There is a strategy that is sometimes employed by rugby union teams that seems to have been also adopted by the Labor Party – don’t contest so you can set up your defence for the next play.
That’s all very well, and works sometimes, but how much more exhilarating to push the opposing scrum off the ball? How much more satisfying is it to win the lineout? How much more inspiring is it to see our breakaways arriving first to the breakdown and securing the ball? How much more in the spirit of the contest is it to see them striving rather than waiting to react?
Have the Coalition finally, and perhaps inevitably, gone so far in the political game that they have overrun the ball and, more importantly, can Labor seize the opportunity to pick it up and remember which direction to run?
“The consequence of this ruthless exploitation of the asylum seeker issue by the Coalition has been a 15-year period of bipartisan cruelty to asylum seekers, interrupted only by a short period of compassionate miscalculation under Kevin Rudd. It is difficult to exaggerate the cost to the good name of the nation and, more importantly, the suffering inflicted upon tens of thousands of innocent refugees seeking our protection. The ludicrousness of the current proposed legislation provides at long last an opportunity for this bipartisan cruelty to be broken.” – Robert Manne
We can only hope.
