Tony Abbott is on the right tram with his turn-back-the-boats policy but hasn’t gone far enough.
There’s a sporting contest and money to be made out of this.
Have the navy intercept boats and turn them back to Indonesia?
Excellent, though if you really wanted to be fair dinkum and stop the boats you’d combine that with blowing them out of the water on sight (and plenty of supporters for that action).
But why not make it a contest, save the taxpayer heaps and give whole new meaning to the term ‘‘offshore betting’’.
Allow bets on how many boats get through in a week, a month, a year?
How many refugees make it to the mainland? How many boats, refugees get turned back? Which countries supply the most?
Weekly-monthly doubles, this and the next, trifectas, exotics, superfectas — after the government took its cut, it would be a nice little earner.
It would have be to a fair sporting contest; Marquess of Queensberry rules, above board and above the Plimsol line, as it were.
Refugees good enough to burst the defence and cross the stripe, make it to the mainland, should be given immediate entry.
This would allow detention centres — an enormous drain on the public purse — to be shut down. It’s the Australian way and everyone’s a winner.
A few latte-sipping, chardonnay-swilling, sandal-wearing lefties might object.
They might label Abbott with Gough Whitlam’s description of Joe Bjelke-Peterson with: ‘‘A Bible-bashing bastard.’’ There views can be dismissed. Drowning’s too good for them.
‘‘Can’t bowl, can’t field, can’t bat . . .’’
That was English journalist Martin Johnson’s jocular dismissal of a previous band of his compatriots when they arrived here to contest the Ashes.
It was unfair, inaccurate but a phrase that has entered the language.
It would be inaccurate to describe the Indian cricket tourists in those terms. They can bat and bowl.
They’re also a disgrace. They’re a contender for worst team in any sport to have toured here, but not in ability.
Former Australian captain and coach Bobby Simpson once said a team could be inferior in batting and bowling but could at least be competitive by improving its fielding.
It was hard to tell whether the Indian fielding was so bad because they didn’t practise, or because they didn’t care.
As in everything they did, the Indians looked like a football team that had turned it up after 20 minutes.
Fieldsmen, including the God-like Sachin Tendulkar, wandered in and out of slips — with wicket-keeper the most important positions — at their leisure.
And the running between wickets was worse than the fielding.
Whatever the X factor is that makes a captain, D.S. Dhoni and his last-Test replacement Virender Sehwag, haven’t got it.
The logic behind their field placings was incomprehensible.
The only plan seemed to be to go on the defensive as soon as the game went against them, hoping the Australian batsmen would get themselves out. This made the bowlers’ job impossible.
Little wonder they became dispirited, inconsistent; part of a dispirited rabble whose members looked like they wanted to be anywhere but contesting Test matches in Australia.
The selectors were evidently at the South Australian Test but played no part in the selections — amazing.
Hard to gauge how much of Australia’s successful Test summer and turnaround has been due to a compliant opposition.
Not hard to gauge that India has huge problems and needs a complete resconstruction from the pitch up; the sort of reconstruction Australia has undertaken.
But if you don’t admit you’ve got problems, you’re not going to find solutions.
The Indian camp’s noises haven’t bespoken silent, serious reflection. Legendary Indian allrounder Kapil Dev is pessimistic.
He’s said when the Indians return home, when the Twenty/20 starts, the money roles in and the players are adulated, the disastrous tour will be forgotten.
This goes beyond India. When money and individual egos are more important than the greater good, the game has a problem.
No problems at the Australian Open and the men’s singles tennis final.
Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal earned the descriptions ‘‘epic, classic’’ and even ‘‘greatest match ever’’ after their 5 hour-53 minute marathon.
Maybe it was the greatest, and maybe Djokovic, Nadal and the superceded Roger Federer form the greatest triumvirate of all.
Better than Rod Laver, Roy Emerson and Neale Fraser, or Pancho Gonzales, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, or John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg or Jimmy Connors, or any other trio.
Maybe, but what the final proved was the pointlessness of comparisons — entertaining talking points as they may be.
Time and again in one of their interminable points, Djokovic or Nadal set up chances to come to the net for volleys.
Long-time watchers were expecting rushes to the net that never came, that would have come when Laver was winning grand-slams.
Laver and his contemporaries played with wooden racquets that had heads scarcely 30cm wide.
Now the triumvirate blast cannons from heavy weapons.
How would the one-time power players Gonzales and Hoad go with such weapons?
Imponderable, and there aren’t too many little blokes like Laver and Rosewall at the top. None, in fact.
Bigger, faster, fitter, stronger now? No doubt, and maybe even better, but monotonously better.
Not only romantics might swap for a Laver v Emerson, Gonzales v Rosewall, Borg v McEnroe point.
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