By jingo, it’s time for common sense

Did he know what he was doing, however? There, the answer is more elusive. On one hand, you'd hope that he did, since he's running for prime minister. On the other, given what he'd said, you'd hope that he didn't, because it was vote-seeking, jingoistic rubbish.

He was banging a political, if not a populist, drum; he was not enunciating sensible policy. Abbott said (among other things on his list of unlikely first-foot-under-the-desk achievements) that he would order the navy to turn boats around. (He had several caveats on that putative order, which at least indicates he may know he'd be grasping a very painful nettle.) He would visit Indonesia to make it plain that Australians viewed boat people whose port of embarkation was in Indonesia with as much distaste as Indonesians viewed Australians who peddled drugs in Bali. Peddling drugs is a crime, as is boarding an unauthorised boat in Indonesia. But trying to reach Australia in a leaky, unsafe boat is not a crime. It is too often – sickeningly often – a fatal misadventure.

In any case, Abbott would get at best a polite hearing on the issue in Jakarta where the political realities are somewhat different. Indonesia's interest lies in getting unauthorised arrivals to move on. In any case, so-called boat people matter very little to the government in Jakarta, since they have arrived in Indonesia planning to do so and to become Australia's problem instead.

And at the administrative level, removing the impact of Indonesia's money buys anything bribe culture, so far as it relates to facilitating the onward passage of unauthorised arrivals Indonesia doesn't want and cannot accommodate, requires a rather longer term view than apparently suits Abbott. Further, the Indonesians have already made clear their distinct ambivalence towards Abbott's excursion into Flashman territory on the boat people.

It might be true – though the point is arguable and substantially untested beyond anecdotal evidence – that most Australians regard so-called queue-jumpers, "illegal" arrivals, and specifically "boat people" with unequivocal distaste. The cost of processing and supporting refugees who arrive outside the parameters of Australia's formal immigration programme is substantial, particularly at a time when even the most inattentive Australian has worked out that money is after all a finite resource. But it would probably cost substantially less if processing were done in Australia under rules that ensured people did not spend months locked up in quasi-prisons, rather than overseas, the preferred out-of-sight, out-of-mind option of both sides of politics.

The revived Nauru option, flagged by Abbott in his IPA speech as a live proposal if he were to become prime minister, effectively would bribe a foreign country (albeit a tiny Pacific Ocean outcrop with no economic future) to become a prison island. This is a sorry excuse for policy and immoral to boot, at a distressingly fundamental level. (The same can be said about Labor's so-called Malaysia Solution.)

Australians need to take a reality check. Politicians beat up the issue of unauthorised arrivals in ways that encourage the quite erroneous view that the country is being swamped by illegal and politically suspect people. They are playing to the gallery. The overwhelming majority of Australians are not racist in the formal sense of the term. But many Australians take national pride to jingoistic levels encouraged by politicians in office and politicians seeking office – though this may not be their intent – and by discordant national cheerleaders who declare that the country is open only to the Chosen.