Lacking political leadership: Comparing the treatment of boat people in 1977 and today

An excellent article by Klaus Neumann, Professor of History at the Swinburne Institute for Social Research, in “Queue jumpers” and the perils of crossing Sydney Harbour on a Manly ferry provides the historical context for the current morass that is Australia's refugee policy.

Neumann provides a survey of the Vietnamese boat people "crisis" that occurred in 1977 and draws parallels with the politics of boat people during the last decade or so.

His conclusion is that the sympathetic treatment of boat arrivals by the Fraser LNP Government during the 1977 federal election campaign, in stark contrast with the xenophobic view of the Whitlam Labor Opposition (Greg Sheridan provides an eye-opening observation on this) and broad public opinion at the time, demonstrates that political orthodoxy (following public opinion) doesn’t always determine outcomes in Australian politics.

• The 1977 boat people "crisis" demonstrates that sometimes politicians can do the right thing and lead public opinion, and the public won't penalise them for it.
• During the Tampa election of 2001, and then again in 2010 and 2013, Labor assumed that it would suffer disastrously if it didn’t try to match the anti–asylum seeker rhetoric of the Liberals and Nationals. It worried that a considered and principled stance, like the approach adopted by Don Chipp's Australian Democrats in 1977, and eventually taken by Fraser, Peacock and MacKellar, would severely damage its standing at the polls.
• Neumann ponders that "it would be fascinating to see one of the major political parties test this orthodoxy. The experience of 1977 suggests that it might not be as risky as Labor leaders from Kim Beazley to Kevin Rudd have assumed".

Yes, it would be fascinating to see current day politicians "lead" public opinion, but the chances of that are remote.

• The Abbott Government—in stark contrast with the Fraser Government—is committed to its sledgehammer approach of "towing the boats back" and off-shore processing.
• There is no one of Don Chip's stature on the cross-benches.
• And the Labor Party is fractured on the issue, dominated as it is by the Whitlam / Hawke labour-oriented anti-asylum view from 1977 which still permeates public opinion and policy making today.