The Abbott government has had the rockiest start of any newly-elected government I can recall[1]. Opinion polls are already showing the government trailing Labor, even before the election of a new opposition leader.
The failure has two main elements. The first is the consequence of gaining office on the basis of slogans and personality politics rather than any coherent set of policy proposals. ‘Stop the boats’ was a great vote-winner for the LNP in opposition, but in office it’s a hostage given to fortune. Maybe the boats will stop and maybe not, but bombastic rhetoric will have no effect one way or the other.
The implication for Labor is not to respond in kind with wrecking and cheap slogans. Rather, it’s to make the point that, however dysfunctional the previous government may have been terms of leadership, and whatever the problems of implementation, it was in the right (or at least better than the LNP) on all the major policy issues[2].
The implied political strategy is to defend and extend the key policies of the Rudd-Gillard government, with the exception of the mistakes driven by short-run political exigencies (the archetypal example being the withdrawal of benefits from single parents, and the associated failure to do anything to improve the treatment of unemployed people in general).
That means treating the Abbott government as a temporary interruption a program of reform that includes carbon pricing, the NBN, NDIS and Gonski reforms. The only big gap in Labor’s program is the absence of a credible plan to finance these policies in the long run, while allowing state governments sufficient revenue to do their work. Labor needs to use the time in opposition to break with the low-tax rhetoric of the past, and work out a coherent plan to increase revenue. In practice, there’s no real chance of increasing the rate or coverage of GST, so the options will have to come on the income tax side. More on this soon, I hope.
The second factor in Abbott’s poor start is the ‘born to rule’ mentality that we’ve already seen in Queensland. Newman and his ministers have been shameless in grabbing more and better perks, giving jobs to their mates and so on. Abbott has started in the same vein, with examples such as the sacking of Steve Bracks, and his rumored replacement with a mate such as Nick Minchin. The contrast with Rudd, who left Liberal appointees in place, and gave plum appointments to well qualified Libs, is striking. Although the travel expense scandals now coming to light date from the past, they fit into a pattern that is already evident.
Of course, Labor is hardly innocent in this. But the isolated examples that have come to light, and the near-total absence of ministerial scandals in the Rudd-Gillard government suggest that this is not a case of ‘everybody does it’. Labor should join the Greens in pushing reform of the entire system.
fn1. The arguable exception is the Labor minority government that emerged from the 2010 election. But this wasn’t a new government or a new PM: Labor had a couple of years on top after 2007 and Gillard had already had her honeymoon period in the immediate aftermath of the deposition of Rudd.
fn2. ‘Better than Abbott’ was a pretty low bar when it came to refugee policies. But Labor did at least increase the refugee intake, while Abbott has cut it.
John Quiggin 
I suspect ‘our’ ABC are a bit stunned by the amount of crook goings on they have to work with. The missing ingredient is opinion polls. A year or so ago when the government of the day made some fairly inconsequential error of judgement (example the Malaysia solution) an adverse opinion poll came out the next day. Tssk tssk must do better. Perhaps the fear is that the public have spoken so the LNP have a presumed mandate. With the publicly funded ABC there is also the fear of being nobbled.
Perhaps the tax question can be addressed by this:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
($21-32 trillion sitting in off-shore tax havens – Even if Australia could claim just a fraction of that, could be 100s of $billions available for expenditure on hospitals, universities, roads and other infrastructure)
Perhaps Federal Labor could take up Colin Barnett’s self-interested plea in modified form, and propose restoring the States’ ability to impose income taxes, while retaining the Commonwealth’s ability to do so. This has a number of positives – it would go some way to addressing vertical fiscal imbalance as well the structural deficit, and (more cynically) it would also enable the Commonwealth to avoid the opprobrium associated with raising taxes, by allowing (or implicitly forcing) the States to do it.
Curious about that poll do u have a link?
@Graham
Graham, I think Prof Q is referring to the Morgan Poll.
Oops – automod.
Graham, the latest Morgan Poll shows Labor on 50.5% and LNP on 49.5% 2PP. You’ll have to google it, as my link got automoderated.
Admittedly the Morgan Poll has a reputation for skewing towards Labor, but it certainly supports Prof Q’s contention that this is the worst polling performance of a new government in memory.
“That means treating the Abbott government as a temporary interruption a program of reform that includes carbon pricing, the NBN, NDIS and Gonski reforms.”
While carbon pricing, NDIS and Gonski reforms may not be too difficult to implement again (although instability on carbon pricing may cause delays in reinvestments in renewable energy in the private sector), I think NBN would be difficult to fix if it is messed up in the term of the Abbott Government which looks increasing likely.
There was the Joel Fitzgerald scandal with undeclared travel gifts, and to a certain extent Labor managed to own the slippery meanderings around the ACT wineries. The allegations against Craig Thompson predated his time in parliament, but I suspect the electorate read those as expense scandals.
What the Gillard government did do was propose legislation exempting the parliamentary departments from FOI which the Abbot opposition eagerly supported with none of the usual stop the waste nonsense. There is a reason most of the current exposures predate the Gillard-Abbot legislation. Gillard also moved heaven and earth to block any progress on the integrity legislation agreed with the Greens and Independents in 2010.
There’s also the really interesting question of why we are hearing about these expenses only now? The September election could have been a lot more interesting if this had been known then.
I haven’t seen many opinion polls. Is this because MSM doesn’t want to rock the boat with their allies now in government? It is usual that a new government has a honeymoon period this close after an election. If what you say is correct, I would have thought that would have been massive news.
With regards to your “Better than Abbott” comment on refugee policy, discussions around this subject tend to not define what “Better” means. My reading is that it falls into 2 groups:
better means less boats; OR
better means more humane treatment of refugees.
With the change in policy by the ALP over the last 3 to 5 years, for both sides of politics, “Better” appears to mean “less boats. Already Abbott’s key election promise to achieve this (Buy the boats) has been abandoned. I haven’t seen any examples of the other plank in this policy (tow the boats back to Indonesia) being implemented. What he seems to be doing in this massive area of policy controversy during the election is continuing with the Labor policy of processing offshore and arranging for asylum in third countries for those people found to be refugees. (A policy I think will be found to not be legal when tested in court)
Although I hadn’t heard about the weddings, the fact that Abbott was claiming expenses for Pollie Pedal was regularly pointed out on Twitter, as was his repayment of expenses over Battlelines. And, as a self-funded half-ironman competitor, I was always suspicious that he must have been spending a lot of work time and money on his training for the full event.
So, it’s not so much that the news has just been discovered but that it has somehow been decided that it is news.
PrQ
I note your second footnote but I don’t agree that this makes their policy better. It was offered in circumstances where the ALP must have known they were getting beaten, and wouldn’t have been held to the promise in the unlikely event they’d win. It was conceived, IMO, merely to give the “Labor for Refugees” crowd some political cover, but really it was like some chap dressed only in a g-string claiming he wasn’t naked.
The reality is that the ALP and LNP policies were an artefact of their mututal (though hostile) design, and one can argue that the ALP nudged the LNP to the right in the race to the bottom. Once the “PNG solution” came in, the LNP moved to boat buys, paying for info in Indonesia (and now) “hide the boats”. It also expanded Nauru and is now moving to prevent administrative review.
More broadly though, there can be no doubt that by the standards established post-War, the ALP regimes of 2007-2013 were both comparatively competent and honest — and that under enormous pressure from internatuional circumstances and later the Murdoch press from at the very least early 2010.
A number of important and valuable initiatives were enacted or commenced. They turned out to be very poor at playing the game into a political headwind but it’s unlikely that Abbott will choose to unwind much of substance undertaken by his predecessors.
Even the much-maligned Swan looks good by comparison with his successor, Hockey, who seems either not to be familar with IMF projections and those in the budget or be a disembling fool, in circumstances where talking down the economy has ceased to have any political value for his party.
And this is telling:
@Fran Barlow
Hockey continues to talk down the economy even when it has ceased to have any political value for his party?
Oh dear. I didn’t realize he was that incompetent.
@Worrier
Ignorantly too as he didn’t realise the (old pre-election) figures he was relying on improved the pre-existing projected unemplyment rate in June 2014.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/joe-hockeys-lplates-are-there-for-all-to-see-20131009-2v752.html
As Pascoe observes:
I am happy tax increases (at least for the super wealthy and very high income earners) can now be talked about, together with off-shore tax heavens. A bit of ‘austerity’ in this area is not amiss.
Recent OECD data confirms the distribution of income growth between 1980 and 2008 within countries was very uneven among countries. Denmark stands out with having an approximately even growth in income across the top 1%, the top 10-1% and the remaining 90%. The point, you have made on many ocasians, JQ, regarding the USA is confirmed. In Australia the inequality has grown.
Totally unrealted to the ALP vs LNP discussions, I maintain on the basis of an insight from general equilibrium models, income distribution matters. While it is difficult to know the ‘right’ degree of wealth inequality (incentives do matter, as do endowments), it is the total neglect of counteracting the growing income inequalities (and growing tax rorts) in the policy framework which is avoidable. The ship has to turn no matter how strong the head wind, for the sake of ‘the economy’.
As for long term funding of the ALP’s policy program, IMO, the major mistake the Rudd-Gillard government made in this regard is the messing up of the mining tax. I realise avoiding this mistake is easier to talk about then to achieve, given the weddings and all that. It just happens to be a very costly mistake.
The changes to single parent benefits changed in 2006 under Howard. However, to avoid a huge uproar, the changes were to only apply to new applicants – the existing single parents were “grandfathered.” This created two classes of single parents, those who existed before 2006 and those after, who got moved to Newstart when their youngest turned 6. The ALP decided to treat all single parents the same – apparently they would have had to pass new legislation because the “grandfathering” was going to expire in 2012. Considering the state of the Senate, the Coalition probably wouldn’t support extending the grandfathering, and the Greens would want all single parents on the single parent pension forever. I expect that any legislation would have been difficult to achieve.
It is difficult to believe that single parents, who have known since 2006 that they would be required to look for work when their youngest reaches 16 (at the latest), weren’t making any arrangements (ie studying) to move back into the workforce, to join their less-well-off brethren that have been moved onto Newstart since 2006. Remember a 6-year-old child in 2006 would be 12 in 2012 – should their parent be able to stay out of the workforce for another four years?
Raising income taxes sounds like a suicidal re-election strategy.
As I said in another thread, I think the politicians’ travel rorts issue is a storm in a teacup. I really don’t care if politicians fiddle their travel expenses a bit. The real moral and intellectual crime is politicians who don’t understand macroeconomics, don’t care about solving unemployment, don’t care about inequality and don’t care about or deny global warming, resource depletion and limits to growth. Those are mistakes of a profound nature which will lead directly to environmental and economic collapse. Travel rorts just don’t rate on the scale of the real challenges we face.
I think what they should have done with the mining tax, instead of promising company tax cuts, is given all the revenue to the Commonwealth Grants Commission to distribute to the states along with the GST. This would be on a firmer constitutional footing given the minerals belong to the states, help fix state balance sheets, ensure that any state like WA which raised mineral royalties was just shooting itself in the foot as those revenues would be deducted from their CGC distribution, and given the Commonwealth government and state governments some leverage and space to remove the various stamp duties, payroll taxes and other highly distortionary fund-raising measures the states need to raise money atm, which would be much more positive (and more popular) for economic growth than company tax cuts.
Rudd was the first Howard challenger to talk of tax cuts under a Labor government. And then he got elected. I don’t think anybody is getting elected to government in contemporary Australia on a promise of higher taxes. The GST was merely a change of tax structure but it’s presentation as a tax hike nearly killed Howard at the time. The Turkey does not vote for Christmas.
What made my jaw drop was Barnaby Joyce describing an expensive gift from a mining magnate as saving taxpayers’ money! Isn’t taking gifts from people who will be affected by the decisions you make an elementary no-no for an MP?
A few things spring to mind;
Abbott promised a new more honest government and then we get the leader defending claims of serial rorting;
LNP members caught rorting were allowed to pay back the sum while they pursued Slipper over the same issue;
In opposition Morrison was the veritable “shipping news” yet in govt he has restricted news on boats;
Greg Hunts convoluted arguments on carbon tax/ETS are looking particularly weak in light of IPCC and current Australian weather patterns;
Abbott is continually late for important events, a habit he adopted in opposition.
This has to be the shortest honeymoon ever.
@TerjeP
Australia, September 7 2013 suggests otherwise.
@JamesH
That’s true of course. OTOH, how likely is it that politicians who did grasp the quality and scale of the challenges and who had singlemindedly devoted themselves to implementing the best solutions possible would have the time left over, or the inclination, to hire a jet for a phot op in Tamworth or be inclined to attend a wedding where they could hob nob with reactionaries while moaning about the entitlement mentality of the lower classes or the corruption of officialdom?
The reckless indifference of the political class to these questions is also expressed in their snoutsd-in-the-trough mentality. Rorts are merely the outward signs of a profound disease.
oops … last was to @ikonoclast …
@TerjeP
FTR, I would add, Terje, that voting for more taxes is not the same as “turkeys voting for Christmas”. Taxes are neither harmful nor useful per se. A tax system that settles burdens and benefits fairly within a community and between generations and which is adequate to fund services that communities need is a good one, which, to use your analogy, keeps the turkeys in rude health.
Indeed, subject to the above, even those who in absolute terms bear a disproportionate share of new tax burdens will probably benefit, because by definition, the communities within which these relatively privileged live will be wiser, healthier, happier and likely to contribute to a more productive society, from which those privileged will also draw advantage.
Why wouldn’t any rational and ethical person want that?
@JamesH
I take you point about revenue to State Governments. However, I don’t believe distributing the revenue allocated to company tax cuts from the mining tax (short term for Super Profit …) to State Governments would have made a big change to the balance sheets (budgets) of the States. The problem (mistake) lies with the depreciation allowances which the Gillard agreed to.
@Mr T
I think its a ‘Turn the boats around’ not ‘tow back’ the boats policy, the latter (apparently) being much more risky to navy personnel.
Kevin Rudd did return one set of asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking in his first term. Since LNP took office I think two sets of asylum seekers have been transferred to Indonesian search and rescue. If that current situation were to continue then presumably you get better results in terms of less boats & more humane treatment of refugees. This assumes the Indonesian government is co-operative, if not, well I assume that would mean a lot more boats arriving?
TerjeP is very careful in talking about election outcomes and tax increases by making a prognosis about Australia in the immediate future. I suspect TerjeP knows about the election disaster of the Free Democrat Party (FDP) in the September 2013 federal election in Germany. The FDP did not manage to get 5% and therefore will not be represented at all in the new government. They were the coalition partner of the CDU/CSU during the past legislative period. They used to have around 8% of the votes.
What happened?
Mr Genscher, the currently honorary senior official of the FDP, and, I understand, a domestic and internationally highly regarded former Foreign Minister under coalition governments for many years, criticised Roessler, the leader of the FDP until he resigned after the September 2013 election, for having narrowed the policy agenda of the FDP to tax cuts and small government. Source: Der Spiegel.
The FDP moved in the direction of Libertarians. It didn’t work.
On the climate change side, the Canadian blog DeSomgbog is not impressed with the new lineup http://desmogblog.com/2013/10/09/australia-s-new-prime-minister-surrounded-climate-science-denying-voices-and-advisors
You are getting close to mirroring our goverment!
In the long run, bracket creep will increase tax revenue. In the mean time you could get rid of some of the more egregious rorts (novated leases on cars anyone?).
I reckon bracket creep is a really clever invention – you get tax increases without voting for them. So all you need to do is not vote for tax cuts, and there you are. Which is like telling me I’ll lose weight if I just eat less …
I was on a golfing trip to Murray Downs in Swan Hill and while buying a beer after a humbling golfing experience, I heard a conversation between a customer and female bar staff. Customer opined why are you working you’ve got till he turns eight. Bar attendant replied I don’t know what you do all day, don’t you get bored.
This might explain why some single parents aren’t making arrangements for future employment. Just reporting not judging.
@Anthony
Though apparently having read Graham Richardson’s piece in The Oz today it seems that Tony Abbott did say at least once that he would tow the boats back while he was Opposition Leader.
@Fran Barlow
You labour metaphors much more than is warranted.
I don’t think Australians will vote into government a political party that has a clear agenda to increase taxes. Of course the ALP can give it a shot. But it certainly wasn’t the strategy they used in 2007.
@TerjeP
It is a myth that the electorate does not support increased socials spending. It is a mantra that gets repeated endlessly, because it is necessary to the survival of a certain kind of economics. The ANUpoll found quite different results when it actually asked the questions.
I imagine we will soon see an extensive commentage denouncing psephological alarmism as a product of evil parasites with their snouts in the public trough.
I note some parallels between Greg Hunt and the former Soviet Union’s TD Lysenko. Both have theories unsupported by peers yet were put in control of major industries. Both like to silence their critics. In the case of Lysenko q.v. some wacky ideas led to crop failures and famine, one idea I recall was to plant crops in north-south alignment to harness the Earth’s magnetic field. According to Hunt farmers can be re-educated to become more CO2 absorbent so coal burning is less of a problem, an idea not well supported by peer reviewed science.
Lysenko had some of his critics shot. Hunt has silenced his critics for example in disbanding the Climate Commission within days of getting the job. Yet we have no idea whether Hunt’s pet theories have any chance of working. If carbon tax is repealed then I think we should reasonably expect spectacular results from ‘direct action’. Instead I’m expecting a shambles with any emission reductions largely attributable to a global economic downturn.
If the Abbott government had been smart, they would have allowed an ETS to continue, *and* introduced direct action schemes. If direct action proved more than adequate—but it won’t, that’s assured, if they account honestly—then they could have restructured the ETS if warranted. Instead, they place continuing uncertainty across the entire renewable energy sector, a sector that Australian conditions are well suited for, especially for research and development of even better technology. Cut adrift the solar energy business, and then rely heavily on coal and iron ore exports to China to help our economy. Smart…not.
Direct Action is a political sop. I don’t know anybody that believes it is good for anything other than political spin.
Quite right hermit. The only factors which will limit CO2 emissions by Australia and by the world will be;
(a) economic collapse; and/or
(b) fossil fuel shortages.
All extant system behaviour to date, empirically measured, illustrates that the fossil fuel burning economic juggernaut of late stage capitalism will continue on the same path (attempted endless growth) until the above limiting factors cut in. All other attempts at (self)-imposing limiting factors have failed to date. I predict these attempts will continue to fail and only the unintended outcome of economic collapse (and the real world limits which will cause it) will be responsible for capping and then reversing human CO2 emissions.
This whole phenomenon raises an interesting philosophical question. Can humans en masse direct their own history? The answer is NO if we mean by this “direct their own history by volitional action towards intended outcomes”. Of course, we are the “authors” of our history in some senses even though we are not the “directors” of our history. We are the authors of unintended consequences but not the directors of intended outcomes.
Ultimately, we are helpless before natural forces and helpless before biological forces including the various biological forces and drives of out own nature. All these forces in toto determine our “macro” or overall fate. Volition, planning, conscious direction and intention have little role in directing the macro outcome although we like to believe these intentional factors are pivotal.
A sense of powerlessness is engendered by the true perception of how fated we are to follow our doomed path. People would rather live with their illusions. Maintaining these illusions is actually accelerating the oncoming doom. But consistent with my thesis, I would have to say it seems that humans’ attachment to their illusions is also part of their unavoidable fate.
There is nothing that can be done to avoid fate. Thus if anything can be done it can only be done at the level of the individual consciousness’s attitude to fate. The correct existential attitude if it can be achieved is to accept it and not worry about it. The correct existential attitude is probably close to a certain non-theistic Buddhist attitude which holds that all reality is ultimately illusion. Yes, it is empirically, materially real but it ultimately still means nothing. When the individual ephemeral consciousness ceases then reality itself effectively ceases (for that conscoiusness). In that sense, material reality is an illusion that is easily swept away. Everything we strive for and care about is pointless illusion and is annulled by the return to non-existence. We are deluded if we think it really means anything.
@Tim Macknay
But the States have never lost the constitutional power to impose income taxes – they just agreed in 1940 not to do so, and any state can withdraw from that agreement whenever it likes. Though in practice it’d want Commonwealth cooperation in using ATO assesments mechanisms to avoid an administrative mess.
A more feasible revenue raiser for the States would be a land tax administered as a large surcharge to council rates (which are, in Georgist fashion, based on Unimproved Capital Value). They could even ease the political difficulties of a new tax on individuals by just heavily taxing councils and so forcing them to raise the rates.
@TerjeP
No, the GST was a net tax hike – it raised the amount of tax as a proportion of national income by over one percentage point (to a level, BTW, above the current level). It had to do so to fund the compensation to low income earners who could not benefit from the associated income tax cut.
@John Brookes
But bracket creep depends on rises in nominal personal incomes. And with very low inflation, low productivity growth and a declining share of wages in national income these are growing only slowly. Bracket creep still works, but it takes a lotlonger to do so than it used to. Plus it has the side-effect of reducing the progressivity of income tax.
Has the start to the Abbott Government really been that rocky?
The Indonesian trip (1) helped smooth over the clusterf*ck Labor created over live cattle experts, a win for our farmers and (2) kicked a couple of goals in relation to people smuggling:
A rather spectacular start, I would’ve thought.
Jeepers- live cattle exports not experts.
Mel, I don’t think I really need to remind you that opinion columns are not a source of factual information. I also suspect you’re already aware that The Australian and Greg Sheridan both have well-established reputations for being strongly partisan supporters of the Conservatives and Abbott, as well as being rather creative in their interpretation, and reportage, of events.
Given that you already know these things, I assume you’re just stirring the pot.
@Mel
Abbott is taking advantage of work already done under the last government on live exports from the fish-wrapper of your choice.
@Mel
Utterly rocky. Post rockslide rocky.
1. With the exception of the abolition of “the carbon tax” (sic) he has proposed exactly nothing positive and different from the regime he claimed was the worst government in history. What before the election were “emergencies” (“boats”, “the budget”) now look like things that require no specific new action on no specific timeline. No radical savings measures have been adopted, nor new revenues proposed. he has a cabinet composed 95% of males, all of them white and 40% of them lawyers.
It turns out Abbott, and some of his underlings had their metaphoric snouts deep (and improperly) in the public trough even before coming to power — claiming benefits even for purelyly PR-based and entertainment activity.
They’ve sacked the Climate Commission on Culture War grounds, affirming their disgust at evidence-based policy, and removing its material from the web with all speed, only to discover that with 48-hours, it could go public and get even more money from the public.
Their treasurer has re-affirmed that he was the boob most who follow politics or economics had long ago concluded, proving conclusively that his nearly all-male cabinet was indeed, not selected on merit.
Abbott has wandered around the region making a fool of himself — apologising to the Malaysian PM for the fact that his country “got caught up in a charged political argument in Australia” that he started in his attempts to disrupt the Australian government’s attempts to get to his right on asylum-seeker policy.
He has also had to apologise to Indonesia for Australia insisting on humane treatment of Australian-sourced cattle (when the measures ultimately adopted were even supported by John Cobb of the Nationals). In order to smooth over this issue, he has had to abandon his position on tow-backs, and buying boats and trading information sub rosa with shady folks in Indonesia which he had affirmed before the election in public interviews, proving again that by his standard for lying, he is a liar. He also abandoned his (implied) promise to spend the first week of his rule in an Indigenous community. He has also implied that he has no leverage in his trade dealing with China.
This all in under 6 weeks … scandal, incompetence, abandonment of pre-election promises, meek submission to regional partners/stakeholders and otherwise running from press conferences.
Oh … and all ministers denied the right to do press conferences not first cleared through his office. Indeed, even low level appointments of new staffers for new MPs now have to be approved by a panel led by his Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, and IIRC, Ronaldson and Abetz. Gosh, that’s going to cement unity.
And what about that PPL scheme? He is either going to have to deal with The Greens on that now — how embarrassment! — or wait until Clive’s puppies turn up — and demand the requisite pound of flesh for waving through what Clive regards as “a scam”. Bearing in mind that not all LNP members think it’s a good idea, that will be interesting.
The last government was not one I admired, but it was comparatively competent by Australian post-War standards. This government is giving early signs of threatening to become the worst post-War Federal regime in Australia’s history — and this despite being composed largely of ministers who held office under Howard.
@Anthony
My point remains that the legal status of what both sides of politics have been doing remains open to challenge.
If what you say is correct, and two boats have been handed over to Indonesian Search and Rescue, it relies on the good will of Indonesia for this policy to continue to be successful. If the boats in question were in a fit state to continue sailing (I have no information on this), the Australian government leave themselves open to charges of piracy. If the boats were in need of assistance, all this will mean is that the quality of boats making the attempt will improve.
Once any boats enter Australian Territorial Waters, there is an argument that Asylum Seekers have a right for that request to be heard in Australia. All the efforts by both the former Labor government and the current government to deny them this right has either been found to be illegal, or not tested in court. The current strategy is to prevent the question being put to a court. But it is my belief that eventually, some lawyer will find a way whereby a court does consider the matter.
@Mel
I think you meant to say that the trip to Indonesia managed to make some progress smoothing over the grave damage done by the Coalition during its election campaign over asylum seekers (a diplomatic disaster which far overshadows the live export tension). But this involved an extremely humiliating about face by Abbott, proving what we all knew, that the “boat-people” rhetoric was nothing more than a deceitful electoral gambit.