The Gillard government hoped to turn the asylum-seeker impasse to its advantage but the plan was doomed.

Thursday's cabinet debate on asylum seekers was the first big, long, hard-fought cabinet argument of the Gillard prime ministership. And the most important person in the debate wasn't even in the room.

The entire discussion, broken into two meetings and running close to three hours in all, was held in anticipation of how Tony Abbott would react to any government decision. And the final decision was made on the same basis.

The Opposition Leader is usually an invisible presence at a big cabinet debate in any government. Except for those rare occasions when the government has been in the lucky position of controlling both the lower and upper houses - such as at certain points in the prime ministerships of Malcolm Fraser and John Howard - the government always has to factor in opposition reaction to legislation in the Senate.

But today the Gillard government has the numbers to control legislative votes in neither chamber. The Opposition Leader was a giant looming presence around whom all debate revolved on Thursday.

This novelty of a federal minority government produced two distinctly perverse outcomes this week. Consider.

The Gillard government started out not wanting a carbon tax yet ended up delivering the legislation for one on Wednesday. The government did want to continue offshore processing of asylum seekers yet was forced to abandon it on Thursday.

So on two of the biggest political questions the country faces, the government has been obliged to do things it did not intend to do and denied the power to do what it wanted to do.

Even more bizarre, both major political parties went to the last election promising that there would be no carbon tax and that offshore processing of asylum seekers would continue. This week we see with increasing likelihood that neither of these bipartisan commitments will be delivered.

Gillard's deal with the three independents and one Greens MP in her quest for power accounts for the first change; Tony Abbott's decision to maximise the political pain for Gillard in his quest for power accounts largely for the second, but aided crucially by the decisions of the independents. In both cases, Gillard was obliged to conduct government on other people's terms.

The cabinet debate on Thursday was on asylum-seeker policy, but it's also going to be consequential for the internal political equilibrium of the Gillard government.

The Prime Minister opened the meeting by telling her ministers that their debate would inevitably deal with the politics, but she urged them to "focus on the end point". What was this "end point"? She didn't say. She outlined options.

The option that quickly emerged as the only serious proposal for a change in policy was championed by the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen. By the end of the debate, it was clear that his proposal carried the support of every cabinet minister from Labor's Right faction in NSW and Victoria.

This was the power bloc - the NSW and Victorian Right - that galvanised the revolt against Rudd, the bloc that delivered the leadership to Gillard. The significance of this was not lost on anyone in the cabinet room.

To summarise the situation confronting the government when the cabinet convened on Thursday:

When the High Court ruled that the Immigration Minister had exceeded his powers by sending asylum seekers to Malaysia, it had thrown all offshore processing into question. The government decided that it would legislate to give the minister the power he needed. It tabled amendments to the Migration Act that would allow a minister to send asylum seekers overseas but did not specify any destination countries. Gillard demanded Abbott support the amendments to resume offshore processing; Abbott demanded it specify Nauru only; the government refused. With the support of independents, Abbott clinched the numbers to defeat the government amendment.

What to do about it? Bowen's proposal to the cabinet was this: The government should propose a new amendment to specify that it would allow asylum seekers to be sent to Malaysia but also to Papua New Guinea and Nauru. This would give the government what it wanted but also Abbott what he had been demanding, noisily and publicly and insistently for over a year.

"We've reached an impasse over whether it should be one or the other - let's do both."

Bowen reasoned that although Abbott was likely to find some new excuse to reject the plan, it would make it harder for him. To scream for Nauru for ages and then to suddenly reject it would expose him as a phoney.

He would be seen more clearly to be opposing the government for mischievous political purposes. It would cement the public impression of Abbott as "Mr No". And, Bowen argued, there was always a chance that Abbott might actually agree to support the plan. Either way, the government would be better off. And while this proposal, by perpetuating offshore processing, would appeal to the political Right, Bowen added a further element that would appeal to the political Left.

If the Malaysia plan worked as an effective deterrent, and the number of boat people fell, the government should increase the humanitarian immigration intake substantially. Bowen cited a figure of 20,000 over four or five years.

Taken together, Bowen suggested, these two elements would rebalance the incentives for people thinking of boarding a boat to travel to Australia. The Malaysia plan would toughen the treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat, and the enlarged humanitarian quota would lift the chances for an asylum seeker applying formally through the UNHCR overseas. Coming by boat would become riskier; applying and waiting would become more promising.

Gillard did not commit herself but played the part of a neutral chairwoman. She wanted all her cabinet to have a chance to speak, and by the end of the first meeting on Thursday morning, almost all of them had.

The ministers who spoke strongly in support of the Bowen proposal were the Minister for Population, Environment and Water, Tony Burke, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, and the Assistant Treasurer, Bill Shorten.

As a junior minister, Shorten is not entitled to sit in the cabinet but was there on Thursday representing Wayne Swan, overseas on business. All hail from the Right.

Key ministers from the Left were adamant in opposing Bowen's plan. The leading voices against the proposal were the Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, and the Minister for Families, Jenny Macklin. They were supported by another important Left figure, the Industry Minister, Kim Carr.

Two ministers from the Queensland Right, the Trade Minister, Craig Emerson, and the Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, also opposed the Bowen plan. While Rudd is notionally a member of the Right, it was the Right that removed him.

These ministers simply refused to believe that Abbott would accept the proposal. He would simply find a new reason to oppose the government. And though this might make him look unreasonable, it would be more harmful to the government, and especially the Prime Minister. The government would look sillier and sillier as it moved further to the Right to accommodate Abbott, Rudd argued, only to have him reject their amendment regardless. Rudd said that it was time for the government to admit defeat on its offshore processing effort and move to onshore.

Combet made the point that there was 10 years' worth of TV footage of Gillard denouncing Nauru. If she now embraced it, the Liberals would have a field day, piling this inconsistency on top of her inconsistency on carbon tax. Abbott had "framed" Gillard in the public mind on the questions of integrity and consistency. To support the Bowen plan would be to simply reinforce Abbott's main case against Gillard.

Surprisingly, one senior figure from the Left swung in behind Bowen and the majority of the Right - Anthony Albanese, the Transport and Infrastructure Minister. He was a surprise because Albanese has been a long-standing advocate of onshore processing.

His case? He argued that whatever the government proposed, Abbott would oppose. So this led to an inevitable conclusion - they would be left with only one option, onshore processing. But he urged the cabinet to adopt the Bowen plan anyway, on the ground that it would give the government "political cover". The government would be moving to the Left, but appearing to be forced there by Abbott.

At the end of the morning meeting, Gillard did not declare a position. She said she would adjourn the meeting to think it over. She would call another meeting later in the day and return with a cabinet minute drafted with Bowen.

When they reconvened, Gillard announced that she had decided she could not agree to any plan that included Nauru. It was a bridge too far. The government would move to the only remaining option - onshore processing.

The Right had lost the argument. It is unused to losing. It is dominant in the union movement, dominant in the ALP national conference, dominant in the caucus.

Rudd had challenged the Right's power and disrespected some of its key personnel. The moment the polls made him vulnerable, the Right made sure that he paid the price.

One of the reasons it was so effortless for the Right to transfer allegiance to Gillard was that she was on the right of every major argument with Rudd.

But now the Right has suffered a defeat on a high priority area of policy and some of its key members are unhappy, even angry. This does not mean they are ready to withdraw support for Gillard, and it certainly does not mean they will support Rudd. But it is the first serious rupture between Gillard and her own power base in the caucus. It is an unsettling moment for the Gillard government.

Undone by their own tactics

meanwhile .....

The Indonesian media played it straight. Surprisingly, the arrest of that 14-year-old Australian boy on drugs charges in Bali provoked none of the shock-horror headlines that exploded onto front pages and the airwaves at home. Another day, another tourist does something dumb.

There were some eyebrows raised by Julia Gillard's phone call and the dramatic arrival of the Australian ambassador in Denpasar. The Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, was asked if this was an intervention in Indonesian affairs.

"No it isn't," he said. "It is just a normal display of concern. But Australia must respect the Indonesian justice system." No argument there, then. Kevin Rudd said the same thing.

But if I were an Indonesian I would be shouting from the treetops about Australian double standards. The figures are elastic, but there are literally dozens of Indonesian teenagers imprisoned in Australian detention centres and jails, without charge, without trial, without hope. Indonesian Solidarity, an advocacy group based in Australia, says there may be as many as 70 of them.

They are not asylum seekers but crew members from the refugee boats that fetch up at Christmas Island. Most of them are barely literate village kids, many from West Timor, one of Indonesia's poorest provinces. They understand no more of people smuggling than they do of astrophysics, but the smugglers offer them a fortune beyond their parents' wildest dreams and off they go to sea, they know not where. No one tells them they are heading straight to the waiting arms of Australia's Border Protection Command.

Because they carry no identification, they have no way of proving their age if, indeed, they actually know it. So the Australian authorities go through a grotesque rigmarole of X-raying their bones and, in some cases, genital inspections, to try to determine if they are under 18.

This can take months and frequently more than a year. Many have been held in adult prisons, including Sydney's Silverwater Jail, where they are thrown together with God alone knows what sort of hardened criminals. Not for them the solicitous prime ministerial phone call, the flurry of foreign ministers, the parents sleeping in the next room. As often as not their families have given them up for dead, believing they were lost at sea.

Let's not mince words here. This is an outrage. It is an offence against all the norms of Australian law and, indeed, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a signatory. In condoning this cruel child abuse - even by benign neglect - the Gillard government is trampling fundamental Labor principles of decency and humanity.

If there is any doubt about the age of these kids, then give them the benefit of it. Let them go home. Now.

Mike Carlton