Don't let political opportunism hide an idea that may work By aggressively talking down Kevin Rudd's new asylum seeker package, Tony Abbott is in danger of putting personal political interests ahead of the national interest and even ahead of the stated objectives of his own policy. It is that bizarre. Abbott's frustration is understandable. Faced with a late policy shift that might do the very thing he's been demanding, which is stop the boats, he is flummoxed, claiming the new policy is already "unravelling before our very eyes." It is not legally binding and it doesn't say what Mr Rudd says it said. It doesn't say that everyone who comes to Australia illegally by boat will go to PNG and it doesn't say that no one who goes to PNG will ever come to Australia," he said. Rudd, who said the policy was absolute and was not contradicted by PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill at their joint press conference on Friday, was scathing. "It is quite plain to us that Mr Abbott is out there deliberately undermining the government's clear message to people smugglers," he said on Monday. This is not in the national interest. It might be in Mr Abbott's personal political interest but, frankly, if you do that sort of stuff you raise the question about your ultimate fitness to hold the high office of prime minister. Abbott's partisan campaigning on the domestic front would be unremarkable this close to an election were the subject policy not so vulnerable to doubt in the international arena. Like the Malaysian transfer agreement, doomed by the opposition because it too might have succeeded in stopping the trade, the new policy is, by definition, a calculated bluff. It is designed to outweigh the desire to get here with the horror of being sent somewhere else. In other words, it is deliberately awful. Don't take my word for it: look at the department's own ads. The only reason PNG agreed to this new arrangement was that, if it works, relatively few refugees will need resettlement. The boats, ideally, would stop coming, and dirt-poor PNG would pick up some much-valued financial assistance for infrastructure and education. As with national defence and strategic security, the success of Australia's tough new asylum-seeker stance relies on something our bitterly divided polity seems incapable of - the outward projection of an unwavering resolve. The message should be that anyone and everyone attempting entry by sea will be turned away. People smugglers are brokers of slim chance. For their market to exist they need two things: human misery born of violence and persecution, and they need a product to sell. Australia is that product - a land of "hope, reward and opportunity," as the current Liberal Party slogan so neatly says. Rudd's shamelessly rightward policy shift has infuriated his opponents and has been done under the moral cover of stopping deaths at sea. As covers go, it's a solid one. But the political opportunism of Labor's capitulation should not be used to obscure its potential to solve one of the country's most intractable problems.