Try the Bolt and Fielding plan

Try the Bolt and Fielding plan. Slowly, ever so dangerously slowly, the continued arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers at Christmas Island is becoming a difficult political for Labor. The government really has no idea what it can do about either so perhaps it’s time to take a bit of unorthodox advice.

On March 17, the News Limited columnist Andrew Bolt — his reach has now expanded bey0nd the Melbourne Herald Sun to the other tabloids — stopped criticising for a moment to propose a solution. At the time the government took no  notice of the advice but with Kevin Rudd now so clearly in election mode and desperate to avoid taking a stand on anything that might cost a vote, perhaps it now should.

Bolt wrote this:

So here’s a simple plan to fix everything — a plan first suggested to me by Family First Senator Steve Fielding to stop the boats dead without being at all cruel.

Let’s announce that from today we’ll send every boatload of “asylum seekers” we intercept to some refugee camp in Indonesia, Pakistan or whichever other country we can persuade to take them.

Yes, you’re right. Those countries won’t want our rejects, so let’s make them an offer they can’t refuse.

For every single boat person they take from us, we’ll take two genuine refugees from their camps.

What could be fairer? We’ll be twice as kind, we’ll send the boat people to safety and we’ll reward not those who’ve pushed in but the refugees who have waited the longest in line.

Two refugees for every boat person. Guaranteed to stop the flood like nothing Rudd has ever tried.

If the Prime Minister has a better idea, let him now explain it. But I haven’t heard one yet in the two years since he made his fake promise to “turn ’em back”.

If you really do believe that queue jumping is the great evil when accepting boat people, the plan has a certain logic about it.

There are some in my backyard. Next time you see a picture of Kevin Rudd on the lawns of the Lodge or Kirribilli House, just remember that when he’s back at home in Brizzy he thinks there is a public house or two within a block or two. Not that he’s certain. “I believe” is the strongest he could put it when his latest hospital adventure tour was interrupted yesterday by demonstrators in Cairns protesting about public housing being put in their suburb without adequate services and employment opportunities.

The Cairns Post reported the incident thus:

When asked if he would live next to a block of 19 public housing units, Mr Rudd said he would have no problems doing so.

“The place I live in Brisbane, I believe has social housing within a block or two and I have lived there for the past 15 years,” he said.

He justified the projects by saying the Federal Government recognised the need to stimulate the economy and chose to act by fast-tracking projects, including public housing.

Not that Rudd met the demonstrators personally. He slipped in through the back door of the Cairns Hospital to announce his spending plans and left it to his chief-of-staff Alister Jordan to hop out the front and spend 30 minutes with the locals. And being part of the great tradition of putting off until tomorrow any difficult messages, the underling just asked for some submissions to be sent to him in writing about the issue.

Then there was Joe. Any future coalition government is clearly going to be light on when it comes to ministerial experience. The ranks have certainly thinned with the disappearance of Howard, Costello, Downer, Nelson, Minchin and now Turnbull.  When it comes to choosing a new leader should Tony Abbott go down in a screaming heap, then Joe Hockey will be the only option.

Kevin to get his way. Kevin Rudd has little time for Tasmanian union leader Kevin Harkins but such is the factional numbers game within the Labor Party that for a while it looked like the prime ministerial view would be ignored and Harkins given a winnable spot on the party’s Senate ticket. Not any more, it seems, with the emergence of a new candidate whose entry will see the choice made by the ALP’s federal executive. Given that Rudd described Harkins last year as a “pugilist” who had “Buckley’s and none” chance of entering the Senate for Labor while he remained prime minister, presumably the new candidate, Lisa Singh, will get the nod.

Singh, a former minister in the state Labor government before last month’s defeat, says: “I don’t know how I will go. I’ve just put my nomination in and hope that, with my parliamentary experience and record, it will be well regarded by the national executive.”