For months Labor has been legitimising One Nation’s racism, making concession after concession to its anti-migration agenda.

Instead of a relentless campaign against One Nation, Labor has been ploughing the political ground in which One Nation’s sows its toxic seed.

In early August, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke booked a National Press Club address to outline how Labor was going to impose immigration cuts but cancelled at the last minute after flak from employer groups and dissent erupted in Labor’s cabinet over the details.

Later that month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Newscorp Dubbo Bush Summit about Labor’s plan to tackle One Nation’s rise: “There is a current spike in the support for One Nation … but we’ve responded. We started lowering the numbers [of migrants] well before [One Nation’s surging popularity] occurred because we recognised that we want to get [migration] right to assist the Australian economy.”

Then Burke’s office confirmed that Labor was planning to slash the refugee intake from 20,000 to 13,750 a year.

Refugee support organisations had been warned weeks earlier that the cuts were on the cards.

It was a step too far. As anger erupted in Labor’s backbench and across the refugee sector, Albanese intervened to over-rule Burke.

But the incident only made it even more obvious that Labor is dancing to One Nation’s tune.

New crisis on Naoero

The 24 August was the 25th anniversary of the Tampa incident when then Prime Minister John Howard used the Australian military to prevent the Norwegian ship MV Tampa landing 433 mostly Afghan asylum-seekers on Christmas Island.

It marked the beginning of the now infamous “Australian solution”, using offshore detention to refuse to process or settle refugees in Australia.

Howard launched “Fortress Australia” with his famous election line, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

While there have been twists and turns over the years, the Albanese government is totally committed to offshore detention.

Albanese transferred the remaining refugees on Naoero to Australia in June 2023. But Labor remained committed to offshore detention and since its election has sent all new asylum-seeker boat arrivals to the South Pacific island.

Now there are more than 100 asylum-seekers on Naoero. After the High Court struck down indefinite immigration detention on the mainland, Albanese is using Trump-like laws to deport refugees from Australia to indefinite detention there.

But 25 years after Tampa, Naoero is engulfed by yet another humanitarian crisis. On 24 August, scores of asylum-seekers waited over ten hours outside the Eigigu supermarket for rice that had been unavailable for weeks.

The shortage of rice (and flour) was just the tip of the iceberg of what Bangladeshi asylum-seekers called weaponised starvation in their hand-written letter to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

The allowance paid to asylum-seekers is too little for them to afford to buy food even when it is available. Most asylum-seekers are subsisting on one meal a day. The situation is made worse by the frequent electricity blackouts that spoil any food stored in the fridge.

The hostility of dei-Naoero (local inhabitants of Naoero) towards asylum-seekers continues to plague the island, and asylum-seekers face a regime of harassment and frequent assaults and robberies exacerbated by the complete indifference of the police, who are often related to the perpetrators.

Their appeal to the Minister refers to “the total lack of security and sub-human conditions that we are forced to endure”. They write, “We are trapped in a system that is causing us severe physical and psychological destruction.”

Asylum-seekers are not allowed to work. And Muslim asylum-seekers cannot openly practise their religion.

Over the last two years, only a handful of asylum-seekers have been found to be refugees. Now the Naoero authorities are ramping up the threats to forcibly deport asylum-seekers to their home country. Some Bangladeshis have been told that unless they return home, their allowance will be cut.

In the aftermath of Labor losing the seat of Secret Harbour to One Nation in West Australia Albanese proclaimed, “We simply must defeat them [One Nation]. We owe it to history.”

Tragically Labor shows no sign at all of learning from history. One Nation won’t be defeated by outdoing their racism.

By Luke Ottavi and Ian Rintoul

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