Dutton's latest scare campaign on boats doesn't hold water

Dutton says "now we've warned about this for some time, all of the core factors like releasing the 149 criminals (under the High Court ruling), watering down Operation Sovereign Borders.

That sends a clear message to the people smugglers, and that's when they get back in business, and that's when we see boat arrivals".

While Dutton has again warned of an armada of boats coming at us, that is highly unlikely.

For all practical purposes, both major parties now have identical policies on boat arrivals.

Both parties are committed to maintaining turnback policy under Operation Sovereign Borders, offshore processing on Nauru and the non-settlement of these asylum seekers in Australia.

Once the most recent boat arrivals, who are apparently from India and Pakistan which is unusual, realise they have been tricked by people smugglers, word will get back to their communities that coming to Australia by boat will not give them a favourable outcome.

The really extraordinary thing about the current hysteria about a tiny number of boat arrivals is that it ignores the fact we now have almost 110,000 asylum seekers living in Australia with little to no chance of being recognised as refugees.

That started in 2015 when we saw the biggest labour trafficking scam abusing the asylum system in our history.

That scam peaked in 2017-18 when almost 28,000 asylum applications were received when Dutton was home affairs minister - a fact he desperately tries to avoid talking about and most media outlets other than this masthead ignored.

Australia is known internationally for its harsh approach to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Our only opportunity of adopting a more humane and far less expensive approach to boat policy was lost when Tony Abbott combined with the Greens to scuttle legislation on the Malaysia Agreement that had been negotiated by the Gillard government.

Much like Donald Trump is currently demanding the Republican Party not co-operate with the Biden administration to regain control of the southern US border, Abbott's objective was to stop the Labor government from stopping the boats so he could take political advantage of the situation at the 2013 election.

The scuttling of the Malaysia Agreement did exactly what Abbott wanted. It led to a massive increase in boat arrivals, as well as deaths of people coming to Australia by boat. Abbott belted the Labor government on the issue day and night whilst avoiding blame for the situation.

After the second Rudd government re-introduced offshore processing which largely stopped the boats within a few months, Scott Morrison re-introduced turnback policy for the tiny number of boats that were still coming. That enabled him to award himself a trophy to ensure he got all the credit for "stopping the boats". It was classic Scotty from Marketing.

Dutton and Scott Morrison infamously released information about a sixth boat turnback in 2019 to try and scare Australians that granting a visa to the Biloela family would restart the boats.

When the Labor government did grant the Biloela family permanent residence, it didn't restart the boats but the Morrison/Dutton scare campaign had done what it was designed to do.

The Coalition warned of an armada of boats when the Medevac legislation was passed. At a cost of many tens of millions of dollars, they reopened the Christmas Island detention centre to transfer the Medevac refugees and in preparation for an armada of boats.

Morrison flew to the detention centre for the most expensive photo opportunity in Australian history. But no boats arrived and the Coalition quietly closed the centre a few months later.

The Coalition argued the boats would restart when the Albanese government abolished Temporary Protection Visas. That also didn't happen.

Dutton is now alleging that the Albanese government abiding by the High Court decision to release certain detainees from detention will restart the boats. No government has an option to disregard a High Court decision. That sort of thing only happens in a police state and thankfully Australia has not reached that point.

But let's put asylum seekers arriving by boat into context. In the past six months or so, two possibly three boats carrying in total around 50 people have managed to evade Operation Sovereign Borders. It is up to the head of Operation Sovereign Borders to explain how these boats escaped detection.

As Scott Morrison may have said if he was still prime minister, I don't drive the navy ships/planes or run the surveillance that is core to Operation Sovereign Borders.

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But back to the actual loss of control of Australia's borders that started when Peter Dutton was home affairs minister. A situation he has never acknowledged or taken responsibility for.

He recently told Australians that the 100,000-plus asylum seekers currently in Australia arrived under the Albanese government when the vast majority arrived under Dutton's watch.

The Albanese government has undoubtedly taken far too long to address the issue of unmeritorious asylum seekers arriving by plane that it inherited from the Coalition.

Its $160 million package to address that is totally inadequate but it is far more than Dutton ever did on the issue.

For Dutton to now tell us he knows how to do border protection is an extraordinary deflection from his own numerous failures.