seeker policies. Both are committed to a unilateral response to boat arrivals that involves turnbacks and offshore processing to ensure no asylum seeker arriving by boat will be granted protection in Australia.</p>
<p>This is a stunning concession to the Coalition’s hardline policy. The Coalition has won the debate on turnbacks. It is now mainstream policy. And yet, we would do well to remember just how dramatic the policy is. </p>
<p>The policy is pursued in the face of the objections of Indonesia – to whom the majority of turnbacks are directed. It is in clear contravention of Australia’s voluntarily assumed obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. It is undertaken at considerable risk to the asylum seekers who are forcibly returned to the shores of Australia’s international neighbours.</p>
<p>The assessment of it being “safe” to carry out the policy would seem to refer only to a narrow assessment of the seaworthiness of boats that are turned back with no regard for the personal circumstances of the asylum seekers on board, or their subsequent plight.</p>
<p>The Labor left moved a motion to ban turnbacks. It argued instead for a policy that pursued strong regional and international arrangements and improved the protection outcomes of asylum seekers before they reached Australia by boat.</p>
<p>The motion was doomed to fail – it did not address the dilemma for Labor in formulating its asylum seeker policy. It is clear that Labor must take to the next election a policy that guarantees that asylum seeker boats will not again arrive in large numbers under its watch. </p>
<p>Both Labor’s left and the right missed an opportunity at the national conference to pursue an alternative way. The policy Labor takes to the next election need not focus on stopping the boats – as far as we know, this has all but been achieved. Labor only needs to ensure that the boats do not start coming again in significant numbers. This outcome is more easily achieved, and does not require either a turnback policy or regional processing on Nauru or Manus Island.</p>
<p>The answer lies in a much more robust engagement with both Malaysia and Indonesia. Labor’s 2011 agreement with Malaysia offers a useful blueprint. As I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-labor-can-create-a-humane-refugee-policy-without-reviving-boat-arrivals-44132">outlined</a> previously, a return to a policy along these lines preserves the human rights of asylum seekers and offers an opportunity to engage positively with Malaysia and Indonesia, with whom we share the dilemma of addressing the needs of asylum seekers in our region.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Climate change and energy</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography at University of Melbourne</strong></p>
<p>In tackling climate policy head on at its 2015 party conference, Labor made a virtue out of necessity. There is no way it could have done anything else. The alternative was being bludgeoned by the Coalition about its “hidden plans” for a carbon tax and emissions trading between now and the next election.</p>
<p>And so Shorten went out on the front foot. He used his opening speech at the conference to aggressively promote climate as a key electoral issue. He affirmed that Labor will support a target of 50% of stationary energy from renewables by 2030 and establish a national emissions trading scheme (ETS). </p>
<p>The platform also indicates that Labor will introduce tougher vehicle emissions standards and provide ongoing support for important climate institutional innovations – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority – created by previous Labor governments and attacked by Abbott.</p>
<p>The platform and Shorten’s comments use four narrative claims that aim to frame and capture the initiative for Labor in the upcoming climate debate:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Shorten emphasised climate is “an economic and environmental cancer that demands early intervention”. In other words, this issue is about national security and “national health”. </p></li>
<li><p>Labor is pushing for innovation and investment in a “clean energy future” – a claim that fits with Labor’s traditional self-representation as Australia’s only party of national modernisation. </p></li>
<li><p>Shorten underscored the policy’s economic and social responsibility. It will produce – rather than cost – investment and jobs, and lower household energy bills. </p></li>
<li><p>Shorten and his environment spokesman, Mark Butler, have aimed to blunt Coalition claims of “rash leadership” by arguing this new policy is merely trying to catch up with others, and is specifically following the lead of major economies like the US and China.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So what could be better and what’s missing? </p>
<p>Electricity production is currently responsible for around 33% of Australia’s national emissions. The ALP’s renewables announcement therefore implies a national emissions reduction target of at least 16% below present levels by 2030. </p>
<p>With the ETS and the use of other emissions reduction and energy efficiency measures, tougher targets are possible. And they are essential if Australia is to do its fair share in keeping global warming well below two degress Celsius.</p>
<p>Given the Abbott government’s ongoing refusal to divulge Australia’s targets in the run-up to the UN climate negotiations in Paris this year – Australia is the only developed country to not have done so - Labor missed an important political opportunity by not now announcing its own national emissions targets and national carbon budget for 2025, 2030 and beyond. </p>
<p>These targets and the carbon budget could have been justified in reference to the research of the Climate Change Authority – just as Labor’s platform does for vehicle emissions standards.</p>
<p>Labor also failed to make any mention of tackling Australia’s very substantial public subsidy to the fossil fuel sector. The International Monetary Fund recently reported that Australia’s subsidy to this sector to expected be around A$41 billion in 2015, or around 2% of GDP. </p>
<p>Ending this environmentally destructive subsidy would help level the economic playing field between alternative energy sources and provide significant additional revenue for the budget – including for investment in renewables. On this matter too, the ALP platform is silent.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Party reform</h2>
<p><strong>Rob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University</strong></p>
<p>The late British Labour MP Tony Benn once quipped that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>New Labour is the smallest political party that’s existed in Britain – the only problem is that they are all in cabinet. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tony Blair and the modernisers made reform the party a central part of his efforts to re-make the party. His greatest achievement was to re-write Clause IV – de-socialising UK Labour’s key aim.</p>
<p>The Australian Labor Party, under Bill Shorten’s leadership, has deferred its “Clause IV” moment. Modernisers, especially on the right, won the conference battle to “review” the long-standing socialist objective. </p>
<p>In a feisty debate, NSW Labor leader Luke Foley led the battle to re-write the ALP’s core mission, calling for an objective that “true believers can believe in”. Veteran Kim Carr led the counter-charge, with a pointed “Comrade, I could not disagree with you more” and some old style tub-thumping.</p>
<p>On other reform matters, Labor has, in classic style, tentatively and messily moved forward. Conference committed to increasing Indigenous membership and required state branches to direct elect delegates. Kevin Rudd’s leadership changes were endorsed. Labor’s gender 40:40:20 rule will eventually become a stronger 50:50, but only by 2025. Critical issues like changing the trade union block vote were not even debated.</p>
<p>This all suits Shorten. Labor has signalled some progressive intent, but the difficult decisions have yet again been postponed and deferred – the same-sex marriage amendment is a perfect example. Internally, the left faction has not been able to impose itself.</p>
<p>Debates on internal rules are often dismissed as party “navel-gazing”. While they have little immediate impact on the party’s electoral appeal, they remain central to what the party stands for. Blair knew this, which is why changing Clause IV was such an early crusade.</p>
<p>Shorten, despite his modernising tendencies, is unlike Blair. First, he lacks a cohort of like-minded modernisers. Second, his “vision” of modernising the party is neither as clear nor radical. This might just help get him into office, but it remains hazy what he might do if he got there. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Education</h2>
<p><strong>Bill Louden, Emeritus Professor of Education at University of Western Australia</strong></p>
<p>The Labor values underpinning the education platform are reassuringly familiar: equity, access and inclusion. The platform hits all the contemporary educational hotspots, too:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Better early years education and care;</p></li>
<li><p>More support for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teachers;</p></li>
<li><p>Needs-based and sector-blind school funding;</p></li>
<li><p>An independent national curriculum and assessment system;</p></li>
<li><p>Higher standards in initial teacher education;</p></li>
<li><p>The primacy of the public TAFE provision; and </p></li>
<li><p>Accessible and affordable higher education. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, is it a matter of “move along, nothing to see here”? Not really, because beneath the educational values that have served Labor so well electorally lie some unresolved policy tensions.</p>
<p>As always, these are mostly about money. The continued commitment to the Gonski resource standards in schools will be welcomed by most in the school education industry. The platform acknowledges that delivering on this will require Labor to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… work co-operatively with the states and territories to increase school funding. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>More co-operation and more money would be good, but the federation has a lot of moving parts. Without significant reforms to the federation the states won’t have more money to contribute. Without reductions in outlays in other portfolios it is hard to see how a future Labor government could afford to invest more in school education.</p>
<p>The policy tensions in higher education lie between the commitment to “a strong, affordable and accessible higher education system” and the opposition to “deregulation of fees, or the introduction of full fee degrees for undergraduates”.</p>
<p>It’s said to be dangerous to get caught between a vice-chancellor and a bucket of cash, but the near-unanimous support of vice-chancellors for Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s funding reforms reflects real financial pressure on higher education. The demand-driven system has opened up access, and this is a good thing. But declining income per student is undermining the quality of teaching and research. </p>
<p>So, the policy tension remains after the national conference. In government, Labor values have delivered accessible and affordable higher education. But without funding reform the system will be weaker, not stronger.</p>
<p><strong>Gwilym Croucher, Higher Education Policy Adviser at University of Melbourne</strong></p>
<p>As widely speculated, the national conference reaffirmed the ALP’s strong opposition to the current government’s planned deregulation of university fees. Senator Kim Carr said a future ALP government “will rebuild what the Coalition has torn down”, and that the platform makes it “clear that Labor will never support fee deregulation”.</p>
<p>Carr also signalled again that while a future Labor government would respect university “autonomy”, there will be an expectation that in receiving public funds they will be “accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars” through “partnerships”.</p>
<p>This will be read by many as further evidence that the ALP intends to return to the previous policy of requiring universities to sign “compacts” with the government, which would set out agreed goals in exchange for public funding. The previous Labor government’s use of compacts was unpopular – they were seen as ineffective.</p>
<p>The ALP’s platform signals a return to higher education targets. It seeks 40% of 25–34-year-olds holding bachelor-level degree or higher by 2025, and 20% of university undergraduate enrolments made up of low socioeconomic background students by 2020. These were dropped by the Coalition once they formed government.</p>
<p>Australia is likely to achieve the first target with little change to the system as numbers are already close. But the low-socioeconomic goal has remained elusive – there has been only slow progress on this in recent years despite significant investment.</p>
<p>Regarding research, the platform promises the full cost of research will be funded while encouraging:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… researchers to engage with end-users, including industry, to improve the impact of their research for industrial applications and the public good.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<h2>Health</h2>
<p><strong>Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy at University of Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Labor’s 2015 policy platform on health is the equivalent of motherhood and apple pie – a traditional presentation of what the party has always stood for and what the electorate wants and expects.</p>
<p>Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are essential components of Labor’s vision for a fairer Australia. Together they deliver access to health care based on need not ability to pay. And there is a lead role for the Commonwealth government in the funding and delivery of healthcare services.</p>
<p>The party platform gives little indication of what health and healthcare policies will be taken to the next election or implemented should Labor win. That’s not surprising: its main role is to serve as the yardstick by which policies and programs should be judged. </p>
<p>The good bits: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Recognition that investing in good health for all Australians will deliver a productive workforce and a competitive economy and that climate change is having an impact on health outcomes;</p></li>
<li><p>Acknowledgement that the social determinants of health are crucial to more equal health outcomes – especially important when it comes to tackling Indigenous disadvantage;</p></li>
<li><p>Commitment to a strong and properly resourced public health system, including primary care and preventive health;</p></li>
<li><p>Mental health as a priority for action; and</p></li>
<li><p>The statement that lack of dental care represents a significant gap in the provision of universal health care.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The not-so-good bits: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>No clear role delineation for public and private sectors; </p></li>
<li><p>Nothing new proposed to address the chronic disease challenge; and </p></li>
<li><p>A very clinical approach to prevention.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The real problem is the failure to clearly recognise and articulate the difference between achieving good health and delivering health care. Thus, despite the invocation of social determinants, health does not appear in other parts of the platform concerned with infrastructure, environment, education and employment, and social justice. That’s a function of the way the platform document is produced.</p>
<p>Effective delivery of Labor’s goals for health and well-being and Closing the Gap will require a whole-of-government approach that, for the moment remains, undisclosed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly is on the Management Committee of the Refugee Advocacy Service of South Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Louden was deputy chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and chaired its National Initial Teacher Education Committee from 2011 to 2014. He represented Western Australia on the Board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority from 2008 to 2012. He was a member of the Rowe Review into the teaching of reading in Australia.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym Croucher is a higher education policy analyst in the office of the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Russell is a former policy advisor to the federal ALP.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Christoff is on the Board of the Australian Conservation Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Conversation’s experts respond to the ALP national conference on matters of asylum seekers, health, education, party reform and more.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideBill Louden, Emeritus Professor of Education, The University of Western AustraliaGwilym Croucher, Higher Education Policy Adviser, The University of MelbourneLesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of SydneyPeter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography, The University of MelbourneRob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452162015-07-26T09:04:19Z2015-07-26T09:04:19ZLabor conference leaves Shorten stronger<p>Bill Shorten has emerged from the ALP’s national conference looking more like an alternative prime minister than he did before. </p>
<p>Shorten, whose leadership has been in a serious low, won convincingly on the big defining issue of the conference – whether a future Labor government would be able to turn back asylum seeker boats. </p>
<p>In other areas compromises were managed – same-sex marriage, recognition of Palestine. Only minimal progress was made on advancing democracy within the party, but this is not something that galvanises the public. The conference did <a href="https://lab15.org.au/amendments/404">endorse an ambitious objective</a> of having 50% women at all levels in the party organisation and in public office positions the party holds by 2025.</p>
<p>Apart from his initial address at the conference’s opening, Shorten made a number of strategic interventions. He gave short speeches at the beginning of day two and day three, as well as closing the asylum seeker debate and moving a much-wrangled motion on same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>On Saturday morning Shorten set out and made a strong case for his <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-reveals-suite-of-asylum-seeker-measures-45209">broad policy on asylum seekers</a>; on Sunday there were feel-good remarks about his pride in how the party had handled the difficult part of that issue. </p>
<p>“In events, there’s sometimes a tipping point where matters can go one way, or matters can go the other way,” Shorten said on Sunday. “Yesterday there was a tipping point when we were talking about those hard and complex issues of how Australia can be a humane and safe destination.”</p>
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<p>It’s only a small stretch to see the conference as one of those “tipping points” in Shorten’s leadership. If it had gone badly for him, it would have seriously undermined his position. Now, thanks to rugged negotiation and a recognition by those involved about how high the stakes were for Labor, Shorten’s leadership has been boosted. </p>
<p>By leaving the way open for turnbacks, Labor has endorsed the tough policy being pursued by the present government. At the same time, it has promised a very generous approach on refugees, including an eventual doubling of the intake and A$450 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.</p>
<p>The hard line is to reassure voters in the political centre, as well as to provide a viable policy for a Labor government. The generous trade-offs were both to appease upset left wingers at the conference, and also appeal to electors who will be tempted to turn to the Greens. </p>
<p>The policy leaves the government with a much weaker point of attack against Shorten. </p>
<p>The Coalition is questioning how anyone can believe Labor after its record in government. But the point is that Labor’s experience in government is the very reason why you would believe it is fair dinkum on turnbacks now. Why would it go through all this agony internally and then not follow through in government? Its previous experience of opening the floodgates and the subsequent drownings has taught it a lasting lesson. </p>
<p>On same-sex marriage, the conference <a href="https://lab15.org.au/amendments/317">compromise</a> accommodated Shorten’s desire for the conscience vote for Labor MPs to be retained, in spite of the wish of many delegates for MPs to be bound. It says that the free vote should apply in this parliament and the next – going to a binding vote in 2019.</p>
<p>The seconder for the motion moved by Shorten was his deputy Tanya Plibersek, who earlier this year had <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-28/pliberseks-same-sex-marriage-vote-stance-triggers-backlash/6426246">expressed strong support</a> for binding MPs. The left was in a strong position to impose a binding vote next term, but the Shorten forces pushed it out for another three years. </p>
<p>The Shorten camp argues, fairly convincingly, that by the end of the parliamentary term beyond this one Australia will have same-sex marriage, so the binding vote in the long term is irrelevant. Shorten gave conference the promise that if he became prime minister and same-sex marriage was not already legislated, he would move for it within his first 100 days. </p>
<p>Shorten has a position which not only backs his conscience vote stand for the foreseeable future but allows Labor to put maximum pressure on the Liberals to have a free vote.</p>
<p>But if Tony Abbott manages, as he wishes, to suppress or defeat the issue this term, Shorten has a useful pitch to take to the election, with his promise that he would bring forward a government bill if elected. </p>
<p>An extraordinary amount of last-minute tooing and froing – some of it in full view as the players talked in huddles – surrounded the <a href="https://lab15.org.au/amendments/446">compromise motion on Palestine</a>. </p>
<p>The final position – in the form of a resolution rather than the party platform – said: “If … there is no progress in the next round of the peace process a future Labor government will discuss joining like minded nations who have already recognised Palestine and announcing the conditions and timelines for the Australian recognition of a Palestinian state, with the objective of contributing to peace and security in the Middle East.”</p>
<p>The motion was moved by Tony Burke, of the New South Wales right, and seconded by Queenslander Wendy Turner, from the left. There were no other speakers.</p>
<p>It was certainly not as tough as the left wanted, but it wasn’t quite what the Victorian right would have preferred either. The right is divided on Palestine, with the NSW right, influenced by the composition of western Sydney, more pro-Palestine, and the Victorian right, influenced by the Jewish lobby, more pro-Israel. </p>
<p>Burke told the conference that those on both sides would be disappointed. But on an extremely delicate issue, the conference has taken a step to opening the way for recognition of Palestine as a state without being excessively provocative. </p>
<p>The past three days have seen Shorten enhance his position within the party and publicly. The question now is how far he can build on a successful weekend.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://michellegrattan.podbean.com/e/anthony-albanese-richard-marles/">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Labor’s Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bill Shorten has emerged from the ALP’s national conference looking more like an alternative prime minister than he did before.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452112015-07-25T08:40:23Z2015-07-25T08:40:23ZALP conference day two: tears on both sides as Labor paves the way to turn back boats<p>After a fraught few days and a highly emotional debate at Labor’s national conference, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has secured the right to turn back asylum seeker boats if he becomes prime minister.</p>
<p>The conference defeated on a show of hands an amendment from the left that rejected turning away boats of asylum seekers saying “it undermines the co-operation required to reach sustainable regional processing arangements”. </p>
<p>The victory was essential to Shorten. The issue had become the most dangerous one for him at this conference. He came under sustained attack after he announced on Wednesday that a Labor government must have the option of turning back boats. Many in the left were deeply angered by what they regarded as an ambush.</p>
<p>Although the right and left numbers are evenly balanced at the conference, there were differences in the left, especially because of the ramifications if the leader was rebuffed, so ensuring Shorten had the numbers in the end.</p>
<p>But the issue put the most senior left-wingers around Shorten in a difficult position, which they resolved differently. Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, both installed proxies, parliamentarians Terri Butler and Katy Gallagher, to register anti-turnback votes, so they did not have to personally vote against the leader. </p>
<p>But infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese, Shorten’s former leadership rival, did not take that course. He voted for the unsuccessful amendment. </p>
<p>There was a moment of drama at the start of the debate when a small group of protesters descended from the back of the vast auditorium at Melbourne’s convention centre down the steps to the stage and unfurled a banner reading “NO REFUGEE TOW-BACKS”. Having made their point, they left when ALP president Mark Butler ordered the sign to be removed. </p>
<p>The debate, with just eight speakers, was both deeply passionate and carefully managed, with many mentions of respect for opposing views. Its tone contrasted with some of the harsh talk behind closed doors of the last few days. </p>
<p>Hours before the late afternoon debate, Shorten began the day by announcing a package of proposed measures to pave the way for toughening the policy.</p>
<p>These included: a doubling of the refugee intake to 27,000 by 2025; abolition of temporary protection visas; reinstatement of mentions of the UN Refugee Convention in the Migration Act; A$450 million to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; and work with other countries to implement independent oversight of all Australian-funded facilities.</p>
<p>Other measures promised would ensure refugee claims were processed as quickly as possible by restoring access to the Refugee Review Tribunal and increasing transparency; end children in detention as soon as possible; and establish an independent children’s advocate as well as impose mandatory reporting of any child abuse in facilities. </p>
<p>Shorten spoke at the end of the debate, declaring that he could not take to the Australian people at the next election a policy that may contribute to people drowning. </p>
<p>“I would not be the leader I seek to be of this nation if I avoided my own conviction on this matter. People were getting on unsafe boats and they were drowning. There’s no moral one-upmanship here,” Shorten said.</p>
<p>“I promise all of you a Labor government will support immigration, will support refugees and we will not reopen the lethal seaway between Java and Christmas Island.</p>
<p>"I believe we can win the argument that refugees have been good for this country, that we can take more refugees, treat refugees more humanely and keep people safe.”</p>
<p>The most emotional speech in the highly charged debate came from frontbencher Tony Burke, who was Labor’s last immigration minister. Tears welling in his eyes, Burke said he was in the portfolio less than four months and 33 lives had been lost on his watch – one of them a baby only ten weeks old. </p>
<p>“I was given his name on a Post It note – I kept that name on my desk until we lost office,” Burke said. </p>
<p>Burke said that he knew which policies worked and which did not. If people smugglers could put an argument to desperate people, those people would take the risk of getting on boats.</p>
<p>“I want more people to get here – but every single one to get here safely,” Burke said. </p>
<p>Burke warned that the Liberals would “bugle the message out” if a Labor government rejected turnbacks. </p>
<p>“If we give hope to the trade, we will end up helping fewer people and hundreds will start the journey and never complete it.” </p>
<p>The unsuccessful amendment was moved by left MP Andrew Giles who stressed that whether he won or lost the debate he was proud to be part of Bill Shorten’s team. Giles said that turnbacks were “clearly contrary to our international obligations”. </p>
<p>Immigration spokesman Richard Marles told delegates the conference faced a “hard decision – but we cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading today”. </p>
<p>After the vote, there was a feeling of relief that the most explosive issue of the conference had been successfully resolved. But several observers wearing red t-shirts inscribed with “DON’T Turnback” were in tears. Political necessity had prevailed but their anguish symbolised the dismay that many Labor activists will inevitably feel. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-ben-oquist-on-the-direction-of-the-greens-and-the-senate-crossbench-44971">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Australian Institute director Ben Oquist, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
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After a fraught few days and a highly emotional debate at Labor’s national conference, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has secured the right to turn back asylum seeker boats if he becomes prime minister…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451622015-07-24T07:54:22Z2015-07-24T07:54:22ZALP conference day one: Labor says turnbacks needed to prevent drownings<p>The man in the deepest ditch on day one of Labor’s national conference was surely the party’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles.</p>
<p>With party feeling still red hot about the plan to allow a Labor government to turn back asylum seeker boats, there were audible groans from a few delegates when leader Bill Shorten said in his conference address that Marles “will deliver immigration policies that are safe and humane”. </p>
<p>Later Marles appeared on a panel at one of the conference’s fringe events. The room was packed. This was hostile territory.</p>
<p>But Marles was blunt. We know that 1200 people had perished at sea, he said, and almost every person familiar with this area believed the figure was far higher. </p>
<p>That human tragedy had now ended and the people smugglers were no longer in business. But if Labor reopened this journey “we will be condemned by history”. </p>
<p>As the number-crunchers continued to work behind the scenes, Marles promised the critics would soon see unveiled “the most generous offering any potential Australian government has made”. Members of the party would be able to “hold their heads high”, he said.</p>
<p>But the questions were critical, and there were mutterings and interjections. For many in Labor, the asylum seeker issue – and especially turnbacks – is highly emotional. </p>
<p>Despite the strong feelings, Shorten and Marles are set for a win on turnbacks when asylum seeker policy is debated on Saturday. The frontbench and the factions were closing behind Shorten over the issue. They could not afford to humiliate him. </p>
<p>Frontbencher Brendan O'Connor, from the left, a former home affairs minister, was on the same wavelength as Marles. “I think if we don’t get right this policy, if we don’t have sufficient deterrents, we’ll see a return to hundreds of people dying at sea. That’s not acceptable,” he said.</p>
<p>Shorten’s push on turnbacks would ensure there is no difference on this front between the ALP and the Coalition at the election. </p>
<p>The emphasis on preventing drownings has a strong echo of the Coalition’s own line at the last election and since. </p>
<p>Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, a former immigration minister, said Shorten’s position would be supported on the floor of conference and defended him against critics in the left who complained they felt ambushed by his surprise announcement on Wednesday. </p>
<p>Bowen said that Shorten had openly indicated in advance what approach he would take at the conference – if he had left it until the issue was on the floor, people could have accused him of “not being open and honest in advance of the conference”. </p>
<p>Bowen also said Shorten had consulted appropriately with senior colleagues, including him, on the policy initiative. </p>
<p>In his address, Shorten chose to bypass turnbacks, concentrating on issues more congenial to the rank and file. </p>
<p>Shorten’s pitch on climate – the 50% renewables target, the plan for an emissions trading scheme, and a challenge to Tony Abbott to make the next election a contest about climate policy – went down a treat with delegates. </p>
<p>The speech contained no new policy announcements – the renewables target had been flagged earlier in the week. Nor was it particularly inspirational. But it did the job for the delegates on the day. </p>
<p>Notably, despite Shorten being under attack over aspects of his union career and Labor criticised for being too close to the unions, he went out of his way early on to pay tribute to them. </p>
<p>“No group of people in all Australian history has done more to guarantee safety, to build national wealth, to lift the living standards of ordinary people, than our unions. Ten thousand royal commissions won’t change this,” Shorten said.</p>
<p>In his speech Shorten made a particular pitch to women saying: “Our goal should be nothing less than the equal participation of women in work, equal pay for women at work, and an equal voice for women across our parliament.”</p>
<p>For women in the party, Shorten called on the conference to “declare, by 2025, 50% of Labor’s representatives will be women”. A worthy aspiration, no doubt, only remember that Labor has had targets before. When push comes to shove, other considerations – especially factional ones – have overridden lofty sentiments about gender representation. </p>
<p>As he looks to the conference’s second day, with its consideration of asylum seeker policy, Shorten can be feeling easier. But even when he gets his win, turnbacks will continue to be a divisive issue in the rank and file. </p>
<p>Opening the way for a Labor government to return boats should help Shorten in his competition for votes with the Liberals. But the danger for him will be that he loses votes on the left to the Greens, which will be the one party opposing the practice. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-ben-oquist-on-the-direction-of-the-greens-and-the-senate-crossbench-44971">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Australian Institute director Ben Oquist, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
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The man in the deepest ditch on day one of Labor’s national conference was surely the party’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles. With party feeling still red hot about the plan to allow a Labor government…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451522015-07-24T03:46:57Z2015-07-24T03:46:57Z50% renewable energy would put Australia in line with leading nations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89602/original/image-20150724-20908-1q9k35w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">California has realised that investing in renewables is smart economic policy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADillon_Wind_Power_Project_(15396918783).jpg">Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opposition leader Bill Shorten told the Labor Party conference this morning that the party’s policy should be for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-22/shorten-to-unveil-ambitious-50-per-cent-renewables/6639908">50% of electricity to come from renewables</a> by 2030.</p>
<p>This would bring Australia abreast with its international competitors such as California, with its <a href="http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/calif.-gov.-jerry-brown-calls-for-50-renewables-by-2030">recently announced target</a> of 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030, and Germany, where the <a href="http://energytransition.de/">Energiewende</a> (“energy transformation”) will see the country commit to 40-45% non-nuclear green power by 2020, and 55-60% by 2035. </p>
<p>Shorten’s move is a major break with previous ALP policy, and promises to be so effective in building a new power sector to eclipse the present fossil-fuelled sector that it already has the conservative side of politics foaming at the mouth. This week predictably saw the return of the “Electricity Bill Shorten” name-calling, and The Australian newspaper branded the renewables policy “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/labors-loony-turn-on-renewable-energy-target/story-e6frg71x-1227453030801">Labor’s loony turn</a>”.</p>
<p>It is such a break with previous climate policy because it sets a target for building renewable energy capacity, rather than targeting notional carbon reductions by such and such a date without specifying how to get there. If adopted, this policy would allow Labor finally to free itself of the politically damaging obsession with using carbon pricing – either in the form of a carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme – as its principal green platform. </p>
<p>Although Labor is also <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/24/bill-shorten-emmissions-trading-climate-change-labor-conference">committed to emissions trading</a>, renewable energy offers the more politically straightforward approach of fast-tracking investment in the renewables sector, providing the business certainty that the Abbott government has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-government-should-keep-its-hands-off-clean-energy-finance-44581">so keen to break</a>. </p>
<p>This was always the missing piece in Labor’s green strategy – eclipsed by its continuing commitment to support Australia’s exports of coal, gas and iron ore to the rising industrial powers of Asia, particularly China. The new policy represents a switch from a 20th-century obsession with fossil-fuel mining and export, to a 21st-century focus on creating <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/economics-manufacture-renewables-to-build-energy-security-1.15847">energy security through renewables</a>.</p>
<p>It promises to be effective for the same reason that Germany’s or California’s commitment to swing behind a power sector fuelled by renewables is effective. These targets are really about industry strategy, with a favourable side-effect that they also promise to lower carbon emissions. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/26/wind-energy-denmark">Denmark’s 2012 commitment</a> to renewable power using wind energy (with a conservative target of 50% renewables by 2020) has already created the world’s number-one wind power company, <a href="http://www.vestas.com/">Vestas</a>. Support for renewables is a smart industry strategy. </p>
<p>China is, of course, the world leader in this transition, with a commitment to source 30% of electricity from renewables by 2020. China’s <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/law/energy-development-strategy-action-plan-2014-2020/">Energy Development Strategic Action Plan (2014–2020)</a> specifies limits for overall energy and coal consumption, and at the same time sets targets for renewable energy capacity as reaching 350 gigawatts, 200 GW and 100 GW respectively for hydro, wind and solar, plus 58 GW for nuclear. </p>
<p>These are by far the most ambitious targets in the world. China’s current electric power capacity stands at 1,360 GW, with hydro, wind and solar accounting for 424 GW – a total that grew by 51 GW in 2014 (or roughly a 1-GW non-thermal power station each week). By contrast, thermal generation of electricity (from coal) actually <a href="http://www.japanfocus.org/-John_A_-Mathews/4297/article.html">shrank in 2014</a>. </p>
<p>What these countries’ leaders understand, and what gives this new policy signal from the ALP leadership real teeth, is that renewable energy promises to be one of the leading industries of the 21st century. These industries promise not just reliable and secure energy, but also – for the countries smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities – industrial and manufacturing strength, exports, technological innovation and jobs. All of this comes with the convenient side-effect of reducing carbon emissions, which while welcome, does not have to be the main driver of the policy shift.</p>
<p>To those who think such an energy transformation is inconceivable, Germany and China stand as major correctives, with Japan hovering as another major contender. Germany <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208">abandoned its nuclear industry</a> after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011, and instead adopted aggressive targets for renewables, backed by a feed-in tariffs scheme which helped to fund the transition from consumers’ energy bills, not from public fiscal sources. </p>
<p>The usual canards against renewables are already being trotted out by those who criticise their advance. The Australian’s environment editor Graham Lloyd <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/renewable-energy-flings-of-desire-do-not-soar-over-truth/story-e6frg6zo-1227453112230">wrote yesterday</a> that renewables don’t offer the same “density” of energy as their fossil-fuelled and nuclear competitors – ignoring the point that it is their very diffuseness that makes them so attractive. Solar and wind energy can be generated almost anywhere, while fossil-fuelled and nuclear sources have to be centralized and suffer rigidities as a result. </p>
<p>Lloyd also claimed that energy storage and intermittency are “technological barriers” that make the transition to renewables difficult, along with cost barriers. But the real experience of Germany and China provide a very different perspective. These two countries, through their commitment to large-scale renewable energy, have been driving down costs. Solar panel prices globally have <a href="http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/06/solar-pv-module-prices-have-fallen-80-since-2008-wind-turbines-29/">tumbled by 80%</a> over the past few years, driven largely by scaling up production in China and to some extent in Germany. </p>
<p>Australia stands to benefit from these cost decreases as policy shifts to supporting a renewables-driven power system. These costs refer to production costs, or wholesale costs, driven by the learning curves that are a feature of all manufacturing industries. What the existing power producers actually charge consumers is another matter altogether. </p>
<p>But as the political debate comes to focus on the real production costs of electricity, so the position of the incumbent power producers will prove to be untenable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45152/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Mathews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ramping up investment in renewable energy would put Australia on a footing with competitors such as China, Germany and California, which are set to reap the economic benefits of this emerging sector.John Mathews, Professor of Strategic Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450952015-07-24T02:01:06Z2015-07-24T02:01:06ZOperation Sovereign Borders, offshore detention and the ‘drownings argument’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89435/original/image-20150723-22816-12ftlgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Scott Fisher</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is based on Sarah Joseph’s presentation to the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law’s 2015 conference, delivered on July 24. You can click through her presentation using Prezi below.</em></p>
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<p><br></p>
<p>On the day of the release of the Human Rights Commission’s report into children in detention, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most compassionate thing you can do is stop the boats. We have stopped the boats.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Upon being confronted in June by allegations of bribing people smugglers, Abbott replied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s really only one thing to say here, and that is that we’ve stopped the boats. That’s good for Australia, it’s good for Indonesia and it’s particularly good for all those who want to see a better world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in response to nearly 2000 drownings in the Mediterranean in one quarter this year, Abbott’s advice to Europe was blunt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only way you can stop the deaths is to stop the people smuggling trade. The only way you can stop the deaths is in fact to stop the boats.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And one can see that this line is taken up by some in the media is well – as seen in this tweet from News Ltd columnist Chris Kenny.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"614276731873001473"}"></div></p>
<p>Under the period of the Rudd/Gillard government, it is widely accepted that around 1200 asylum seekers drowned on their way to Australia. That figure is backed up by Monash’s Border Observatory website, Marg Hutton’s sievx.com website and ABC Fact Check. It seems around 2-4% of those who attempted the journey died doing it.</p>
<p>Under the Abbott government, Hutton and the Border Observatory record about 40 likely deaths by drowning of people trying to make their way to Australia by boat, most in a single incident in the government’s first month.</p>
<p>So, the argument is that the government’s suite of harsh measures, including towbacks, offshore detention, offshore processing and resettlement, offshore non-processing and non-resettlement, are designed to deter people from seeking asylum in Australia by boat. They stop people from embarking on dangerous journeys where they might drown.</p>
<p>And now the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, is advocating the same policy, reasoning that the policy “saves lives”. </p>
<p>At first glance this seems a powerful moral argument. The drownings argument has swayed many who were once critical of harsh border measures.</p>
<p>The 50 deaths on the rocks at Christmas Island in December 2010 swayed the ALP left, which was long resistant to offshore processing – and also Paris Aristotle, of the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, whose commitment to human rights cannot be doubted. Public intellectual Robert Manne also changed his mind, saying that opposition to offshore processing was part of “ineffectual and sometimes misguided humanitarianism”.</p>
<p>So, how to evaluate this “drownings” argument?</p>
<p>First, we must consider the “bona fides” – or sincerity – of the government’s position. Is it really pursuing harsh refugee policies in order to save lives? Many are sceptical about this. The mantra of “stop the boats” has been around much longer than the explicit concern about drowning.</p>
<p>Motivations are evidenced by actions. Australia has allegedly paid people smugglers to return to Indonesia with their human cargo. The government will neither confirm nor deny, but there is evidence from Indonesia indicating the payments took place. The vessel in question had to be rescued off a reef in Indonesia. That return trip was hardly safe.</p>
<p>The same might be said for the forced returns by way of the orange lifeboats. Three allegedly drowned in a river after such a return. </p>
<p>And just this week, it seems an asylum seeker boat from Vietnam nearly reached Western Australia and has been escorted away, to where we do not know. It is surely safer to let them dock, rather than to send them off to the wide ocean again.</p>
<p>However, the bona fides or sincerity of the argument may not be so important if the policy is saving lives. The ends may justify the means, regardless of alternative perverse motivations.</p>
<p>So, is the policy saving lives? We know that the boats have largely stopped arriving in Australia, leaving aside the boat from this week. But have they stopped leaving Indonesia? Or Sri Lanka? Or Vietnam?</p>
<p>Many of the 1200 assumed dead under the Rudd/Gillard governments disappeared and are assumed drowned. Could the same thing be happening under Abbott, but with less publicity? After all, “on water” matters are now of utmost confidentiality. Iron law, so we were told this week.</p>
<p>This is a spurious resort to national security. Asylum seekers, and even the crime of people smuggling, are not a national security issue. They are unarmed people arriving in this country seeking our help. They are not sneaking into the country; they are all intercepted at the border. In fact they surrender at the border.</p>
<p>To the extent that the government wants to keep information from people smugglers, I suspect the smugglers know a lot more about what is going on than the Australian public. They know which boats have left, which have failed to reach their goal, those which have returned, and perhaps those which have been bribed.</p>
<p>In these circumstances of utter failure in transparency and accountability, the government deserves no benefit of the doubt. It may say it has stopped the boats, but in the face of deliberate concealment of information, we are entitled to be sceptical.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I tend to think that most or at least many drownings, or lost boats, would be reported. Information does come through from Indonesia (though we know less about what might be happening from Sri Lanka or Vietnam). I think the absence of evidence of drownings does, fairly, indicate there have been none or very few. Certainly less than the numbers under Rudd and Gillard.</p>
<p>So, I am going to proceed on the basis that the government’s core premise holds true. By stopping the boats from reaching Australia, the policy correlates with a drastic reduction in deaths by drowning en route to this country.</p>
<p>So, in that respect, are the harsh policies therefore justified? Do the means justify the ends, regardless of motivation, if the ends correlate with many fewer deaths by drowning. Do asylum seekers, to quote Chris Kenny, “owe their lives” to the Abbott government?</p>
<p>More than 90% of the asylum seekers who have arrived by boat in Australia have been recognised as refugees. At the risk of sounding trite, it is really dangerous being a refugee. Drowning by boat is drowning while fleeing. But it is very dangerous to flee via land. And it is very dangerous to not flee.</p>
<p>And it is very dangerous to go to a refugee camp. There is crime, violence, death, disease and even disaster. They are chronically underfunded.</p>
<p>The options, if one is a refugee, are not good. It is why so many resort to using people smugglers, due to an absence of safe pathways.</p>
<p>The refugee camps – if you can get to one, and that is not easy - are the so-called queues, the homes of the “good” refugees who wait to enter by the front door, not the “bad” refugees who are apparently jumping the queue.</p>
<p>But refugee camps don’t operate like queues – it isn’t first-come first-served. If it was, apparently it would take a refugee arriving in the “queue” now 170 years to reach the front. The average stay in a refugee camp is 17 years. So many stay much longer and even die there.</p>
<p>So there is another reason why people get on boats: their own agency as human beings.** People are making a conscious choice that their best option is to seek asylum via boat. Otherwise they have no future.</p>
<p>Furthermore, there is no future for refugees in certain countries in our neighbourhood such as Indonesia and Malaysia. It is hard to get work, hard to get education, hard to have one’s claim processed, and hard to be resettled even if one is found to be a refugee.</p>
<p>In those circumstances – limbo – people seek out a route to a country where they can find resettlement, which used to include Australia.</p>
<p>Like everyone, they care about safety, stability and having a future. And accordingly, many knowingly take a risk. I don’t deny that sometimes people might be forced onto boats unaware of the risk, especially women and children. But the majority are not oblivious to the news of sinking boats.</p>
<p>In December 2011, more than 200 drowned when an asylum seeker boat sank off the coast of Java. Most of the victims were Iranian men. Survivors were interviewed by the media afterwards. They were distraught, but they would try again. One quote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will continue this way again. We will go again by boat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That is symptomatic of the plight of the asylum seeker. It is horribly reminiscent of the plight of migrants of old. I was in Ireland last week, and reminded of mass migration from that country in the 19th century – some of it to Australia but much of it to the US, where the Irish community is now huge and successful.</p>
<p>Yet so many died on the journey to get there. They were known as coffin ships, and the mortality rate aboard them was commonly around 30%. Many of today’s refugees have as few choices as those fleeing famine and persecution in Ireland 150 years ago.</p>
<p>Furthermore, what would you do?</p>
<p>If you would contemplate the boat, if you would take the boat, then the argument boils down to this. Our insistence that they not get on boats may seem compassionate, but it is also the sanctimony of the safe and the rich. We are basically telling desperate people to flee in a way that makes us feel comfortable. </p>
<p>We may have stopped the boats coming to Australia. But ultimately this strategy, which is pretty much erecting a “keep out” sign around our continent, will save nobody. This is because the refugee issue is global. And refugees all over the world are making necessary and dangerous and often fatal choices due to dire circumstances of which they have no control.</p>
<p>There are around 60 million displaced people in the world, including internally displaced people – more than at any time in human history: one in 122 people.</p>
<p>Last December, the International Organisation for Migration said there were a record number of asylum seeker deaths at sea in 2014, due to the increase in “desperation migration”.</p>
<p>As for Abbott’s advice to stop the boats on the Mediterranean – many of those attempting the crossing are from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia. Does anyone doubt their need to flee?</p>
<p>And consider their options. For Syrians: stay, go to crammed refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey, where access is now restricted anyway, stay in dangerous limbo en route, or stay in Libya, where Islamic State is flourishing.</p>
<p>It was thought that the Italian rescue operation, Mare Nostrum, was a pull factor. But the numbers attempting the crossing did not stop when that rescue operation was significantly curtailed – just more drowned.</p>
<p>The boats are not even stopping in our neighbourhood. Twice as many boats have set out from Burma and Bangladesh in the first quarter of this year compared to 2014. On the news we all saw the macabre spectacle of stranded boats being pushed away from Thailand and Malaysia, while people died on them.</p>
<p>So, the bottom line – the boats to Australia might be stopping. But refugee boats and outflows and needs are not. Our current policy is the ultimate case of NIMBY. Leave it to the rest of the world to cope with this problem.</p>
<p>So, what are the solutions? If not Operation Sovereign Borders, what else?</p>
<p>Proportion is lacking in any discussion of Australia and refugees. There has been a deliberate hyping of the actual numbers, as well as an insidious narrative of illegals and invasion, including an unsubtle linkage between asylum seekers and terrorism. And yet the numbers arriving by boat since the topic became so politically toxic (ie since 1999) would not fill the MCG.</p>
<p>It is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands hosted by states like Turkey, Jordan, and Kenya. For example, there are 1.2 million refugees in Lebanon and 1.7 million Syrians in Turkey.</p>
<p>Australia could substantially increase its humanitarian intake, and take many more from the region, reducing the incentive for people to get on boats. Australia could decouple its largely unique link between offshore and onshore intake so we don’t play off refugees against each other. </p>
<p>Of course Australia can’t solve the world’s refugee problem on its own. But we should aim to be part of a solution, not an exacerbator of the problem.</p>
<p>That means real dialogue towards a real regional framework, rather than upsetting Indonesia with our boats policy, and saying “no no no” to the idea of taking in Rohingya refugees who have fled via boat.</p>
<p>Globally, more sustainable solutions are needed. Less than 10% of refugees who urgently need resettlement are resettled. The UNHCR estimates that nearly one million need resettlement but only about 80,000 will receive it. This severe disconnect between resettlement needs and resettlement places is ongoing and deteriorating.</p>
<p>A great increase in resettlement in Western countries is needed, including Australia, but that won’t solve the problem by itself. Other states need to get on board. </p>
<p>For example, by late 2014, the Gulf countries had taken no Syrian refugees. Japan, South Korea, the BRIC countries, and middle income States like Malaysia, are all capable of increasing their resettlement places in accordance with increased economic capacities. But countries with “economic capacities” do not include Nauru, Papua New Guinea or Cambodia. </p>
<p>Australia’s asylum seekers issues cannot be divorced from the global refugee crisis. And the solutions are therefore complex. That complexity can seem messy compared to the brutal simplicity of the government’s solution to simply “stop the boats”.</p>
<p>But, frankly, I don’t want to buy into a phenomenon which the critical legal scholar Mark Tushnet has called “blue-printism”. That is the idea that one can’t criticise a policy unless there is a readymade comprehensive blueprint for an alternative. Blueprintism inherently and unjustifiably entrenches the status quo.</p>
<p>Yet the burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate that its policy settings are correct. And I don’t think it can, given the numerous grave flaws in that policy.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The expenditure of billions of dollars on the offshore warehousing of asylum seekers is not the answer, when humane policies are so much cheaper.</p></li>
<li><p>High seas refoulement and disappearance is not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>The silencing of reports of sexual and other abuse in offshore detention is not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>The iron law of on-water confidentiality, restricting the info that the Australian people receive on the treatment of human beings under its own government’s policies, is not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>Australia’s mute response to breakdowns in the rule of law on Nauru and PNG are not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>The shredding of Australia’s international reputation is not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>The creation of what former Australian of the Year Pat McGorry has called “factories for producing mental illness” is not the answer.</p></li>
<li><p>And finally, the use of people as means to ends, people who have plainly not drowned and are in no danger of drowning – the infliction of deliberate cruelty on such people so as to deter others from coming – is most certainly not the answer.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is unlikely that we are saving lives, but we are definitely ruining them.</p>
<p>** I thank my colleague Dr Patrick Emerton for his thoughts on this point (this piece was edited on the morning of 26/7 to included this acknowledgment and make three very minor editorial improvements).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45095/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This article is based on Sarah Joseph’s presentation to the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law’s 2015 conference, delivered on July 24. You can click through her presentation using Prezi below. On the…Sarah Joseph, Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451012015-07-23T20:13:23Z2015-07-23T20:13:23ZGrattan on Friday: Shorten’s battle for electoral acceptability costs him party credibility<p>Bill Shorten’s authority is on the line as he struggles to reverse Labor’s opposition to turning back asylum seeker boats. A rebuff by the party’s national conference, which opens in Melbourne on Friday, would be a disaster for the already embattled leader. If Shorten lost this fight, his leadership would be shredded.</p>
<p>The stakes are so high that the betting must be on Shorten getting his way. But members of the left are furious, not just about the policy shift but at how Shorten dropped it on the party on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Think captains’s pick.</p>
<p>The seriousness of the situation was dramatically highlighted on Thursday when left leader Anthony Albanese – who lost to Shorten in the 2013 ballot – <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/anthony-albanese-criticises-bill-shortens-handling-of-boat-turnbacks-policy-20150723-gij9xm.html">told a Labor function</a> in Melbourne: “I have real concerns about the way that yesterday was conducted in terms of the announcement on asylum seekers. I think that it is absolutely critical … that we always remember our need for compassion and to not appeal to our darker sides.”</p>
<p>This is seen by some in the party as Albanese, after a difficult day with left colleagues, sending a message to the right that they should not think this can be just bulldozed through.</p>
<p>A lot of talking will be needed before the vote, scheduled for Saturday, with specific undertakings given in terms of transparency around turnbacks and proposed increases in the refugee intake.</p>
<p>There is nothing complicated about Shorten’s turnback switch. It is driven by electoral pragmatism and a recognition that, even with the offshore detention policy, the people smuggling trade would be encouraged again if boats weren’t being stopped by Australian patrols.</p>
<p>The turnbacks have worked. If Shorten had to go into the election saying Labor would discontinue them, he would be handing a gift to Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>Those with long memories might see a parallel between this battle and the 1982 hard-fought switch on uranium policy. In dramatic scenes at that year’s national conference, Labor moved from an uncompromising anti-uranium position to a more flexible stand. The painful decision was seen as absolutely necessary for Labor to be competitive at the next election, which it won.</p>
<p>Shorten has been inching to a policy change for some time. That doesn’t stop many regarding his Wednesday <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-embraces-the-boat-turnback-policy-he-previously-condemned-45062">declaration</a> on the ABC’s 7.30 program that a Labor government must have the option of turnbacks – which obviously would be used – as an ambush.</p>
<p>In the interview Shorten also ate crow, admitting Labor’s policy failure in government and that, contrary to everything it had predicted, the Coalition turnback policy has succeeded. These admissions, while correct, are hard for many in the party to take.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://lab15.org.au/conference-documents">conference’s draft platform</a> is silent on turnbacks, which would amount to permission for them. Shorten has to fend off a prohibition being written in. Although Labor governments can wriggle around conference decisions, such a ban couldn’t easily be ignored. But the political force of it would be its impact before the election.</p>
<p>Despite Labor being consistently ahead in the polls, Shorten is not entering this conference with “prime-minister-in-waiting” stamped clearly on his forehead. No messiah to see here.</p>
<p>Rather, Shorten is at a stage of his leadership where he must reassure doubters, inside and outside the party, that he really does have what it takes. That means showing he is in control, and also appearing to stand for something.</p>
<p>The problem thrown up by the turnbacks issue is that many in the party will be deeply disillusioned by what Shorten is now standing for, while potentially many in the electorate would write him off if he were not allowed this shift of ground.</p>
<p>Low personal poll ratings and a hellish experience in the trade union royal commission witness box have made a successful conference especially vital for Shorten.</p>
<p>Shorten’s Friday leader’s address needs to be strong in both substance and presentation. A bad performance is damaging, as Julia Gillard found in 2011 when she neglected to mention Kevin Rudd in a list of Labor prime ministers and was generally lacklustre.</p>
<p>If Shorten is trying to draw the opposition closer to the government by embracing turnbacks, his other Wednesday pre-conference announcement – <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-seeks-to-turn-climate-policy-into-a-positive-with-ambitious-renewables-goal-45048">commitment</a> to a 50% renewable energy goal by 2030 – was designed to sharpen the contrast with the Coalition.</p>
<p>In his address, Shorten will go on the front foot over carbon pricing, while invoking the market language of the Liberals.</p>
<p>“Around one billion people and more than 40% of the world’s economy have already embraced the opportunities of emissions trading schemes,” he says in a section of the speech released early. “We must give Australian businesses the opportunity to engage with this global market … Labor will cut pollution with a market solution.</p>
<p>"A Shorten Labor government will build an emissions trading scheme for Australia. And we will not be intimidated by ridiculous scare campaigns.</p>
<p>"If Mr Abbott wants to make the next election about who has the best policy solution for climate change – I’ve got a three word slogan for him. Bring. It. On.”</p>
<p>Sometimes modern Labor conferences can look like mass rallies with little content. This one has a series of controversial issues to be managed.</p>
<p>At one stage the push for a binding, as opposed to a conscience, vote on same-sex marriage loomed dangerously. But the dynamics of that have changed and Shorten is confident of holding the line on the conscience vote.</p>
<p>Other contentious matters are recognition of a Palestinian state; how far to go in making the party <a href="https://theconversation.com/butler-will-press-for-alp-reform-45009">more internally democratic</a>; and the Australia-China free trade agreement. Wheeling and dealing has been in high gear to get compromises.</p>
<p>Compared with turnbacks, there is much less at stake on other issues for Shorten, although any setbacks would be bad.</p>
<p>The right and the left are equally balanced, with each faction a few short of 200 delegates, and there is a handful of unaligned delegates. With such a tight situation things can go wrong just by chance. It will be vital for the Shorten forces not just to have deals hammered out, but to ensure that numbers don’t drift away inadvertently.</p>
<p>Amid the arguments over current issues, there is a move to sweep away an antiquated piece of Labor’s past – the “socialist objective” – and replace it with a more contemporary statement. Some in the left are upset about that too, having a sentimental attachment to irrelevant wording that’s heading for its centenary.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-ben-oquist-on-the-direction-of-the-greens-and-the-senate-crossbench-44971">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Australian Institute director Ben Oquist, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
<iframe id="audio_iframe" src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/zbt52-577e27" width="100%" height="100" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bill Shorten’s authority is on the line as he struggles to reverse Labor’s opposition to turning back asylum seeker boats.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/448302015-07-23T20:13:12Z2015-07-23T20:13:12ZIt’s all about the leader at ALP conference, leaving less space for policymaking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89129/original/image-20150721-24304-9hio12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ALP national conference has become a highly choreographed, stage-managed affair in recent times.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This weekend’s <a href="https://lab15.org.au">ALP national conference</a> is the first time Bill Shorten will take centre stage as a political leader. Since winning the federal Labor leadership in the wake of Labor’s defeat at the 2013 election, Shorten has kept a <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/bill-shorten-the-invisible-man-20150501-1mvxa6">reasonably low profile</a> as opposition leader.</p>
<p>The conference’s timing represents a litmus test for Shorten. In <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll/newspoll-shorten-support-sinks-deeper-as-alp-stretches-lead/story-fnc6vkbc-1227449968856">this week’s Newspoll</a>, Shorten recorded his lowest-ever approval rating as leader of 27%. This is a worrying number for the ALP, which has had a tendency to destabilise – and even remove – its leader based on <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gillard-used-polling-to-trigger-coup-20120214-1t49l.html">poor polling figures</a>. </p>
<p>The conference’s outcomes could revive Shorten’s fortunes or sink them further. What are the lessons of history as Shorten prepares for his moment in the spotlight?</p>
<h2>Past national conferences</h2>
<p>In 1969, another leader who had yet to face a federal election used the national conference as the starting point to articulate his own agenda. Then, Gough Whitlam – who obtained the leadership two years earlier – used the conference to argue forcefully for policy change within the ALP. As he told the <a href="http://www.whitlam.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/320823/Speech_by_Hon_EG_Whitlam_AC_QC_on_the_bestowing_of_Life_Membership_to_himself_and_Margaret_at_the_ALP_at_the_44th_ALP_National_Conference_2007.pdf">2007 conference</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[At] … the National Conference of 1969 … We re-wrote two-thirds of the platform. In particular, we established the principles for universal health care and for federal aid for all schools, government and non-government alike, on the basis of needs and priorities. We were enabled thereby to bury the sectarianism which had disfigured our society for a generation and had retarded education for a century.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These events are an example of the national conference serving its original intent, as it was designed in the <a href="http://archives.cap.anu.edu.au/cdi_anu_edu_au/xx/z1/PPD2011/11.%20ALP%20Constitution.pdf">ALP constitution</a>.</p>
<p>The conference, now held once every parliamentary term, is notionally the party’s supreme policymaking body. The decisions taken at the conference are theoretically binding on the elected ALP members of parliament. The conference, as laid out in the <a href="http://www.queenslandlabor.org/wp-content/uploads/2014-Qld-ALP-Rule-Book-Final.pdf">party rules</a>, is intended to serve as the major forum for the party to debate its policy decisions.</p>
<p>The national conference codifies these decisions, which are approved by its delegates. The decisions the conference makes are, according to the constitution, final. </p>
<p>The conference delegates are represented in an equal number from each Australian state and territory. They are elected both by branch members and each state party’s electoral college, which is comprised of union representatives and members of the ALP’s organisational wing. The vote is evenly divided between the two groups. </p>
<h2>A shift in focus</h2>
<p>Historically, the conference brings out a tension that still exists within the ALP today. </p>
<p>There are those within the party who seek to promote policies that adhere to the ALP’s more socially conscious agenda. But, increasingly, this objective has become secondary. Instead, the conference has become dominated by pragmatic political operatives who try to <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/02/factions-jockeying-over-key-alp-policies/14304888001826">craft agreements</a> before the conference starts in an attempt to stifle debate and project an image of party unity.</p>
<p>The recent focus of the national conference has therefore shifted. It is now used to serve a different purpose: a political marketing service. As a result of this trend, the conference has become a highly choreographed, stage-managed affair. </p>
<p>In 2007, the then-leader, Kevin Rudd, used his speech at the national conference to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-04-27/rudd-centre-stage-as-alp-gathering-kicks-off/2534064">road-test themes</a> he would later use in his successful election campaign. </p>
<p>Three years earlier, the ALP hastily labelled Mark Latham as a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/30/1075340839338.html?from=storyrhs">“New Sensation”</a>. It attempted to market the previously unpredictable leader as a modern political statesman ahead of his own election campaign.</p>
<h2>Lessons from the 2011 conference</h2>
<p>The last national conference is an example of how a tightly controlled affair can work against a leader. In 2011, Julia Gillard’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/julia-gillards-speech-in-full-20111201-1o9yu.html">speech</a> was overshadowed by her <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-04/rudd-gives-rousing-conference-speech/3712014">omission</a> of Rudd’s achievements as ALP leader. This further exacerbated the leadership tensions that Gillard’s speech was designed to dismiss.</p>
<p>This year’s conference will attempt to stabilise Shorten’s position as leader and set a platform for the campaign the ALP wishes to run at the federal election due next year. Expect the media to play up <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/11/labors-right-may-lose-control-of-conference-for-first-time-since-1984">divisions</a> between warring factions over policy issues. This narrative is in the ALP’s best interests if Shorten’s performance at the conference falters, as it did with Gillard. The ALP would prefer to be seen as squabbling internally over policy issues rather than over the viability of Shorten’s leadership.</p>
<p>During the last conference, the hot-button issue that sparked debate on the conference floor was same-sex marriage. The conference <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/national-affairs/alp-platform-changes-to-support-gay-marriage/story-fnba0rxe-1226212916021">voted</a> to change the party platform to support legalising same-sex marriage. Four years on, the party as a whole has yet to argue forcefully for its implementation.</p>
<p>This is because the ALP national conference has lost its policymaking significance of the past. Instead it has become a reflection of the leader’s standing within the party. Consequently, this year’s conference will be the event that defines Shorten’s leadership in 2015 – for better or worse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Winther does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ALP national conference has lost its policymaking significance of the past. Instead it has become a reflection of the leader’s standing within the party.Todd Winther, PhD Candidate in Political Science, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451192015-07-23T10:37:00Z2015-07-23T10:37:00ZClimate zombies: can Labor bring back a tabloid-proof climate policy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89470/original/image-20150723-22814-1mkj8iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/28813363/climate-biggest-policy-difference-butler/">Believing</a> that the divide between itself and the Coalition on climate change policy is wider than on any other issue, Labor will use its national conference this weekend to shore up support for an ambitious renewables target. Proposing a Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 50% by 2030 would at least put Australia onto a respectable path within the OECD group of nations.</p>
<p>Certainly, Labor would like to make it the big issue of difference – perhaps for the wrong reasons – because it considers it cannot afford to stand up to the Coalition on asylum seekers. This is becoming the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/07/labors-dilemma-progress-on-climate-change-is-the-hostage-of-xenophobia">dark side</a> of Labor’s enthusiasm for a renewed and renewable climate policy. </p>
<p>If it supports a humanitarian policy on asylum, Labor will run the gauntlet of tabloid xenophobia. But if it doesn’t, the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/turnbacks-bill-shorten-gambles-all-with-asylum-boats-vow/story-fn9hm1gu-1227453087742?from=public_rss&utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial">split within Labor</a> will also be easy prey for tabloid and attack-dog journalism from News Corp, which is still editorialising very strongly against Labor at present.</p>
<p>The hyper-mediatised sado-politics of human misery for asylum seekers is likely to continue. Any progressive and deliberative politics on this issue is to be sacrificed to a politics of fear. And the fear I am talking about is the cowardice of either major political party to stand up to the psychotic tabloid offensive on banishing the boats.</p>
<p>On climate, Labor is gambling on the extensive polling conducted in recent years that shows such solid support for an effective climate change policy, particularly on renewables. Renewable energy ticks all the boxes for Labor. They can revive manufacturing and jobs; they are much harder for a climate-denialist hostile News Corp press to attack; they really are effective at reducing emissions; the electorate loves them.</p>
<p>But the most telling indication that renewables is a winner for Labor is that the Coalition is angry at it for putting out this policy. This is not because the Coalition officially opposes renewables, but rather that it is being outplayed on an issue that is supposedly bipartisan. Conversely, the Coalition has stepped up its attack on a Labor-devised emissions trading scheme (ETS), desperately trying to ensure that it will be defined as a carbon tax.</p>
<p>While such a move is intellectually specious, the Coalition is counting on News Corp to do all the heavy lifting here. The television images of Tony Abbott‘s interview with 2GB on the day of the Daily Telegraph’s “Carbon Zombies” story on July 16 had him looking very smug with a copy of the paper sitting in front of him.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89464/original/image-20150723-22811-vn65hr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Daily Telegraph front page, July 16.</span>
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<p>But Greg Hunt, without a News Corp palisade, looked surprisingly uncomfortable on the ABC’s <a href="http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/insiders/NC1576V024S00#playing">Insiders</a> trying to spin this. He was one of the key designers of an ETS under John Howard, but has been commanded to stay on a message that is suited to the tabloid theatre of caricatures, two- and three-word slogans and knee-jerk reactions by those readers who only glance at the front page on their way to the sports pages.</p>
<p>“Kill Bill”, “Electricity Bill”, “Carbon Copy Bill”, “Axe the Tax”, “Toxic Tax” and “Carbon Zombies” – all have been used around the opposition’s policy on an ETS.</p>
<p>Under the cover of the tabloid shock doctrine of a bogey tax, Hunt finds the courage to insist that electricity prices will go up – and have gone up – with an ETS. But a <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/carbon-tax-savings-eclipsed-as-vic-fixed-power-price-soars-50-18056">report earlier this year</a> showed that Victorians were not getting any relief in their electricity bills since the repeal of the carbon tax.</p>
<p>From the ground zero of former prime minister Julia Gillard’s fatal acquiescence to the Coalition/News Corp’s gattling-gun offensive to redefine ETS as a “carbon tax”, Labor has never quite been able to recover a language that could sell its carbon abatement policies.</p>
<p>The ETS was a great success in lowering emissions. It provided compensation to low-income electricity consumers. Most importantly, it directly levied the actual polluters. Conversely, Direct Action is actually a direct tax on consumers – money which is given directly to polluters as a reward for reducing their pollution.</p>
<p>I have only heard one Labor politician who has been able to fearlessly call this for what it is. Labor’s Clare O’Neil, the new member for Hotham, ran rings around Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programitem/peOW30jJzL?play=true">Melbourne’s 774 Drive</a> this week. It is worth quoting her analysis at length:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just want to make it clear to the listeners out there. What the Coalition has done is instead of Labor’s plan, which is to make big polluters pay for polluting, is having gotten rid of that tax, it is using your tax dollars to give to big polluters to stop polluting. It’s absolutely outrageous.</p>
<p>Direct Action is unfair, but importantly it doesn’t work. What we saw with the first auction was the government splurge, I think it was, two and a half billion dollars. It spent 25% of the money in the fund yet it only got us 15% of the way we need to get to for our 2020 reduction targets. </p>
<p>It’s not going to make those targets Josh, and if we put higher targets in place going into Paris as we need to do, what you’re saying is we are going to need to tax more and more ordinary taxpayers and pay polluters even more.</p>
<p>It’s outrageous.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the Frydenberg’s response was very telling:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We found the lowest cost of abatement by putting out an option and running a market based mechanism. But if you want to talk to the listeners out there, ask them what they thought of the carbon tax at the last election, they gave you the lowest primary vote on record since 1903.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So the difference here is that O’Neil is talking about what is actually economically fair, Frydenberg is only talking about how a heavily media-driven election campaign is able to spin fairness. This is the stark opposite to what is actually the case. But for Frydenberg, this is all that counts and the measure of politics itself.</p>
<p>Why the Labor Party was not able to bring out these contradictions some two years ago is another great failure of Labor. For a start, it could had fed the press with alternative memes, such as that the ETS would produce a dividend for Australians: a carbon dividend, a health dividend, a safer Australia for our children.</p>
<p>Right now, though, Labor could be seizing upon the latest contortion in tax politics.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/treasury/coag-2015-path-cleared-for-tax-hike/story-fn59nsif-1227454027389?from=public_rss&utm_source=The%20Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial">reports</a> that Abbott is determined to co-ordinate a 15% increase in the GST, which would amount to twice the impact on the economy that a price on carbon would have. This led Tristan Edis from <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/7/21/policy-politics/tonys-15-gst-vs-carbon-tax-python-squeeze?subscriber=12f243f55023d9f2ead2768fe58cffbff0f8436f">Climate Spectator</a> to ask:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So why does Abbott thank someone for proposing an increase of the GST yet believes the carbon price is going to end the economy?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Increasing the GST may be necessary for the economy and to take the heat off the budget, but it makes an absurdity of Liberal frontbenchers lining up for years to tell us that they are tireless defenders of consumers. Somehow, neither Direct Action nor a 50% rise in GST are scary zombies, while an ETS that had no net cost for compensated consumers is.</p>
<p>That Labor is gambling on climate, with very good public opinion odds in its favour, will ensure it will become one of the top three election issues, next to asylum seekers and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/15/australians-more-concerned-about-isis-than-climate-change-survey">Islamic State</a>. This in itself is important in ensuring that climate imposes itself on Australia’s “attention economy”. </p>
<p>But the real challenge Labor faces is selling its message once the attention is created. If it is to succeed, Labor needs to be on the front foot, O’Neil-style, pointing out the nauseating contradictions in the tax rhetoric.</p>
<p>How the majority of the electorate can be fooled by such travesties is the real tragedy of Australian politics today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
If it is to succeed, Labor needs to be on the front foot, pointing out the nauseating contradictions in the rhetoric around tax reform.David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450982015-07-23T03:42:10Z2015-07-23T03:42:10ZVIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the ALP national conference<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4xejQKlYuw0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker and Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics including the ALP national conference, Bill Shorten’s announcement about asylum seeker turnbacks and Labor’s two-party lead in the latest Newspoll.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stephen Parker and Michelle Grattan discuss the ALP national conference, Bill Shorten’s announcement about asylum seeker turnbacks and Labor’s two-party lead in the latest Newspoll.Stephen Parker, Vice-Chancellor, University of CanberraMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450392015-07-22T23:08:00Z2015-07-22T23:08:00ZLabor embraces renewables at the cost of good climate policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89311/original/image-20150722-1423-lvhpwn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor wants 50% of Australia's electricity to come from renewables by 2030 - but what about other climate policies?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lawmurray/4367240417/">Lawrence Murray/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At this weekend’s ALP National Conference, Bill Shorten is likely to propose a target of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-to-unveil-50-renewable-energy-target-at-labor-conference-20150721-gih4bp.html">50% renewable electricity by 2030</a> as Labor’s central climate change policy. </p>
<p>This proposal demonstrates in spades how poisonous climate change politics has trumped good policy. As with taxation, neither main party seems prepared to develop an effective and efficient climate change policy and make a case for it in a way the electorate will embrace.</p>
<h2>From emissions trading to the carbon tax</h2>
<p>For a brief golden moment <a href="http://webarchive.nla.gov.au/gov/20080719105839/http://climatechange.gov.au/emissionstrading/index.html">around 2008</a> we had the prospect that a firm cap on emissions would drive an economically efficient carbon price – an emissions trading scheme – with bipartisan support. </p>
<p>And, for the majority of economists and policy architects this represented the preferred policy approach to effectively address climate change at lowest cost. </p>
<p>As this carbon price steadily increased, the need for a Renewable Energy Target, also a policy with bipartisan support, would simply fall away as the carbon price did all the lifting to reduce emissions. </p>
<p>Alas, the fixed carbon price that was finally introduced in 2012 was not economically efficient as a falling European price meant it looked unreasonably high at its fixed level of A$23 per tonne. </p>
<p>It was removed in 2014, leaving the RET as “the central policy instrument for reducing electricity sector emissions,” to <a href="http://www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au/reviews/2014-renewable-energy-target-review/report">quote the Climate Change Authority</a>. </p>
<p>Yet the Authority also noted the RET was not the best approach to reducing emissions in the electricity sector. </p>
<p>Economic modelling for the <a href="https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/ret-review-report-0">Warburton Review</a> of the RET also concluded that “whilst the policy is somewhat effective in the abatement of emissions, it is at high cost compared to current global pricing and is therefore not the most efficient means of emissions abatement”.</p>
<h2>Renewables over carbon pricing</h2>
<p>Yet the Labor Party seems prepared to embrace renewable energy as the central plank of the climate change platform it will take to the next election and into government if it wins. It is a brave move, given the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4278380.htm">inevitable accusations</a> of high cost this approach will attract.</p>
<p>Bill Shorten and Mark Butler have committed to an emissions cap to meet Australia’s post-2020 target for emissions reductions. </p>
<p>In an ideal policy world, a market mechanism such as emissions trading would be used to meet the target, and renewable energy would play whatever role was economically efficient to meet the cap at lowest cost. </p>
<p>Yet Labor seems unprepared, at least for now, to advocate such a lowest-cost policy to turn the cap into a carbon price. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/15/tony-abbott-revives-anti-carbon-tax-campaign-as-labor-recommits-to-ets">scorning response</a> last week from some media outlets and the government to a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/opposition-leader-bill-shorten-rocked-by-leak-on-climate-change-plan-20150716-gid3yi">leaked Labor Part policy option paper</a> indicates why Labor is being so circumspect.</p>
<p>Labor must now put together a comprehensive climate policy framework that can deliver Australia’s fair share of a global emissions target, provide a credible and predictable direction for investors, and survive the political barrage that the government will no doubt unleash against it. </p>
<p>This will likely involve a series of carefully crafted individual elements stitched together into an ugly, albeit comforting, patchwork policy quilt. Although not the ideal policy mix, it may yet turn out to be politically astute. Labor’s assessment of political reality seems to be that it has no other option.</p>
<h2>No solutions on the other side either</h2>
<p>Of course, the government remains bereft of a policy to achieve these same objectives. Direct Action, with its Emissions Reduction Fund and Safeguard Mechanism, is designed to help meet the government’s target of a 5% reduction in emissions against 2000 levels by 2020. The government is expected to announce its post-2020 target in August. </p>
<p>This target is likely to be for 2025 or 2030 and will require a lift in aspiration. Indeed, the Prime Minister <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-07-13/joint-doorstop-interview-tirrannaville">pledged</a> that Australia will “take a strong and credible position” to December’s United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.</p>
<p>Yet the current policy is <a href="https://theconversation.com/without-a-safeguard-australia-will-burn-through-our-emissions-target-41762">not fit for that purpose</a> and will require replacement or substantial re-engineering to make it so. The government has spent more time defining what its policy will not be than the alternative. That flexibility is about to expire as a credible domestic policy will be required to achieve the announced target.</p>
<p>Many political pundits and advocates for vested interests on both sides will welcome a genuine debate over alternative climate change policies in the lead-up to the next election. Let the battle and blood-letting continue. </p>
<p>Yet investors in the energy sector and those concerned about the urgency with which climate change must be addressed will mourn the passing of one more opportunity to forge a genuine consensus on how to address a problem that will hurt all Australians as well as our global sisters and brothers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45039/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Wood owns shares in Origin Energy and other energy and resource stocks through his superannuation fund.</span></em></p>Labor’s proposal for 50% renewables demonstrates in spades how poisonous climate change politics has trumped good policy.Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/446982015-07-22T20:12:47Z2015-07-22T20:12:47ZLonging for Labor to reform itself? National conference may not provide it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89100/original/image-20150721-12567-18xwmas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not all of the bold initiatives for internal party reform that Bill Shorten laid down in 2014 appear on the ALP's national conference draft agenda.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hopes for root-and-branch internal reform of the federal Labor Party at its national conference look set to be dashed. The <a href="https://lab15.org.au/conference-documents">draft organisational reform agenda</a>, published ahead of this weekend’s conference, signals that wholesale democratisation of the party’s decision-making structures may not happen.</p>
<p>Expectations had been building for more than a year that the national conference would deliver deep organisational reform. This belief was sparked in April 2014. Bill Shorten, who won the leadership of the federal Labor Party in its first election to involve rank-and-file members, set down his vision for a “modern, outward-looking, confident and democratic party” in his <a href="http://billshorten.com.au/towards-modern-labor-party">“Towards a Modern Labor”</a> speech. </p>
<p>Shorten called for:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a reduction in the structural power of the union in party matters; </p></li>
<li><p>increased membership involvement in preselections for the lower house (70:30 split between local members and a central panel) and for the Senate (50:50 split); </p></li>
<li><p>increased female representation across all party domains; and</p></li>
<li><p>direct election of delegates to national conference.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>However, not all of the bold initiatives that Shorten laid down in 2014 appear on the draft agenda. Conspicuously absent from the document are commitments to enshrine the new rules for <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">selecting the leader</a> in the national party constitution, and significant reform of preselection. </p>
<p>Many of the agenda items are less radical proposals to introduce online policy branches and consider new types of local branches. These sit alongside the usual calls to increase the membership, encourage union members to become active party members, and foster greater engagement by the parliamentary party with the rank and file. </p>
<p>There are also reforms that could be construed as increasing the centralisation and consolidation of power in the hands of party elites. The proposal to require state campaign directors to consult the leader and the national campaign director before the selection of candidates in both targeted and safe Labor seats is a case in point.</p>
<p>The draft statement also “supports state branches that are considering direct election”. Significantly, it proposes an implementation committee be established to further explore the direct election of national conference delegates. While this could ultimately result in reform, it is just as likely to postpone change in the short term. </p>
<h2>Why such a tentative agenda?</h2>
<p>Three key factors can explain the reforms being put forward.</p>
<p>First, while Shorten is federal parliamentary party leader, he does not have the power to change the rules unilaterally. A majority of national conference delegates must approve the changes. </p>
<p>Second, as a decision-making forum, the conference is not naturally suited to deep, system-wide organisational reform. Achieving agreement among 400 delegates on comprehensive organisational reforms is a logistical feat, especially when no faction has a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-powerbrokers-lose-control-with-reform-back-on-the-agenda-20150617-ghqeiy.html">majority of delegates</a> capable of mobilising the numbers. </p>
<p>It is complicated further because the conference also seeks to tackle <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/02/factions-jockeying-over-key-alp-policies/14304888001826">contentious matters</a> of policy and platform, such as climate change, same-sex marriage, the treatment of refugees and the recognition of Palestine. The national conference has many issues to deal with, and only three days to do so.</p>
<p>Third, although Shorten is in a unique position to argue for the reforms as party leader, he would need to expend significant political capital on this. Given the possibility the Abbott government will call an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/five-reasons-why-tony-abbott-could-call-an-early-electionand-five-reasons-why-it-may-not-happen-20150626-ghyb1o.html">early election</a>, and Labor being <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-and-tony-abbott-hit-by-popularity-nosedive-fairfaxipsos-poll-20150705-gi5ga4.html">ahead in the polls</a>, Shorten may be reluctant to allow the party to become embroiled in contentious debates, which may evoke memories of the divisive Rudd-Gillard era. </p>
<h2>Does it matter if internal reform is not achieved?</h2>
<p>The presumption is that failing to achieve substantive outcomes will consign the ALP to political and electoral irrelevance, and Shorten’s leadership to oblivion. Both are dramatic overstatements.</p>
<p>For a start, although Gough Whitlam’s efforts to reform Labor’s organisational structures are widely lauded, few recent Labor leaders have systematically pursued – let alone secured – major organisational change. Leaving aside Kevin Rudd’s move to have rank-and-file involvement in electing the party leader in the dying days of the last Labor government, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538778242.html">Simon Crean</a> has been the only federal leader to achieve major reform in recent times. </p>
<p>And although political commentators are <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/crean-kelty-combet-george-seek-reform-in-alp-union-nexus/story-e6frg6z6-1227448157288">deeply engaged</a> in the issue of organisational reform, it is rarely a vote-winning issue. </p>
<p>Elections are usually decided by public policy issues, leadership and government performance – not by matters of internal party reform. Both the ALP (2007) and the Liberals (2013) were able to win office while largely failing to act on the major reforms recommended by internal party organisational reviews. </p>
<p>However, there are signs that momentum for organisational reform is gathering pace. </p>
<p>Senior party figures such as former senator <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/07/john-faulkner-labor-must-eliminate-stench-of-corruption-to-restore-faith">John Faulkner</a> and ex-Victorian premier <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/politics/election/bracks-backs-faulkner-in-calling-for-labor-reform-20140409-ix70e">Steve Bracks</a> have renewed their calls for change. They have been joined by former union bosses, such as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/actu-elders-warn-labor-to-resist-unions-rising-power/story-fn59noo3-1227448381108">Greg Combet and Bill Kelty</a>, in calling for structural and cultural change. Within the party, newly formed ginger groups such as <a href="http://www.openlabor.net.au/what-we-stand-for.html">Open Labor</a> are calling for party democratisation. </p>
<p>It would be a mistake, then, to view the national conference as a failure if comprehensive organisational reform is not achieved. The short-term importance of reform to Labor’s electoral fortunes and Shorten’s leadership has generally been exaggerated. However, the pressure to change is unlikely to dissipate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a decision-making forum, the Labor Party’s national conference is not naturally suited to deep, system-wide organisational reform.Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityNicholas Barry, Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450482015-07-22T10:22:50Z2015-07-22T10:22:50ZLabor seeks to turn climate policy into a positive with ambitious renewables goal<p>If Bill Shorten and his climate spokesman Mark Butler can’t sell Labor’s proposal for Australia to have 50% of its electricity provided by renewable energy by 2030, they should probably vacate the political persuasion game.</p>
<p>They start with the advantage that renewables are very popular with voters. An <a href="essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport">Essential poll</a> out this week found 50% believed the government should prioritise support for the renewable energy industry over the coal industry. Only 6% thought support for coal should be the priority; 28% said both industries should be treated equally.</p>
<p>This was in contrast to people’s perceptions of what the government’s current priorities are – coal, 49%; renewables, 12%; equal treatment, 13%.
When people were asked whether the government gave enough support to various sectors, majorities thought renewables did not get sufficient support: wind farms, 56%; large scale solar, 55%; roof top solar, 57%. Only 12% said coal did not get enough government support.</p>
<p>These findings come after the Coalition’s lack of enthusiasm for renewables has been on display with Tony Abbott’s attack on wind farms and the government’s directive to restrict what the Clean Energy Finance Corporation invests in.</p>
<p>The 50% renewables goal is just the first stage in Labor’s climate policy. Shorten has released it ahead of the ALP national conference, which starts Friday. He won’t be putting out the more challenging aspects of that policy – Labor’s position on post-2020 emission reduction targets and its planned emissions trading scheme – until some unspecified time later. A section of the party would like to write post-2020 targets into the ALP platform but that is unlikely to get up at the conference.</p>
<p>After the renewable energy announcement, the government quickly ramped up the scare campaign. Environment Minister Greg Hunt said it would have “massive costs”, and even quoted the militant CFMEU – a rather startling source for the government to invoke. Hunt said the main thing was that this was a “desperate diversion” by “Electricity Bill” from his planned “massive new electricity tax” which would drive up power prices.</p>
<p>At present, the Renewable Energy Target (RET), recently legislated afresh after difficult negotiations with the opposition, is equivalent to 23.5% by 2020.</p>
<p>To support its argument, the opposition points to the targets of a range of other places: Denmark, 50% by 2020; California, 50% by 2030; Germany, 55-60% by 2035; Sweden, 63% by 2020; New Zealand, 90% by 2025; and Norway, 114% by 2020.</p>
<p>Butler was reluctant on Wednesday to be definite on what would happen to power prices, because many variables are involved. But he pointed to the government’s own Warburton inquiry into renewables, reporting in August 2014, which said that overall the RET was “exerting some downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices” when demand for electricity had been falling.</p>
<p>The Warburton report also said the direct costs of the RET “currently increase retail electricity bills for households by around 4%, but modelling suggests that the net impact of the RET over time is relatively small”.</p>
<p>Shorten uses a broad brush in promoting his 50% goal. “I believe in the long term it’s going to save consumers money,” he told the ABC, adding that it “ticks all the boxes” on jobs, investment and tackling climate change.</p>
<p>The government is attacking Labor’s failure to be precise about the effect on prices and its lack of modelling.</p>
<p>But let’s be realistic: in a discussion about an ambition for 15 years on, precise modelling risks not being worth the spreadsheet it appears on. The desire that we see in political debate for absolute precision when talking about long-run policies is unrealistic and potentially misleading, especially because much will depend on rapidly changing technologies.</p>
<p>It’s true that there are costs in increasing renewable energy, although they are particularly transitional. And as the use of renewables grows, the fossil fuel sector will be disadvantaged.</p>
<p>But with mounting pressure to act strongly on climate change, the world will be moving towards cleaner energy over coming decades and there will be costs to Australia if it does not do the same.</p>
<p>The renewables issue provides Labor with a chance to highlight that Abbott is out of touch with public opinion in this area. But it is harder to judge where the electorate will be, come election time, on the wider carbon issue. That will depend on factors such as the outcome of the Paris climate conference, and the respective advocacy skills of Labor and government.</p>
<p>Abbott had considerable success with his anti-carbon tax campaign in the 2013 election, much helped by the issue itself being entwined with Julia Gillard’s broken promise.</p>
<p>But parties always need to be beware of thinking they can fight the next election on the same formula as the last one.</p>
<p>Having said that, Labor can’t delude itself. Its overall climate policy will be a difficult sell. It is sensibly backing into it via the easiest route. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-ben-oquist-on-the-direction-of-the-greens-and-the-senate-crossbench-44971">Listen to the latest Politics with Michelle Grattan, with Australian Institute director Ben Oquist, here or on iTunes.</a></strong></p>
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If Bill Shorten and his climate spokesman Mark Butler can’t sell Labor’s proposal for Australia to have 50% of its electricity provided by renewable energy by 2030, they should probably vacate the political…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/447332015-07-15T11:12:00Z2015-07-15T11:12:00ZLabor conference is Shorten’s next test on climate policy<p>The <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/carbon-zombies-alp-bid-to-resurrect-toxic-carbon-tax-that-killed-off-two-pms/story-fni0cx4q-1227442014861">leak to the Daily Telegraph</a> of an options paper on Labor’s carbon pricing policy has been a kick in the guts for Bill Shorten, who was portrayed in the newspaper’s pages not once but twice as a large zombie. It is, however, just an early stage of Shorten’s tough road on this issue.</p>
<p>Maybe the leak was designed to head off some or all the options canvassed, which included a general emissions trading scheme, a separate one for the electricity sector, and car emissions standards. Perhaps the leak was mainly to harm Shorten. Just possibly it came via some chance route.</p>
<p>Whatever the motive, the leak won’t stop Labor having a plan for an emissions trading scheme come the next election. Shorten committed the opposition to that a long time ago.</p>
<p>Labor’s leader has three formidable challenges once the immediate problem of the leak has passed.</p>
<p>Shorten has to see the climate issue managed through Labor’s national conference, held July 24-26 in Melbourne. Then the details of the opposition policy must be brought together. And finally, there will the job of selling it – to an electorate with bad memories of the former ALP government and in the face of a ferocious scare campaign by Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>The draft new ALP platform, to be considered by the national conference, sets out broadly the proposed approach on climate policy.</p>
<p>Labor will “introduce an emissions trading scheme which imposes a legal limit on carbon pollution that lets business work out the cheapest and most effective way to operate within that cap”, it says.</p>
<p>It will “develop a comprehensive plan to progressively decarbonise Australia’s energy sector, particularly in electricity generation”.</p>
<p>A Labor government would support high-emitting industries to become more energy efficient; grow renewables; introduce national vehicle emissions standards modelled on successful overseas efforts; and consider the appropriateness of a climate change trigger in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act and a trigger to cover the national parks system.</p>
<p>A group within the party, the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN), will try to toughen this platform.</p>
<p>Co-convenor Felicity Wade says an amendment will be moved to write in the post-2020 targets proposed by the Climate Change Authority (30% reduction in emissions by 2025 on 2000 levels; 40-60% by 2030). There will also be an amendment put up to commit Labor to having 50% of energy coming from renewables by 2030.</p>
<p>It might be noted, incidentally, that those urging precise targets be inserted can draw on the weight of the Climate Change Authority thanks to Clive Palmer, who insisted on its retention as part of a deal with the government to support its direct action legislation.</p>
<p>LEAN has canvassed the grassroots members of the party and gained support for its amendments from 360 branches and other party entities. Wade says that part of its argument will be that its amendments represent the view of the rank and file – when there is much talk in the party of being more cognisant of its grassroots.</p>
<p>The numbers between left and right at this conference are close, making predictions on amendments difficult.</p>
<p>The powers that be – Shorten and climate spokesman Mark Butler – may be willing to accommodate the renewables amendment but will not want to be tied down on targets. First, the government’s target for the United Nations Paris climate conference in November-December will not be announced until August, thus after the Labor conference; second, they will want to keep flexibility on Labor’s target for as long as possible while finalising the opposition’s position.</p>
<p>Shorten will not announce a policy at the time of the conference. But before the policy is out, it will be vital for Labor to get its climate messages across in general terms, including the difference between a tax and an ETS. If it doesn’t engage early and positively, the Coalition’s scare campaign will be all the harder to combat later.</p>
<p>The policy, when it comes, will have to strike a careful balance: ambitious enough to stake out climate change as Labor’s natural ground, but modest enough to avoid excessive burdens on businesses and households.</p>
<p>Labor requires a policy mix that it can sell from the front foot – accepting that whatever the detail, the government will label it a great big new tax. “Whether it’s fixed or floating, it’s still a tax,” Abbott said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>The opposition then has to decide when to announce the policy. It will have to be ready – or at least a version of it - just in case Abbott springs an election this year, although that is unlikely. Assuming there is not a 2015 election and the Paris conference reaches a reasonable international agreement, a logical time for Labor to unveil its policy would be early in the new year. (That’s not a prediction, I stress.) That timing would mean Labor could take account of the Paris outcome.</p>
<p>The question of whether Shorten can then sell the policy is the big unknown. Despite Labor’s previous negative experience, polling shows it should be possible. Climate policy was a winner for Labor in 2007. Things went pear-shaped with the global financial crisis and the disappointment of Copenhagen. But people have been starting to re-engage with the issue in recent years.</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport">week’s Essential poll</a> found 53% thought Australia was not doing enough to address climate change; only 28% said Australia was doing enough. The picture would change once people were faced with the costs of change, but still this does indicate that many people would be open to more action if a policy was well put together and effectively communicated.</p>
<p>The onus will be on Shorten, who will need to be an effective explainer as well as a convincing advocate. As one Labor man said bluntly on Wednesday: “If we can’t win the climate change debate we don’t deserve to be in government.”</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-podcast-christophe-lecourtier-on-the-2015-paris-climate-conference-44598">Listen to the newest Politics with Michelle Grattan podcast, with French Ambassador Christophe Lecourtier, here</a>.</strong></p>
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The leak to the Daily Telegraph of an options paper on Labor’s carbon pricing policy has been a kick in the guts for Bill Shorten.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441322015-07-07T20:08:53Z2015-07-07T20:08:53ZHow Labor can create a humane refugee policy without reviving boat arrivals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87409/original/image-20150706-20493-8mhvdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C286%2C2281%2C1369&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under the Coalition government, there has been little regard for asylum seekers' humanity, and no concern for establishing durable solutions to their plight. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Eoin Blackwell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Given its poor handling of refugee policy when it came to power in 2007, the Labor Party will need to tread very carefully when it formulates a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/labors-draft-policy-on-migrant-boats-avoids-the-hard-calls-20150630-gi1qu1.html">new policy</a> at its upcoming <a href="https://lab15.org.au/">national conference</a>. It has little to gain politically from deviating from the Coalition’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-boats-may-have-stopped-but-at-what-cost-to-australia-30455">harsh</a> asylum seeker policy, and yet there is urgent need for reform.</p>
<p>Australia’s current policy on asylum seekers has lost all sense of proportion. Stopping the boats is the only policy goal – it is an end for which almost <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-an-offence-if-australians-pay-people-smugglers-to-turn-back-43054">any means</a> are justified. The cost to asylum seekers has been unspeakable. There has been little regard for their humanity, and no concern for establishing durable solutions to their plight. </p>
<p>And there has been a range of other costs – to <a href="https://theconversation.com/boats-dont-arrive-but-continue-to-bring-trouble-for-abbott-government-23326">relations with Indonesia</a> and other neighbouring countries, and to our <a href="https://theconversation.com/boats-secrecy-leads-to-bad-policy-without-democratic-accountability-43324">democratic processes</a>. </p>
<p>There can be no doubting the manifest benefits of stopping the boats. These include undermining the “people smuggling” industry that developed around securing unauthorised entry to Australia by boat; preventing loss of life at sea; and preventing an uncontrollable flow of asylum seekers reaching our shores.</p>
<p>Having stopped the boats, at great cost, it is inconceivable that Australia would allow the movement of people by this means to start again. Its capacity to control movement across its borders is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/would-australias-asylum-seeker-policy-stop-boats-to-europe-40645">envy of the world</a>. All nations, no matter their level of generosity to asylum seekers, wish to be able to control the movement of people across their borders. </p>
<h2>Obvious reforms</h2>
<p>There are obvious reforms that Labor should have no hesitation in adopting. </p>
<p>First, as is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/its-the-principle-that-stops-refugees-from-facing-harm-so-why-is-it-absent-from-labors-platform-20150630-gi12py">already contained</a> in its draft national platform, Labor should significantly increase Australia’s annual refugee intake. Given the scale of Australia’s <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/02key">current migration program</a> and its relative international contribution, the number of 13,500 should at least be doubled. </p>
<p>Second, the raft of amendments to the Migration Act that the Coalition <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/12/05/controversial-migration-laws-pass-senate.html">introduced</a> in November 2014 with the support of crossbench senators should be repealed. Those amendments focused on processing asylum seekers who arrived in Australia up to 2013 and are now either living in the community or in immigration detention. The amendments replaced permanent with temporary protection, restricted review rights in the Refugee Review Tribunal and incorporated more onerous requirements for satisfying the definition of a refugee.</p>
<p>These changes created a greater chance of genuine refugees being returned to their country of origin where they face the risk of death or persecution.</p>
<h2>The regional processing problem</h2>
<p>Regional processing is a central plank in the Coalition’s policy platform. However, it has been an abject failure. Thousands of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island reside in sub-standard living conditions with growing mental health problems under the supervision of private centre operators with <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/how-much-power-is-too-much-when-dealing-with-asylum-seekers-20150625-ghxfpq.html">broad and unreviewable powers</a> to use force against them to maintain order. </p>
<p>Refugee processing has been painfully slow. For those asylum seekers found to be refugees, the resettlement options of Papua New Guinea and Cambodia are inappropriate on any number of levels. The most common way off Nauru and Manus Island for asylum seekers is to <a href="http://www.lawyersalliance.com.au/news/millions-spent-on-voluntary-return-of-asylum-seekers">“voluntarily return”</a> to the country they fled in the first place out of desperation to escape detention.</p>
<p>It is time to accept that the only countries in the region with the capacity to resettle refugees are Australia and New Zealand. Asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru should be brought to Australia and processed by the Immigration Department. This should be an immediate priority if Labor won government, and would be a way to distance itself from existing policy. </p>
<p>The problem is that transferring people to Nauru and Manus Island is the safety valve for the <a href="http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/%E2%80%98turning-back-boats%E2%80%99">turnback policy</a>. If a boat is not successfully returned to Indonesia, the asylum seekers are transferred to Manus Island and Nauru for “regional processing”. The government is thus able to maintain its hard line that no asylum seeker arriving by boat will be resettled in Australia. It is this hard line that has stopped the boats. </p>
<h2>Working with the region</h2>
<p>The problem with regional processing is that it has been conducted as a unilateral exercise with Australia calling the shots. No genuine attempt has been made to engage the countries in the region for whom asylum seeker movement is an issue. </p>
<p>The solution is to retain regional processing but redefine the region. Apart from a few boats arriving from Sri Lanka, asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia all depart from Indonesia and most of those on board have travelled to Indonesia from Malaysia. The focus of policy needs to be to engage the Malaysian and Indonesian governments in preventing the onward movement of asylum seekers to Australia. </p>
<p>There is little downside for Indonesia and Malaysia in assisting Australia to prevent movements between Java and Christmas Island. In return, Australia can offer generous financial assistance to manage the asylum seeker populations in each country.</p>
<p>The previous Labor government made small steps in this direction with its <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/malaysia-signs-refugee-deal/2809512">Malaysia arrangement</a>. The deal was a simple one. In exchange for the transfer to Malaysia of 800 asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat, Australia would provide financial assistance to Malaysia and resettle 4000 UNHCR-recognised refugees on top of existing commitments to resettle refugees from the region. </p>
<p>An important part of the arrangement was that those asylum seekers returned to Malaysia would not be penalised and would be provided with housing, the right to work and access to education for children. The arrangement would act as an effective deterrent to people taking a boat to Australia to seek asylum because their expensive and dangerous journey from Java to Christmas Island would just result in their return to Malaysia. </p>
<p>The arrangement was never implemented. The High Court <a href="http://www.hcourt.gov.au/cases/case-m70/2011">ruled</a> that the immigration minister had not lawfully exercised their discretion to declare Malaysia a “specified country” for the transfer of asylum seekers. The Greens would <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/tragedy-another-asylum-seeker-boat-capsizes/story-e6frfkw9-1226410005101">not support</a> amendments to the Migration Act to fix the problem. </p>
<p>The Migration Act has since been amended. It now confers much broader powers on the minister to send asylum seekers to third countries. There are now no legal impediments to a deal with Malaysia. </p>
<p>There were serious doubts whether the Malaysia arrangement would work in 2011. Boats were arriving in large numbers, and it was possible that the quota of 800 asylum seekers would be reached before it worked as a circuit-breaker on arrivals.</p>
<p>With boats having largely ceased thanks to the Coalition’s turnback policy, a similar arrangement with Malaysia would now work effectively as a deterrent to boats leaving Indonesia.</p>
<p>There is every reason to think that Malaysia would be willing to negotiate a new deal with Australia. Australia could afford to be much more generous in offering resettlement places to UNHCR refugees in Malaysia under an increased quota of 27,000 resettlement places. </p>
<p>Australia could afford generous financial assistance to the UNHCR and the Malaysian government to assist with processing and accommodating asylum seekers located in Malaysia by diverting only a portion of the money <a href="https://theconversation.com/penny-wise-pound-foolish-how-to-really-save-money-on-refugees-27270">currently spent</a> on maintaining the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island. </p>
<p>A humane refugee policy that maintains a strict line on asylum seekers arriving by boat is possible with the right amount of political will.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: The article misrepresented the Malaysia arrangement by suggesting that the agreement was for the transfer of “Burmese Rohingya refugees”. The agreement did not specify the ethnicity or country of origin of refugees to be part of the transfer agreement. It has been amended since publication to correct this.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly is on the Management Committee of the Refugee Advocacy Service of South Australia.</span></em></p>Labor has little to gain politically from deviating from the Coalition’s harsh asylum seeker policy, and yet there is urgent need for reform.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/440682015-07-03T03:03:49Z2015-07-03T03:03:49ZFactCheck: is this the greatest period of humanitarian need since WWII?<blockquote>
<p>“We acknowledge that right now the world is going through its greatest period of humanitarian need seen since the second world war. There are more people seeking refuge, more people displaced than at any other point in time … ” <strong>– Shadow Immigration and Border Protection Minister Richard Marles, <a href="http://www.richardmarles.com.au/sites/default/files/THE%20HON%20RICHARD%20MARLES%20MP_0.pdf">interview</a> with Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast, June 29, 2015.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the lead-up to the ALP National Conference this month, <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/06/30/labors-debate-boat-turnbacks-heats">reports</a> have emerged suggesting the opposition may throw its support behind the policy of turning back asylum seeker boats.</p>
<p>When questioned on the topic, Shadow Immigration Minister Richard Marles mentioned that the world is now going through its greatest period of humanitarian need since the second world war. </p>
<p>Is that correct?</p>
<h2>Rapid acceleration</h2>
<p>It is likely Marles’ comment was a reference to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) annual Global Trends Report, <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/556725e69.html">released</a> in June. The agency estimated that at the end of 2014 there was an estimated <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html">59.5 million</a> people forcibly displaced worldwide. There has been a rapid acceleration of displacement, increasing 40% over just three years from 42.5 million in 2011. </p>
<p>From the end of 2013 to the end of 2014, there was an <a href="http://tracks.unhcr.org/2015/06/ending-the-second-exile/">increase</a> of 8.3 million displaced people from the year. That 12-month period also saw the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html">highest annual increase</a> in a single year.</p>
<p>The data in the report is based on figures provided by governments, non-government organisations and the UNHCR. The <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/556725e69.html">figures</a> include refugees (19.5 million), asylum seekers (1.8 million), and certain groups of internally displaced persons (38.2 million), collectively referred to as “persons of concern”.</p>
<p>The UNHCR has stated that is the highest level of displacement in the post-WWII era. Situations of conflict, persecution, generalised violence, and human rights violations have formed a “nation of the displaced” roughly equivalent of the population of the UK. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/55813f0e6.html">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More than half of Syria’s population is displaced. It is one of the biggest refugee crises in history with around four million people leaving the country. At least <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/55813f0e6.html">7.6 million Syrians</a> are also estimated to be displaced within their country at the end of 2014. <a href="http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html">Children</a> constituted 51% of the refugee population in 2014, the highest figure in more than a decade.</p>
<p>The refugee crisis in Syria was certainly not the only one. Little-publicised conflicts in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Burundi, have added hundreds of thousands to the long-standing refugee populations from Somalia, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.</p>
<p>The number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Asia <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/55813f0e6.html">grew</a> by 31% in 2014 to nine million people. Continuing displacement was also seen in and from Myanmar in 2014, including of Rohingya from Rakhine state and in the Kachin and Northern Shan regions.</p>
<p>Compounding the ongoing displacement of people, the number of refugee returns is at its <a href="http://unhcr.org/556725e69.pdf">lowest</a> point since 1983. During 2014, only <a href="http://unhcr.org/556725e69.pdf">126,800</a> refugees returned to their country of origin. Ongoing conflict and general political insecurity have contributed to the prevailing trends.</p>
<p>In an effort to escape desperate situations, refugees and migrants risk their lives – the starkest examples are those who have embarked on dangerous boat journeys in the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe and in South East Asia. At the end of 2014, the UNHCR estimated that at least <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/5481bf796.html">348,000</a> people had attempted to reach safety by boat throughout the year.</p>
<h2>Response from the international community</h2>
<p>In response to this crisis, many destination countries (including Australia) were criticised by the UNHCR for resorting to tougher deterrence measures in an attempt to stem the rise in asylum and refugee flows. Amnesty International <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.au/resources/activist/POL4017962015ENGLISH.PDF">described</a> the international community’s response to the Syrian refugee emergency as “dismal”, saying that only 23% of the UN humanitarian appeal for that crisis funded as of June 3, 2015.</p>
<p>The UNHCR’s Guterres did not mince words, <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/558016eb6.html">saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[E]ven as this tragedy unfolds, some of the countries most able to help are shutting their gates to people seeking asylum. Borders are closing, pushbacks are increasing, and hostility is rising. Avenues for legitimate escape are fading away. And humanitarian organisations like mine run on shoestring budgets, unable to meet the spiralling needs of such a massive population of victims. We have reached a moment of truth. World stability is falling apart leaving a wake of displacement on an unprecedented scale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the aftermath of WWII, the international community established the United Nations and the Refugee Convention to provide a framework for protection of those who were displaced due to conflict and who could not longer rely upon their own country for safety.</p>
<p>The Refugee Convention also established the principle of responsibility and burden-sharing – the idea that the international community must work together to address refugee crises so that no one country, or a small number of countries, has to cope by themselves. </p>
<p>There is a clearly disproportionate burden on a small number of countries. Around 86% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries. Turkey, Lebanon and Pakistan each host <a href="http://www.unhcr.org.uk/about-us/key-facts-and-figures.html">more than one million refugees</a>.</p>
<p>Amnesty International is one of many human rights organisations who have <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.au/resources/activist/POL4017962015ENGLISH.PDF">said</a> that the principle of international burden sharing is being ignored “with devastating consequences: the international refugee protection system is broken”. The loss of life and human misery is far higher than many armed conflicts.</p>
<p>The global refugee crisis will not be solved unless the international community recognises that it is a global problem and deals with it as such.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>Marles’ statement is consistent with the recent report on global displacement by the UNHCR. Those displaced by conflict and persecution are at the highest levels the UNHCR has recorded, and sadly they are continuing to grow.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p>This is a good analysis, as the recently released UNHCR report rightly draws our attention to the increasing number of refugees and displaced people around the world.</p>
<p>As the author notes, it is the “frontline” countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan that are providing temporary refuge for the massive flow of refugees from Syria. Pakistan continues to be the first place for Afghans fleeing their prolonged conflict, but even Pakistan is now a source country for refugees.</p>
<p>However, other conflicts in Africa receive less attention particularly in the English language media, apart from commentary on boat people in the Mediterranean. It rightly is a global issue calling for global attention. The focus on “turn backs”, which was the main topic of the interview, does not address the need for a global approach to increased movement of people. <strong>– Kerry Murphy</strong></p>
<hr>
<p><div class="callout"> Have you ever seen a “fact” that doesn’t look quite right? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Anne Kenny receives sitting fees from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. She has received grant funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerry Murphy is on the Board of the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre and the Jesuit Refugee Service. I am a partner in a specialist Immigration Law Firm.
</span></em></p>Shadow Immigration Minister Richard Marles has said that the world is now going through its greatest period of humanitarian need since WWII. Is that right?Mary Anne Kenny, Associate Professor, School of Law, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439942015-06-30T20:11:03Z2015-06-30T20:11:03ZShorten’s trust deficit is limiting Labor’s opportunities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86658/original/image-20150629-1402-13wsti5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten's support – and that of his party – is almost entirely a function of public perceptions of Tony Abbott’s performance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Nikki Short</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Who do you trust?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the time, John Howard’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/29/1093717817944.html">opening parry</a> of the 2004 election seemed breathtakingly audacious given he was the man who would <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtZLV7MvcLI">“never ever”</a> introduce a GST and had unleashed the concept of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/the-most-memorable-times-politicians-have-tried-to-wriggle-out-of-their-election-promises/story-fn84fgcm-1226908769670">“core” and “non-core” promises</a> on an unsuspecting electorate. But those four little words went straight to the electorate’s doubts surrounding the lack of experience of Labor’s neophyte leader Mark Latham and his competence to run the economy.</p>
<p>Fast forward to the present day. All the polls suggest that Prime Minister Tony Abbott may suffer a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/23/tony-abbotts-trust-deficit-disaster-is-paralysing-his-government">trust deficit</a>. But that is not stopping him <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-says-dont-trust-bill-shorten-with-your-mortgage/story-fn59niix-1227379941334">re-purposing Howard’s parry</a> to fit Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.</p>
<p>Shorten’s problem is that, if anything, he is more vulnerable even than Latham.</p>
<p>Not only that, Abbott is flexing every muscle to reduce Shorten’s targets of opportunity. In large measure he is succeeding, aided by the opposition’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4249016.htm">fears</a> in some cases and abetted by its <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greens-calls-labors-bluff-over-decision-to-support-coalitions-pension-policy/story-fn59niix-1227408340920">mishandling</a> of others.</p>
<p>That politicians lie comes as no surprise to journalists, nor to many voters who see dishonesty as the fundamental operating principle of their elected representatives:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How do you know a politician is lying?</p>
<p>Their lips are moving.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So the old cliché goes.</p>
<p>However, the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/bill-shorten-defends-himself-over-lying-to-neil-mitchell-about-his-role-in-julia-gillards-downfall/story-fns0jze1-1227413050685">exposing</a> of Shorten as having publicly lied over talking to Kevin Rudd about pulling his numbers away from Julia Gillard in 2013 is much more damaging than that. In close to two years as Labor leader, Shorten has neither built the profile nor provided the performance that renders him prime minister-in-waiting rather than fragile whinger-in-chief. </p>
<p>If the opinion polls are correct, Shorten’s support – and that of the Labor Party – is almost entirely a function of public perceptions of Abbott’s performance. Abbott falls, Shorten rises – and vice versa. That alone exposes Shorten to attacks on his character, even from a prime minister who has problems of his own in this area.</p>
<p>Gillard never recovered from her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCwoj35d3M">carbon tax “lie”</a>. Her admission polluted perceptions of Labor until its defeat in 2013 – and beyond. And here lies one of the dangers for Shorten. It is not just that he is a self-confessed liar, but his admission is a reminder to voters that Labor had fibbed its way into office in 2010.</p>
<p>Worse still for Labor, Shorten’s admission diminishes what would otherwise be a potent field of fire – Abbott’s own economy with the truth. Not only is there the repudiation of Abbott’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-07/abbott-promises-no-cuts-to-education-health/5436224">campaign commitments</a> on health and education in last year’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/then-and-now-the-abbott-governments-broken-promises-20140514-zrcfr.html">budget</a>, but also his admission in 2010 that he does not always tell the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-18/abbott-under-fire-for-gospel-truth-gaffe/830636">“gospel truth”</a>.</p>
<p>His scripted remarks could be relied on, but Abbott confessed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Put the two together and “trust” ought to be a fertile field of fire for the opposition. But this is improbable now – if not impossible – in light of Shorten’s confession and Labor’s record.</p>
<p>To make matters even more difficult for the opposition, Abbott is moving relentlessly to ensure other battlefields are “no-go zones” for Labor. It is already on a hiding to nothing over border protection, so why not <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4256338.htm">let loose</a> Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to conflate that and national security to argue that, because Labor could not “control” Australia’s borders, the opposition is soft on national security?</p>
<p>Tabloid Tony is <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-says-labor-concerns-about-citizenship-stripping-rolling-out-the-red-carpet-for-terrorists-20150618-ghqyf2.html">moving heaven and earth</a> to ensure that Labor’s attempts not to have a tissue paper between it and the government on national security still leave Shorten vulnerable. Throughout the debate on proposals to strip dual nationals involved in terrorism of their Australian citizenship, Abbott strived to portray Labor as more concerned about legal rights than community safety.</p>
<p>Even though his own cabinet forced Abbott to a position which the opposition could endorse, Labor still suffered damage on the way through. The government manipulated the timing of the parliamentary debate to make it difficult for Shorten to offer definitive support because for weeks there was no legislation on the table to consider.</p>
<p>It was another sign of Labor’s phobia that its attack on the government – such as it was – was largely confined to the cabinet split, rather than the substance of the disagreement. It is an irony that the cabinet dissenters saved Shorten from the full extent of the damage Abbott would have liked to inflict.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Abbott’s intent is clear. And the opposition could not be accused of fighting fire with fire.</p>
<p>It is a legitimate question why, within weeks of the terrorist threat being lifted because of the risk posed by Islamic State, a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-19/monis-letter-not-included-in-siege-review-due-to-human-error/6558420">letter</a> from Martin Place gunman Man Monis to Attorney-General George Brandis talking about contacting the organisation did not raise a red flag. That the relevant authorities say there was nothing untoward in the handling of the letter invites the Mandy Rice-Davies <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11303169/Mandy-Rice-Davies-obituary.html">riposte</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He would say that wouldn’t he?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Labor has been equally lead-footed on the budget. It was outmanoeuvred by the Greens on a more equitable-than-not tightening of pension eligibility and probably got in only just ahead of Greens leader Richard Di Natale on the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-23/labor-bows-to-fuel-excise-increase/6566240">re-introduction of fuel indexation</a>.</p>
<p>Without the party rules Rudd <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">introduced</a> to make leadership coups close to impossible, other Labor powerbrokers might be lying to journalists right now about where they stand. And in July, there is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-28/labor-right-push-for-hardline-boat-turn-back-policy/6578678">Labor’s national conference</a> for Shorten to survive, not to mention an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-asks-to-bring-forward-trade-union-royal-commission-appearance-to-july-20150618-ghr6ta.html">awkward appearance</a> at the royal commission into trade unions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jim Middleton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bill Shorten has neither built the profile nor provided the performance that renders him prime minister-in-waiting rather than fragile whinger-in-chief.Jim Middleton, Vice Chancellor's Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.