MV Tampa

I would call them irregular maritime arrivals, perhaps.

But people coming by boats, right? This is a much larger story than I have time for, but the short version of it is since the 2001 Tampa crisis, where basically we sent the fucking, there was a ship, we sent commandos out to the ship, pushed it back into international waters.

We broke a bunch of international law.

The right has found a way to weaponize the relatively small people who come to Australia by irregular means to channel... pretty anger over migration as a whole, right? And a similar thing happens in the States, right? It's all about the border.

Pressure release valve for the rage without actually giving into those people perhaps all the way.

It was an acceptable form of hatred.

And obviously something else happened in 2001 post-Tampa, which was pre-Tampa in September 11.

And yes, a very large number of the people coming by boat did happen to be Muslim.

It's just so interesting how much this debate's changed in the sort of 15 to 20 years that I've been a political commentator.

I remember... and we've talked about this, I think, before, but I remember, you know, it was John Howard, his big argument for stopping the MV Tampa back in 2001 was that he was managing to balance confidence in the Australian immigration system, which was a high immigration structure with, you know, tough borders, as it was called.

But here we are now, all these years forward, and there's this realisation now, whether it was wrong then or it's just different now, attitude amongst a lot of people that will hang on a second.

If infrastructure doesn't keep up, if housing prices are going the direction that they're going and there's not enough of it as well, we don't want, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

[gentle music] Big events have always had the power to shape elections.

John Howard and the Tampa affair

We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

[clapping]

He says, Joe, he said.

Have you heard about the MV Tampa?

I said, yes, mate.

Everyone's heard about it.