Rudd's credibility is lost at sea
AS Kevin Rudd prepares to blitz western Sydney this week, he might like to explain why he engineered Labor's greatest shame, for which he and Gillard bear responsibility - restarting the boats.
We see the consequences of Rudd's moral vanity today as more than 100 asylum seekers a day forge across the seas on a journey that has drowned at least 1000.
So many boats are arriving now that our Navy can barely keep up, forced to flit from crisis to crisis in the Indian Ocean as people smugglers ramp up their trade in anticipation of a clampdown in September if the Coalition wins the election.
Yet Rudd thinks the most important thing for the nation is to reinstall him in the Lodge.
On Friday we saw the juxtaposition of his childish revenge antics against the deadly consequences of his egomania. While he was touring a Geelong shopping mall surrounded by a hand-picked cheer squad, and phoning journalists to divulge his wicked plans, news filtered through that another asylum seeker boat had capsized with 60 souls on board.
Maritime safety authorities had found a debris field to the northwest of Christmas Island where a boat had been spotted two days earlier. Within hours came confirmation from HMAS Warramunga of a body floating in the water.
On Saturday, Rudd no doubt basked in the positive coverage of his day on the hustings and the fresh leadership crisis he had sparked.
Out on the Indian Ocean the Navy was cleaning up the mess he started.
HMAS Warramunga couldn't even complete the grim task of recovering bodies before it was called away to rescue 70 asylum seekers from another "disabled vessel".
While HMAS Warramunga was busy, HMAS Glenelg had to be called in to rescue 58 asylum seekers on yet another boat. They were all deposited safely on Christmas Island by Monday, according to an AMSA spokesperson.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, came another distress call, from a 24-metre "Sri Lankan-type" fishing vessel spotted northwest of Cocos Island.
On Tuesday afternoon, AMSA confirmed a search was under way involving two planes. Let us hope that they do not find more people who have been lured to their deaths by the siren call of Labor's border protection failures.
A maritime rescue source believes more asylum seeker boats than we know have sunk without a trace. Last week navigational safety warnings were radioed to ships to avoid two upturned wooden hulls partly submerged off Christmas Island.
They were first thought to be the remnants of asylum seeker boats that had capsized unnoticed, but AMSA says they are "vessels that arrived safely at Christmas Island and have been destroyed for quarantine purposes by Border Protection Command".
Clearly they were not destroyed enough if they pose a risk to shipping. But it must be hard to keep up.
Since Rudd became prime minister and sent the green light to people smugglers, the number of asylum seekers has soared almost exponentially, to 40,000, and the industry has become far more sophisticated and organised.
They now have the routine down pat. The boat operator will use a satellite phone to call the Australian Maritime Safety Authority direct, give the boat's precise GPS co-ordinates, say it's in distress and request a rescue crew to pick them up.
Some of the boats barely make it out of port before they're on the phone. Earlier last week Australian authorities were alerted to a fishing vessel with 40 people on board just outside Cilicap port in central Java, says the maritime rescue source.
So many boats are now arriving that "it's almost to the point where it becomes a joke," he says. Radio operators greet the arrival of another boatload of asylum seekers with: "Here come the latest citizens".
This is the mayhem that Rudd deliberately, recklessly, arrogantly and foolishly created in 2007 when he unwound the successful Howard-Ruddock border protection policies for no other reason than to make himself look good.
Even Mark Latham now says Howard was right on boats.
When children are dying on the high seas "there comes a time to call the truth" he told ABC's Q&A on Monday night.
But there is no such truth-telling from the hypocritical assorted compassionistas, human rights lawyers and lip-sewing luvvies who used to rail against Howard's "cruel" border protection policies.
Their silence over the past six years has been deafening. Occasionally they stir themselves to mutter some half-hearted criticism of Labor but they always find a way to lay blame on the Opposition.
And you just know they will find their passion again if Tony Abbott becomes prime minister.
Yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald letters page was an exemplar of their perverted logic.
"The Abbott-led Coalition stands condemned over the recent deaths at sea of refugees seeking asylum," wrote John Barry of Croydon, Victoria.
Rudd is counting on such delusional thinking to bring him back to power. But he has no answers. He is the root of Labor's problems.
There is no better demonstration of his bizarre disconnection from reality than that shopping centre walkabout on Friday, set against the backdrop of the bodies of men, women and children floating in the ocean
- See more at: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/rudds-credibility-is-lost-at-sea/story-fni0cwl5-1226662078201#sthash.xiEWNkgB.dpuf
ogQ!(U~$(KGrHgoOKjYEjlLmS1ctBJ1K-4Uyh!~~_7.JPG?set_id=81 "i-need-a-martini"){kind=avatar}
