Richard Tanter writes that policy competition between the Labor government and conservative opposition to “stop the boats” bringing asylum seekers to Australia by ship is producing strategically dangerous outcomes. Both government and opposition are now committed to isolating all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat in Papua-New Guinea, in cluding successful applicants for asylum. It is hard, Tanter concludes, “to think of anything else an Australian government could do in a single policy move more likely to undermine the already limited chances of sustainable peace in Papua-New Guinea.”
Richard Tanter is a Nautilus Institute Associate and Professor in the School of Political and Social Studies at the University of Melbourne.