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Memo Rudd: an asylum solution
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Prime Minister: You have sought options for resolving the Oceanic Viking stand-off, within the policy parameters of both
We regret to advise that these policy parameters considerably circumscribe options. In retrospect, the removal of the asylum seekers to Christmas Island immediately after their rescue would have avoided both the ensuing stand-off (or, as you termed it in our briefing this week, the contraindicated disembarkation dispute) and internal Indonesian disputes which may constrain the capacity of President Yudyohono to provide ongoing assistance on the asylum seeker issue. We also note your ongoing and volubly-expressed frustration that the Opposition has declined to state its own position on the matter. We regret to advise that this matter is beyond your control. Available options appear to be:
A possible resolution may be for the permit for the Oceanic Viking to operate in Indonesian waters to be allowed to lapse by the Indonesian Government, thereby compelling its withdrawal to Christmas Island. This would permit the Government to portray the transfer to Christmas Island as a legal and diplomatic necessity. In summary, your own assessment of your options in our briefing earlier this week is correct: you are indeed located in a waterborne faecal concourse unequipped with an appropriate means of propulsion. However, you may wish to consider a “gamebreaker” option that would shift the debate over asylum seekers in your favour. In 1998 the previous Government undertook to accept over 4000 Kosovan refugees fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing. You may wish to consider a similar undertaking: commit Australia to accepting, for example, 10,000 Tamil asylum seekers in the next 18 months, but on the basis that they are assessed and subject to appropriate security vetting by Australian authorities offshore, while any boat arrivals would be subjected to the current assessment and detention process. This would reduce the incentive for asylum seekers to reach Australia by boat by providing an alternative means of access to Australia’s humanitarian program. The 10,000 could be a temporary addition to Australia’s humanitarian intake or the numbers could be “borrowed” from the 2011-12 humanitarian intake, as was done for the Kosovan refugees. This would represent a genuine effort on Australia’s part to address a key “push factor” in regional asylum seeker numbers while enabling the Government to legitimately deter dangerous attempts to reach Australia by boat. Such a decision may draw criticism from both “toughs” and “humanes”. Unfortunately, your stated preference for an option that everyone is happy with is currently unavailable. |
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355 Comments
This is an interesting suggestion and one of the better ones I have heard. I am a member of the “humanes” but with regard to this particular boat load I have one foot in the “toughs” camp. I prefer to give charity, but am less inclined to do so when there is a gun at my head. Isn’t that known as extortion?
We might also consider in our resolution process (1) Don’t embarrass the head of Indonesia for trying to help us and failing; (2) Don’t blame the PM for making a deal with a party who failed to fulfil it; (3) stop seeking comment on this subject from the Opposition and/or Coalition and/or Liberal Party and/or National Party and/or retired ex-ministers of state on the basis or their irrelevance, uselessness, waste of space, and postured pouting.
The humanitarian component for Tamil refugees is a great idea and a potential circuit breaker - creating a carrot to go with the stick.
[Edit - issues not insults thanks] These poor bastards have been in an Indonesia jail at our expense all these years and are so deeply traumatised they are suicidal.
[Edit]
REfugees should not have to be in a position like this because of recalcitrant government’s laziness.
They should have been brought straight to Australia.
But our need is to help Iraqis and Afghans and we ain’t doing that.
As for the boats, get over the bloody hysteria.
Who the hell are you Bernard Keane to support the ongoing human rights violations on Christmas Island in the name of punishing people who have done nothing wrong.
Read Stephen Fitzpatricks piece about Galang today and then tell us you want to deal with the thugs in Indonesia to make dirty deals.
Just out of curiosity - seeing you are an ex-bureaucrat Bernard - while it is a parody, is this a typical format for a Minister’s briefing notes?
Tamo, Indonesia aren’t failing to do anything. They have simply made it clear that they are not going to start off this program by boarding an Australian vessel and forcing the passengers off that Australian vessel and onto Indonesian soil, against their will. And they’ve let it be known that they consider us hypocrites for wanting them to do the dirty work we’re not comfortable doing ourselves, knowing perfectly well the object of the exercise is for Rudd to do a Pontius Pilate.
Is there any chance to look for an “Australian’ solution?
Why is it called ‘refugee crisis’? It is a government crisis. The Rudd government got trapped testing so called ‘Indonesian solution’.
Playing on sentiments of the darkest pockets of our souls can only be a temporary measure (Pacific solution) but never a solution.
I’ve got an idea on how to get them off the boat.
Tell em to get off and that they have 20 minutes to disembark.
If after the 20 minutes they haven’t gotten off the boat, force them off by the scruff of the necks.
It’s our boat… we don’t have to ask for pliddy please with sugar on top for people to get off. It’s called not being a featherweight.
The refugees are mainly Tamil, they are ethnically linked to southern India, so why aren’t they escaping to India for refuge, it is closer, it is culturally more like Sri Lanka than Australia.
They know that if they get to Australia they will be looked after by the government and not asked too many difficult questions. If they were genuinely in fear of their lives then the shortest trip would seem to be the safest.
They head for Australia becausse they have heard:
It is easy to get in
The Government will support them
Even if they are not “real” refugees, they will not be returned
While I feel for anyone escaping a threat to their lives or their family, the reason these people arrive by boat is largely because they could not get a visa and enter legally. They pay the smugglers more than the airfare would cost.
James, I accept the news reports that “…the governor of the Riau Islands, Ismeth Abdullah, refused permission for the group to be landed on Indonesian territory, declaring his region was not a “dumping ground…”. Therefore I understand that the Indonesian government has failed to fulfil the agreement made with the Australian government. I accept that they made the agreement in good faith, but the agreement is now in frustration. I prefer to skip the side show and focus on the main game - which is about the humane handling of refusees and not the in-humane handling of politicians. We need a manageable solution to every boat, not just this one which has shown itself to be adept at managing public opinion.
Alan, India is not a signatory to the 1951 convention. The Palk Stait between India and Sri Lanka are heavily patrolled by both navies. Indian policy is to repatriate Tamil refugees to India.
A pre-condition for being granted refugee status by the UNHCR is that a person leaves their own country so you can’t be a Tamil refugee in Sri Lanka. Travel from and throughout Sri Lanka, particularly air travel by Tamils, is currently restricted and boats tend to be an eaier way to leave. In order to reach a signatory country a Tamil would generally have to take a boat. Once in the boat Australia is one of the closest signatory countries. Cambodia and New Zealand are the other ‘choices’ in this region. Assuming they don’t get arrested and deported in India or Pakistan the next signatory countries overland are Afghanistan or Iran which are unlikely to be a prime choice for most.
I think they head for somewhere for lots of reasons but ask yourself what would entice you to leave your homeland for good and place yourself and your family in mortal danger by undertaking a very risky voyage? To think that Sri Lankans care less for their children is at best unkind. I think it’s far more likely (and supported by data) that Sri Lankan Tamils leave their own country because of conditions there rather than ‘head to Australia’
One final point, refugees who come to Australia and seek asylum have not broken any Australian law by coming here. It is wrong factually, at law and ethically to characterise them as having done so.
I think the recent drop in the polls experienced by labor is not only due to the rhetoric used by Rudd over the ” irregular asylum seekers” but also his enthusiastic embracing of the proposed
extraordinary jump in Australia’s population.
Many including me see only a tremendous bill that this generation will face for infrastructure
to accommodate this future population.
I think the two issues have combined in many peoples mind.
As RMACFARL said, it’s a great idea and a terrific circuit breaker. Excellent article
Bernard!
SHEPHERD MARILYN: [Edit - no]
RENA ZURAWEL: [Edit - also no]
BERNARDK: Governments aren’t known for their sanity, however, Kevin Rudd would be mad not to take up your suggestion.
There is another legal option. It’s a tougher than I like but it might be effective. That is to explain to the rescued persons who are now refusing to disembark that they may be transported to non-Indonesian waters where the vessel will be boarded by armed Australian Defence personnel who will clap them all in irons pending arrival at the nearest Australian port where they will be taken ashore, charged and tried for piracy and imprisoned until their country of origin arranges for their removal from Australia.
Their status as refugees and victims of a “disaster at sea” has been impaired by the subsequent demands they have made upon their rescuer and will, in the future, give cause to masters of other vessels to hesitate to go to the aid of distressed seafarers.
I cannot help but think of those hundreds of people of SIEV X who died at sea.
An Indonesian refugee camp may be more palatable than a civilian prison, a criminal record and certain deportation.
Here’s a compromise. Not my favourite option but it might satisfy everybody. Intercept all unauthorised boat arrivals, and if they request asylum, then hand them over to a UNHCR facility to be established and funded by Australia as a contribution to the UNHCR, and under UNHCR auspices. May sound expensive, but not as expensive as the farcical costs we already incur in the name of “border security”. The UNHCR then to process them by its normal rules, with Australia just one of their possible final destinations.
I think Australia can take a leaf out of the people smugglers manual that they provide to each boat they dispatch to Aus.
Just disable the engine on the Oceanic Viking and create a few leaks so it slowly starts to sink. Then the Indonesians wil be forced to take everyone on board ashore. Problem solved.
John B
I hate to mention this but the people on the Oceanic Viking are already in Australia (unless, of course, we register our customs vessels in Panama).
If their goal is Australia hy would they want to go to Indonesia or Christmas Island (which is excised from Australia for the purposes of immigration?
TTH why does it worry you that they are on the boat? You’re as concerned as anyone who’s posted about the fate of people suffering hardship in their own country. I don’t understand why this compassion stops when it comes to the small number of boat people.
A brilliant idea. It would be doing what Paul Howes has suggested: there is still the possibility of the PM leading the Australian people out of this, as David Marr said on Q&A last night, fearful frame of mind to a nobler place. It would be like Hawke’s granting refuge to the chinese students after Tiananmen Square. Only more meaningful since those students in Australia were hardly at real peril.
But of course it would be bold and risky and if there is one thing we know Rudd avoids, it is risk.
This issue is a test for the PM, the Labor Party, the Coalition and the Australian people. Alas, every single one is failing.
Dear SBH: “…I don’t understand why this compassion stops when it comes to the small number of boat people…”
If I believed that, I too would go for your quick fix. However, I fear that every boat that follows will use the same tactics. We desperately need a fix that fits all sizes from 10 to 10,000 for now and the next several years.
THETRUTHHURTS - Are you advocating this same behaviour for the baby and other kids. There’s a pregnant woman on board this vessel or the other one(with over 250? people on board)? Says a lot about you doesn’t it? This situation is just ludicrous. Rudd has caused this whole sorry saga due to him being too gutless to stand up to either the Opposition or the media. He should’ve made an Address to the Nation, explained the facts(as opposed to the lies of some media outlets, Opposition etc) and just got on with it. Then, he should’ve started working with Sri Lanka and other relevant countries/bodies/UN etc.
Coming here and being processed should be no threat to anyone. I think if they were white, this situation wouldn’t be a reality. Reminds me of Bush and New Orleans via Hurrican Katrina. Can anyone imagine white people being allowed to give birth in the circumstances some women did. There are kids involved here. What are we saying? That these ‘aren’t really kids’ because they’re not like ‘ours’?This is not about “humanes” and others? It’s about our BS on being ‘fair’ and ‘democratic’ and ‘upholding traditional family values’ and professing to be christian, and……….
Canada, Italy and other countries must just be shaking their heads. They’ve had thousands of people seeking asylum; we get hysterical over a few boat loads. Truly!I find it sickening, disappointing and very sad! I couldn’t give a fig whether I wear any labels. If we stuff this up and use violence, bullying etc, then I’ll give those advocating that a real serve on Jan 26, or April 25th or ????
After watching Q and A last night it is no wonder labor is down in the polls. I thought the”left”
including Tony Jones was cynical and disgraceful.
It was easy to sign in 1951 Australia was desperate for population we had guilt over the treatment of the Jews by Germany and we had the White Australia policy.
So any refugees we accepted were no different than the migrants we were paying to come.
Refugees under the provision had to be in a life threatening situation in the country of origin
and had to come here directly.
The situation now is entirely different the legal refugees we bring in are in the main vetted
by the UN as being genuine refugees. They are not
given a choice of which country they will go to.
The irregular refugees (Rudd’s choice of words)are deciding for themselves where they will go
are spending huge amounts of money and it is doubful if their lives are in danger in their country of origin. So they are attempting to take away from us our right of choice of whom we wish to have as fellow citizens
John Bushell, I’m not a lawyer but I understand that the Howard legislations excludes Australian ships from Australian Territory for these purposes.
Michael James, I don’t think it’s as risky as all that. I think this is a wedge issue with many liberal voters favouring a more humane policy. Either way what ever happened to leadership as a concept. You know where you lead people to a better place? Howard used his political capital on gun control, it would be nice to see Rudd use his much greater stocks on this issue.
The Indonesian Govt has extended the Oceanic Vikings permit to stay docked for another week. This will acheive what? More time for Rudd to dither. More time for the Opposition and the media to highlight Rudd and his Govts inability to make a decision. More time for Rudd to continue to tell us that which we already know. More time for Rudd to realise he is looking like a prized pratt in the eyes of the public. Well done Kevin, when you allow the pidgeons to come home to roost, they flock home. This could be the stupidity that you cant spin your way out of. Time to grow up and act like a mature politician Prime Minister, time to show leadership.
John Bushell, SBH is right. What’s the political risk — that Rudd will lose credibility? That he will appear too soft for the hawks and too cynical for the doves and so please nobody? It’s only a risk if it hasn’t already happened.
One more try at this, at least someone shoot me down in flames and tell me why it wouldn’t work:
For a compromise, intercept all unauthorised boat arrivals, and if they request asylum, then hand them over to a UNHCR facility to be established and funded by Australia as a contribution to the UNHCR, and under UNHCR auspices. May sound expensive, but not as expensive as the farcical costs we already incur in the name of “border security”. The UNHCR then to process them by its normal rules, with Australia just one of their possible final destinations.
They’re on a ship. It’s hardly the worst place they could be. Should everyone in the Navy be assigned to shore because life on ships is a terrible, tortuous experience.
Why does none of the discussion focus on the much bigger issue. Why is Sri Lanka, a commonwealth country producing refugees. Surely if Sri Lanka is unable to guarantee all it’s citizen’s welfare and freedom from persecution then the Australian government should immediately petition for Sri Lanka’s expulsion from the Commonwealth and in addition we should suspend all sporting ties with them just as we did with Southa Africa during the apartheid era.
Under Howard we resettled 95% of the asylum seekers in Australia without a peep from the population and they were held in accommodation superior to the UN’s. and the boats stopped..
and he got rid of Keating’s policy of holding kids behind razor wire.
But he did it quietly Rudd’s megaphone diplomacy is embarrassing us and the Indonesians.
Interesting suggestion Bernard! By setting a limit of 10,000 Rudd satisfies both the “Humane” approach - of signaling an acceptance of Refugees (subject to their processing of course) and the “Tough” approach - by setting a prescribed limit which he can enforce.
It’s a win-win solution that allows Rudd to take control of the game, rather than sitting on the fence and suffering in the polls.
Australia needs to accept these refugees. We can’t force them off at gun-point and retain any shred of international credibility when it comes to human rights. And keeping them on board is keeping a customs boat out of action (at great expense).
Its important to do the right thing not just when its nice or convenient, but when its difficult and costly (as in this case). Those who don’t care for such principles in government should move to Fiji or Burma.
Apologies for the apparent contradiction in my last 2 paragraphs. The difficult and costly decision refers to the processing of the 78 asylum seekers, not the cost of the customs ship.
It sucks that we are being held to ransom, but tough t-tties. The conclusion is obvious, so lets just get on with it; and take some comfort from the fact that we will be accommodating tough and resilient people who know how to get what they want, and can no-doubt cook a mean curry. They would make good Aussies.
Peterhatch, I think that Mr Howard shouted tough and whispered soft, and it gave him the best of both political worlds. So the shouting, the slogans and the ducking continue.
I would prefer as an element of the resolution of the refugee issue that Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull stand side-by-side in front of the cameras and tell us that neither will ever sink any unwanted boat that enters our waters, neither will re-introduce the White Australia Plolicy, neither will withdraw our signature to the UNHCR protocols, neither will bring back the language test, neither will ever use the term “illegals” except to those found to be just that, both will be viglant in protecting this country from importing terrorists, and both will restrain from throwing partliament furniture at one another on the subject of refugee policy in Question Time.
Then they can get to work designing our future strategy for the hundreds of thousnads from Sri Lanka, the however many from Afganistan, and given prgress in the war a similar number from Pakistan, plus, as the ice melts and the waters rise, a significant part of the population form Bangladesh
…and all the populations of the Pacific as their island homes sink beneath the surf. Not forgetting Fiji.
We need to create the processes to manage a couple of million refugees in the next decade.
It isn’t optional. They will try to come because there is no other place of sanctuary within the range of their leaky boats.
Option 4: give the asylum seekers a quiet call and tell them that if they get off the boat and let us look tough in front of the press then we’ll quietly let them in the back door when no-one’s looking. (Except it seems we’ve already tried that.)
Option 5: give the Indonesians a quiet call and tell them to cancel the permit for the Oceanic Viking to operate in Indonesian waters.
Their govt get to look tough by kicking us out.
Our govt gets to look tough by forcing the issue every last inch of the way.
The humane crowd won’t be happy. But it won’t make them more unhappy than the current situation does.
The harsh crowd won’t be happy. But it won’t make them more unhappy than the current situation does.
What’s really needed is a solution in Sri Lanka. And sadly, Global Warming is likely to make this sort of situation much more common.
Option 6: Leave the boat where it is for the next 5 years.
Option 7: Outsource the problem to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, the administrator of this elusive “queue” we’re always hearing about).
Build a facility for the UNHCR, give them the money, the employees, everything they need, to set up a new outpost and halfway house in the South Pacific, and dump all the unauthorised arrivals on them.
The Australian taxpayer would pay for it, but the UNHCR would run the show. The asylum seekers go through the usual vetting and allocation to an asylum country, which might be any country participating in the 1951 Convention, including but not necessarily Australia. So the boat method of “economic migration” becomes an expensive lottery with no guarantee of destination country, the only guarantee is relative safety. If the UNHCR asks for help deporting applicants to country of origin, we undertake to assist them.
I mean, we’ve already tried outsourcing to the Nuaruans and to the Indonesians, why not outsource to the UNHCR? It won’t cost any more than it does already, it’s workable politically, and we can rely on humanitarian standards being met. No more barbed wire and fire hoses. It’s not my favourite option (I actually think we need serious old-fashioned boat refugees just as much as they need us), but it might be a solution that can satisfy both the hawks and the doves in our society, and even make Australia halfway respectable in the global neighborhood.
Peter Hatch. If you really believe that Howard’s actions had any role in “and the boats stopped” then you either have a “room temperature IQ” or are just playing vicious politics (or of course both). As an example of careful consideration of the evidence: look up in the sky, observe the sun going in a graceful circle east to west every day; it was not irrational to think that the sun went around the earth. But with better data and observation we now know that is not the case.
Please drop the utter BS that the refugees stopped or started because of Australian policy. Or else explain precisely how it happens that the massive upturn in the numbers going to other countries (50,000 to 60,000 to European countries etc) in exact synch with Australia?
The reason people are considered to be refugees is that they have already been persecuted.
I do not believe some of the savages here.
Are you brain dead?
@Marilyn.
I don’t think anyone disputes that these people are genuine refugees. The question is, what do we do about it?
There are those who think that we can take them, and a lot more. Such people can be graded by degree of concern about creating unfortunate precedents.
And there are those who think that, however persecuted they are, we shouldn’t take them.
I won’t speak for anyone else further, except to say that I personally don’t feel brain dead, just very very tired.
Peter Hatch
You wrote that accepting refugees will be ’ a tremendous bill … for our infrastructure to accommodate this future population..’
I think you have joined the wrong blog. Refugee intake is about 4% of our immigration program. You should rather address 94% of population increase which are other-than-refugee-migrants.
Also I do not think the Convention of 1951 was written up because of Jews who had already had their country to migrate and many eagerly had done so.
It was not the ‘Jewish factor’ that the Australian government of the day decided to opt for ‘populate rather than perish’ and brought heaps of Italians, Greeks and the English . So please, do not play ‘Jewish factor’ at any opportunity you have no arguments.
The controversy between the major parties is not the cost, it is not the numbers, it is not the floodgates (by rickety boat, as if) argument. It’s that these folks represent something. By coming uninvited they really do suggest an open border.
So why is an open border concept on an island continent only accessible in numbers by major airline scare the two major parties? Because their official immigration policy is virtually an open border now at say 400,000 per year when you include student visa overstayers, migrant workers etc.
That’s what most Australians don’t agree with. But getting a real debate going on endless population growth at huge levels every year would really change politics for both majors and for the corporate donors behind these thespians giving their speeches in costume.
So there we have it: The refugee boat people are scapegoats for an out of control immigration programme to keep the high rise and shopping centre and construction company moguls in profit, and controlling politics. Better we cut immigration in half and took 5 times as many refugees.
There’s another factor Tom: “We will decide who comes into this country and the manner in which they come”.
Howard knew them well. They want choice. They want to choose the sex of their babies, the size of their cuppucinos, they want a choice of hot medium or mild chilli sauce, they want 11 different factory options on their SUV allowing total individuality, the colour of their iphone, the colour of their hair … above all, they want to have the illusion of exercising discretion, in a world that bewilders them and where they know deep down they’re being had. Studies of current affairs TV shows that viewers like the illusion that the world has been accounted for and everything they need to know is known. “… And now you’re up to date.”
Give them, or a delegate, the power to look an immigrant in the eye and reject him or her for any reason or no reason at all, and they’ll feel that their sovereignty has been served. Any intrusion of the element of random chance into their world, or dropping the illusion that it ever worked on anything else, is something they won’t forgive.
James, I agree with your idea of outsourcing the problem to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
the first job of any government is to reflect the wishes of the population ….. not an intellectual exercise.. sorry mate don”t want them, we are happy the way we are…..
PETERHETCH
Intelectual exercise is part of the population wishes….unless we completely ignore intellect.
sorry we don’t have enough water to share. my kids come first.
Peter, I do not agree that the first job of any government is to reflect the wishes of the population. Otherwise unpopular minorities would have no chance of a reasonable existence.
It’s up to each member of parliament to follow his or her own conscience, even if it goes against the wishes of the population. I’m happy to vote for them on that basis.
sorry julian we live in a democracy majority rules..
That’s not quite correct, Peter. The job of a government is to reflect the values and principles of the population, while being smarter, looking further ahead, and showing the people where those values can lead.
Some of the population don’t see why they can’t have their cake and eat it. Fair enough, they either have other things to think about or they’re better at doing than thinking. For example, you may think that the need for border control is sufficient reason to lock people up for a long time to serve as a deterrent to other people against doing something that’s very annoying for us (but not illegal). At the same time you might take a rather dim view of the government locking you up for exercising free speech in a way the government finds irritating (but not illegal).
You might think these two examples of detention have nothing to do with each other. You would be wrong about that, and it’s the government’s job to know that you’re wrong and to see further than you do. It’s the government’s job to remember values and principles even when the people forget, and to find solutions that don’t solve a superficial problem by introducing a deeper and more subtle one.
sorry Jillian in an ideal world we would have individual reps representing our point of view ..
unfortunately they would have to form a government which means parties and whips and discipline…
“It’s the government’s job to remember values and principles even when the people forget.”
Well said James. We seem to agree on a lot of things.
“…in an ideal world we would have individual reps representing our point of view ..
unfortunately they would have to form a government which means parties and whips and discipline…”
Peter, the Liberal Party has always allowed conscience votes, although the option has not been exercised many times in recent years. Governments need to have a majority of the parliament to pass their bills and this is especially important with the budget, but other than that, there should be no problem with members voting against their parties.
James being 67 years old i am distrulful of any large body telling me what is right.. whether that is government, large corporations, media, or PC social pressure…
I have therefore become a conservative if it ain’t broke leave it alone…
I find with the Ruddites it is all rush to fix non existent problems…35 billion for subs..
42 billion for fibre… billions for school halls.. untold billions for hot air trading.. billions for infrastructure for 35 million population..billions to save the world from everything.. gives us a break .. personally i would like to enjoy my life and take as Fraser said politics of the front page…
Peter, don’t you think when we elect a government we should just trust it to fix problems as it sees fit?
There’s the occasional e-mail to be sent if they are doing something we don’t think is right, but otherwise yes, let them get on with the job.
when an intellectual elite goes to far in front of popular wishes you open the country up to extremism..
witness Britain…
I don’t. Not unless sufficient checks and balances are there to keep them in their place. Sounds like Peter agrees with me that governments in Australia don’t know their boundaries.
“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.”
That’s Thomas Jefferson. Government is not to be trusted or given too much power, or they will always push someone around, and sooner or later that may be you or yours.
One of the necessary protections against excessive government is civil liberties.
“All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
James, are you responding to me or Peter or someone else when you say “I don’t. Not unless sufficient checks and balances are there to keep them in their place”?
I agree with you James therfore i am for privacy small government decentralisation get the government out of my life.. low tax.. individual responsibilty..all good conservative values…
Jillian, I was answering my own question, “Don’t you think we should trust the government?”
Peter, then we’re on the same side. But those principles sometimes are a pain in the neck. Sometimes we want the government to make an exception to the conservative-liberal principles, act like bolsheviks to solve a social problem or two, and then go back to being conservative-liberal.
We can’t have it both ways. If it’s so important to the majority to shut a few thousand boat people out while hundreds of thousands of immigrants pour in and tens of thousands defraud their visas, fine. But it’s got to be done in a way that doesn’t involve detention of non-criminals for political purposes, or other breach of civil liberties.
james liberty is not easy most want an easy ride where the “government ” can cure all ills..
i think we should take the harder road where individuals should take more responsibility for themselves . the Australian way.. not some european import…
i think Howard as much as he said he was the most conservative prime minister we would ever have lied, he took out of the tax system families with two children no tax if you earned 85000 a year .. what about those who had no children….
James my earlier point was that most australians do not want an increase in population so therefore rudd is backing a wrong horse..
I agree that the current federal government has borrowed a lot more money than it should have, which is an instance of not knowing its boundaries. When I think of electing members and letting them get on with the job, I have Liberal governments in mind, particularly a future Turnbull government. Labor, unfortunately, is a lost cause from my perspective.
Now I completely agree with you.
I used the word “liberty” deliberately, instead of “rights”. There are two kinds of “rights”:
- liberties, that is, the right to be left alone
- entitlements, that is something that the taxpayer has to give you, even if you don’t earn it
Australia should have a constitutional bill of liberties, to draw limits on how much and for what purpose a government is permitted to interfere in your life and mine.
Entitlements, like education and childcare and healthcare, should be left up to the government of the day to distribute wealth as the voters wish.
My last post was response to Peter at 11:54pm NSW time.
Jillian, as Peter said, Howard said he would be very conservative, but he wasn’t. What’s to stop Turnbull getting in with the intention of leading a “wise and frugal government,” then realising that a bit of porkbarrelling here and a bit of bolshevik social engineering there can do wonders for his reelection chances? Like Howard did.
sorry james i don’t mean to be pedantic but….
in education for instance there is no such thing as “free” education we all pay taxes whether we have children or not.. so we are all subsidising those who choose to have children…
in state schools we still have to pay “voluntary ” fees…and suffer socialist principles pushed by the teachers federation.I choose to send my children to an “independent school it cost me some 20,000 a year plus my taxes ..
why not go right where anyone has the right to open a school supported by the government average amount of 12,00 a year oer student..it has worked in that socilist paradise Sweden..
why not here….
james the conservatives will not get anywhere unless they have principles the middle ground as represented by malcolm is simply Rudd light…
Peter that’s a good idea on education, that’s what I mean when I say the government and voters of the day can decide what the taxpayer should pay for and when people should help themselves.
On your earlier point about “most australians do not want an increase in population,” if that’s the concern, then we really are wasting public policy energy worrying about a few thousand boat people. We should be asking the government about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought in for economic reasons, and the scores of thousands who are cheating on their visas so they can stay here.
Principles! Exactly. What I’ve been talking about.
Jillian Rudd was elected by a very conservative Australian electorate because he said he was Howard but younger..he lied.. he is a bureaucratic danger man..who is very loose with our money
and wants power for powers sake,,,he is not conservative at all.. he is another Whitlam.. and the sooner he goes on to the UN the better….
“…Howard took out of the tax system: families with two children no tax if you earned 85000 a year…” This was something I wasn’t very happy about myself, but Howard was always going to do that kind of thing. He spoke about his belief in income splitting before the 1996 election win. For Howard, it was not just about winning elections - he had an ideological belief in his idea of the family and was prepared to use the system to promote it.
Malcolm Turnbull is not like John Howard. And he is prepared to disagree with voters, including his strong supporters. I have seen him do it. Just this week, at a meeting in his electorate, Malcolm told a group of people that their concerns about ‘one world government’ were a bit extreme - it’s not going to happen.
Peter, I agree entirely about Rudd. The ‘economic conservative’ idea never rang true.
Malcolm is not Rudd light though. He would never have borrowed such large amounts of money.
james it is not the few thousand break year poms who worry me they eventually go home..
nor even the few boat people except that if we do not appear tough we have a potential miillions who want to come at their choice..
my real worry is Rudds idea of a huge population growth in the next few yeatrs at huge cost to the current generation.. why? don’t werhave enough problems now of looking after those who are alreadyhere…
i feel in many areas we do not have real conversations but just feelgood stuff mainly from guilt…
for instance if the climate panic merchants were real they would promote nuclear…
jillian I am sure malcolm is genuine but i think he is in the wrong party.. he will never be a genuine conservative or right revolutionary as in in Regan or Maggie….
Jillian I’d like to believe in Turnbull, I really would. He’s got the smarts and he’s a basically good character, but has he really got principles, or does he just always think he’s right? What’s with all the smear campaigns? Didn’t he ever read Ken Kesey? A man of principle fights by making himself stronger, not by trying to make the other guy weaker.
Peter, there’s never been a wave of millions try to come here. In the early 1800s HM government had to run an advertising campaign in Britain and practically bribe people to come with offers of free land and slave labour. Even after the Tiananmen Square crisis in China, when the doors were thrown open to Chinese, only 145,000 of them came in 1990.
Peter, after the Rudd government, we will need a government that can make tough decisions on economic issues and I believe Malcolm will be able to do that. He may not be a Reagan or a Thatcher, but he is not a Sarkozy either - someone who is elected with hope that he will do what has to be done and then takes the easy way out.
Jillian i really hope you are right…. but instead of always making himself the target how about some new revolutantionary principals,, like freedom for the individual.
James how about we have enough people if you read this weeks Economist you will see how the worlds population is going to decline after peaking in 2050 at 9 billion so our children will have to deal with a world of older but declining population…
James,
Has Malcolm got principles or does he just always think he’s right?
I can’t see into his mind, but I do not think he is after power for its own sake.
In relation to the ozcar issue, which is I guess what you have in mind when you mention ‘smear campaigns’, I think Malcolm genuinely thought he had uncovered a serious instance of corruption - but then he wasn’t able to prove it and it all unravelled on him. People acted as if to say ‘How dare you question the government?’ but that’s what the opposition is there to do.
we will not need a government of making tough decisions that is a Rudd myth we are going to be a very rich country the new Saudi Arabia we have untold wealth in energy in coal,gas, uranium etc..
we need a government who is not going to hoard the wealth but give it to the people to decide how to spend it not some religious beaurocratic micro managing freak…
Peter, who says Malcolm doesn’t believe in freedom for the individual? I think he does.
I read the articles in the Economist and the whole world is going to be facing the issue of an ageing population sooner or later. Immigration will probably slow that process in Australia because migrants seem to have more children.
Peter, how do we stop the government from acting like a religious beaurocratic micro managing freak, when the voters sometimes forget that they can’t expect to turn that behaviour on and off at will?
Peter, I fully agree that we need a government that is not going to hoard the wealth but allow people to retain as much as possible of what they earn.
i do agree with you on Rudd gate Jillian Malcolm was 100% right Rudds mate the car dealer was given special treatment Swann did buy votes.. but unfortunately the aussie voters do not like to seem to be made fools of recently electingsomeone who goives them a grand and then say the guys a crook.. bad timining malcolm but then again he is a new boy at this stuff
The only way we can stop the government from acting like a religious bureaucratic micro managing freak is not to elect the beaurocratic micro managing freak in the first place. I suspect we all agree on that.
Jillian Australia like most developed countries Australia has a declining population only made up by immigration…I feel we should only import a few skilled migrants to maintain our population at it’s current level…
Ah, but the voters forget. Scare them with terrorists or golden hordes at the right time, and they’ll elect a government that doesn’t know the meaning of restraint.
Jillian the few coalition voters , mainly the Howard ex unionist now small business owners battlers in the western suburbs who gave Rudd a go will chuck him out out of self intersest…
I want Turnbull — not Rudd, not some nanny, and not some NewMatilda bolshevik prattling on about the right to free education and unlimited healthcare — I want Turnbull to lead the way drawing up a superior legislative instrument of civil liberties; an article of restraint on the limits and the legitimate purposes of interfering in people’s lives.
James I think you ignore the inatate common sense of the australian electorate… they have always voted right…
me too but not sure malcolm is the man to do it maybe barnaby joyce
James, I don’t know Malcolm’s view on that, but it sounds like a reasonable idea.
Peter, what is your concern about Malcolm in this context?
Peter I’m having a few doubts about the common sense of the electorate over this boat people thing. I can sympathise (while not agreeing) if a few dozen boats a year give them nightmares of being inundated with dark-skinned poor people. However I think they show extremely poor judgement wanting to put people not accused of any crime in a prison, just to send a message to other folks far away. I call that arbitrary detention for political purposes, and it’s a slippery slope towards finding a reason to lock up me or mine for political purposes some day down the track.
if you are talking about a bill of rights I an against it.. it has been a failure in Britain and has only given over to a non elected Judaical and civil servants the rights of Parliament who are elected
to defend our freedoms..
we are giving to much power over to regulation controlled by bureaucrats, international bodies like the UN controlled by non elected socialist..
and Rudd this is his world…
James, I took Peter’s comment about the innate common sense of the australian electorate as being said with strong irony - but I agree with you about the boat arrivals.
james in this context i think the commonsense of the Austraklian people is that we welcolm people of all nations but we feel uncomfortable when on the same day that potential immigrants
are deciding who lives in our country on the front page are Muslims in court being convicted of wanting to kill us..
no Jillian i was not being ironic I truly believe that the Australian population in every vote on political or referendum issues has voted wisely that is why i think the intellectual elite in the ABC and Fairfax are out of step with the population/..
I must admit I sometimes feel out of step with the population’s voting patterns, but I’m not part of the ABC/Fairfax elite either.
Peter, if Muslims want to kill you, they are already here. When’s the last time a Muslim actually tried to kill anyone in Australia, other than the usual chaos of criminal behaviour that you get in all ethnic groups including our own? If you’re worried about people killing you, it’s the drunk drivers you’ve got to watch out for.
so maybe james we are part of the Menzies unrepresented minority.. the original liberal party…
the silent majority….
the forgotten people
James i was married by a Muslim , my best friends ‘to quote a cliche are muslims, i don’t think you could ever quote australians where one in four are born overseas .. to be racists
this does not disallow us to discuss how we art uncumfortable about that we should decide who joins us as fellow citizens.. regardless of the guilt ridden labor, catholic, univercities,ABC fairfax
Crikey nexus…
Be careful of the ice addicts as well. They can be a bit dangerous.
no we need the money to help them.. and the gas sniffers.. and the alcis.. and the single mums…
and the unemployed..and the sick .. and the old.. like me.. can we stop Rudd pissing our money upthe wall……..
Let’s hope we can stop him.
“so maybe james we are part of the Menzies unrepresented minority.. the original liberal party…”
Yes, I think we are. I had hopes for the Democrats party … pretty far-fetched hopes, I suppose, that they might seek a coalition with the Liberals and remind them what L stands for. But they, too, forgot what their party was all about and became the Bleeding Hearts Party. Or as a friend of mine put it, the Nosebleeds.
I have a suspicion that Natasha Stott-Despoja was the last libertarian, in the Jefferson tradition, to serve in Australian politics.
Crikey, you guys just can’t get enough of each other.
I haven’t seen any serious suggestions or debatable alternatives to Bernards gamebreaker since around 3.30 this afternoon.
I am reminded of the ‘the wolf’ in Pulp Fiction who reminds Jules and Vincent there is still more ‘cleaning’ to do by bringing them back to earth with the line “Let’s not start sucking each other’s d — -ks just yet.”
My view is that there is no need for a comfortable retraction or a win win, just take it on the chin. Rudd has to admit that he makes mistakes (like when he was caught in a strip bar - didn’t do him or the nation much harm then) and argue a reasonable person might expect that the indonesian arrangement could have been a go solution but it is now an embarrassing stinking albatross.
Bring them on over to Darwin or Christmas island if there is any space left, process them quickly and engage all members of the south east asian nations about how many we can all take from which countries and how much money is put into the kitty and simply work up a roster of border protection duties and edicts.
Jayzus we have gone from a nation of can do to a nation paralysed with can’t do anything from the paranoia about being unpopular and name-called, I’m not sure what, say racist, colonialist or weak. Eat the sh-t sandwich and get on with it. We’re never going to win everybody over.
the democrats were a break away from the left of the liberal party…
but lost voter interest when they went far student left and when they had a love affair literally
with labor..
unfortunately australia does not have a conservative party or a tradition of Right thinking….
who would have ever thought that a crikey web site the home of Melbourne student left politics
would be where the right are hammering out a philosophy
A restrained government, which will limit the freedoms of individuals just enough to stop them limiting the freedoms of others, and no more.
A prudent government, which will tax in a simple and transparent fashion, to provide the means and the protections for society to develop itself, and no more.
A compassionate government, which will guarantee citizens enough of a helping hand to enable them to help themselves, and no more.
A principled government, which will show leadership on the society’s values and stand firm on those values even when people forget them.
A wise government, which will listen to the counsel of its expert advisers and show courage explaining to the people what future lies before them if they choose to follow that expert counsel.
A competitive government, which seeks to win elections, not to make its opponents lose them, and which demonstrates superior maturity and dignity while letting the riff-raff engage in lampooning.
EVIDENTLY, this plot was completely lost at about 10.30pm when once again we started playing at politics instead of addressing the subject of refugees. Over and Out.
There is no question the ‘boat people’ issue is one of the most difficult, if not THE most difficult policy issue for Australian government. The issue has divided Australians since the White Australia policy and will continue to do so. The thing is, there is no right answer to the issue, and no matter what a government does they will NEVER be able to please everyone’s expectations of what should be done. Personally, I believe Rudd did the right thing with the Oceanic Viking. The vessel was not in Australian waters - we knew of the problem and the government did the logical thing of advising the necessary authorities (the Indonesians) of the threat. Why should the Australian government wait like sitting ducks for a boatload of alleged refugees? If they are not in our waters than (sorry to say) it’s not our concern. It seems when it comes to ‘boat people’ Australians lose all logic and reason. We give the government hell when they allow hundreds of alleged refugees descend on our shores but when they government makes a proactive move we’re up in arms about that too. Whatever the publics opinion on the matter, there seems to be no consistency whatsoever. Now with the current stalemate I believe it would be absolutely catastrophic if Rudd were to surrender and bring the Viking to Christmas Island. It would send the message that if your desperate enough, the government will cave in. Consistency is the only way to win this battle. Rudd made a tough call and he needs to continue to project that, otherwise we may as well put out the welcome mat. For what its worth I believe Rudd’s policies are much better than those of Howard’s, but after over a decade of inhumane treatment, it seems the public haven’t yet decided there own stance on the issue. And the sensationalist media don’t help matters.
Oh, let the people in.
Not only is Christmas Island inhumane - it was expensive to build and its expensive to run. We must have under the counter deals with construction companies and the private prison operators. When you see how far it is from Australia you wonder why we built a prison there, surely it would be cheaper to have high security at the airport and let every one roam free. How many Tamils can swim 3000km to the coast?
Why demonise these people as terrorists, the Sri Lankan spokesperson calling the boat people terrorists has a shady past. Presumably vetting will find that almost all these people are genuine.
Contrast how many people arrive by boat against the numbers that arrive by air.
My family flipped from Liberal to Labor in 1972 because Labor offered vision and social equity and by and large we prospered more from Labor policies. I find Rudd’s rhetoric is usually empty but on refugees it’s positively nasty.
“who would have ever thought that a crikey web site the home of Melbourne student left politics
would be where the right are hammering out a philosophy”
Yes, I was thinking we were bombarding the other people on this thread who have chosen to receive notifications, with issues that may not be relevant to them.
James & Peter, please feel free to come and be on my facebook list. We can continue the discussion there if you like - and there will be other people interested as well.
Release a press statement Mr Rudd (and start a precedent here) saying that you feel this is an unique international humane incident that requires a bi-partisan approach from the Australian people and that you will be contacting the leader of the opposition to formulate a joint principled approach to this issue.
If the opposition says no! you are the government and should deal with it let them do it publicly and officially. The perception of course will be what it really is, and that is that they don’t have a viable alternative either.
Once that is out of the way get that boat to Christmas island for humane reasons (and to stop your own bad press) and move on. The Indonesians are incapable of dealing with this, show you are and compassionately.
Lose the 3rd of Australians who inhumanely won’t accept what is a small number
of boat people? (you wouldn’t lose them all anyways) or
Lose the 3rd of Australian who want you to deal with this humanely? (you would lose a lot more of them and not to the liberals)
Tough choice for a politician, but we all need to sleep at night……
Calum, I like the idea of a bi-partisan approach to this type of issue. I think John Howard opened up battle fronts that should not have been opened.
Patience not instant gratification is the way to go — we just wait — Asians understand and respect that type of action or non action. They will eventually disembark in Indonesia.
No wonder people are concerned about AGW, the amount of hot air here is extremely worrying.
NIC.656: “There is no question the ‘boat people’ issue is one of the most difficult, if not THE most difficult policy issue for Australian government.”
If you think boat people are a difficult issue, remind me never to vote for you if you stand for parliament. It’s a trivial, no-brainer of an issue, it only becomes difficult when provocateurs introduce fear for their own political purposes. Anyone who thinks a few thousand boat people are a threat to security or sovereignty is living in a dream world, imagining that the current six-figure immigration intake is going on in an orderly fashion. You’re asking for a level of “border control” that exists only in la-la land.
The difficulty for krudd is to do something without losing votes. That is quite a balancing act.
EVIDENTLY: “I haven’t seen any serious suggestions or debatable alternatives to Bernards gamebreaker since around 3.30 this afternoon.”
Well, excuuuuse the crap out of me. I was one of those who, like Bernard, proposed a serious solution. Not from my own preferences — personally, I’d rather just assess them for refugee status, give the successful applicants citizenship and send the rest home, but I realize the xenophobic hawks among us won’t accept that any more. So I proposed a solution which:
- is applicable to any number of boats
- does not provide “open door” access to Australian citizenship
- upholds human rights and fair treatment
- asserts the propriety of the UN “queue” for resettling refugees
- won’t cost any more than we’re already spending on this beat-up
I note your own proposal is a good, realistic response to the current situation. But aren’t you a bit sick and tired of going through this circus every time a boat appears on the horizon? We need to get a principled solution in place so we can move on and start dealing with important matter.
TAMO: “EVIDENTLY, this plot was completely lost at about 10.30pm when once again we started playing at politics instead of addressing the subject of refugees.”
Actually we were discussing the one thing that has been missing all along from this farcical storm-in-a-teacup controversy: Principles. Something I happen to consider highly relevant, even if that relevance is not immediately obvious to you.
And, to borrow a phrase from someone who seems to be trying to remember where he left his principles, “I make absolutely no apology for that.”
I was the one who agreed with the solution proposed by James. I don’t think anyone else directly responded to it - I’m not going back through the posts to check.
I also agreed with Calum that this should be approached in a bi-partisan manner rather than being bounced around like a ball between the two major parties.
Thanks Jillian, that’s right. You were the only one who gave it any notice at all. Some others on both the hawks and doves sides seem to enjoy going round and round in circles.
I also posted it up on Malcom’s facebook supporter page, where it got one response saying it was not hard enough on people who are trying to tell us who can come to our country… but hopefully some other people saw it as well even though they didn’t comment.
That’s why I keep banging on boring everybody about principles. Depriving the liberty of some people to send a political message to other people may be a convenient solution to a tricky problem, but in a society that claims to live by the rule of law, it’s not on. It’s got to stop.
I agree James. Some people seem to think that asylum seekers do not have the same rights as established citizens - but human rights are universal.
James where would your facility be located.
If it was within australia then I don’t see how it would work because Australian law would give those not accepted into Australia endless appeal to Australian courts..
If the facilty is in indonesia how is that any different than today….
Surely we have in front of us a solution that works it is called “Howards way”
Jillian it seems an odd comment
Some people seem to think that asylum seekers do not have the same rights as established citizens
No non citizen of any state has the same rights as a citizen.
These are citizens of Sri Lanka Iraq Afghistan who are trying to enter Australia illegally.
james why do you think people react so negativly to boat people?
I know I went to the pub last night and had few but did I dream it or read somewhere that the sri lankans were waved off by friends and were heading here to join rellies all organised by Alex the articulate one who is a people smuggler that works out of India and charges 14,000 a head.
surely not it must have been a dream.
Peter: “why do you think people react so negatively to boat people?”
I think sometimes it’s racism, but more often it’s a desire for the illusion of control in an out of control world. “We will decide …” etc. The TV show “Border Security” is a laughable attempt to convince viewers that Australia is a haven of control and predictability. It’s an illusion, it belongs to Alice In Wonderland, not the real world.
“where would your facility be located?”
My proposed UNHCR Solution
UNHCR stands for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I don’t know anything about international law, but I believe the office is a High Commission which is similar to an embassy. Locate it either within Australia or somewhere else accessible, with diplomatic status. The UN would be responsible for it, we would just provide the resources.
PETER HATCH: Howard’s Way, as you laughingly swipe the title of a book, was to call them all boat people. The name stuck and now all one needs to grab the citizens of Oz by the short and curlies is to row a boat somewhere off the continental coast and to the north-east of Darwin for twenty-two million people to have a collective cardiac arrest. Yet no-one seems to give a rats a-se about the people flying in by the Jumbo full.
I suppose none of the people who complain the loudest about the refugees would-if the situation were to be reversed-try to come to Oz??? Oh no!!!! Perish the thought!!
Perhaps I am totally different to everyone here, because if I had been fleeing a Hitleresque scenario-as with the Singhalese-I would be one of the first people to be getting out of Sri-Lanka and into Oz. But, of course, I was born with a fair degree of survival instincts. And none of the above people commenting adversely about these refugees were born with the same instinct?
If America, with all its trillions of dollars is unable to prevent Mexican refugees, workers, holiday makers, from crossing the Rio Grande del Norte and into the USA, what chance does Australia have with the refugees coming onto our deserted coast-lines, which will be the next stage of the great migration. Truly was King Canute a man before his time.
While the Labor Party is consumed with passion for the man who led them out of the wilderness, rather than giving him a swift kick up the fundamental orifice just to remind him it’s not his job to look cute in photo-shoots, rather it is to front up to the press and front up to his deniers and to make a few decisions. So long will the people of Oz be without sane leadership in this, the age of the world’s greatest migrations. Not that Malcolm Dumbell is going to be able to lead his Party or the Coalition anywhere but the nearest milkbar.
JAMESMcDONALD: I don’t know who you were quoting when you wrote about choice, “They will want to choose the sex of their babies, the size of their cappucinos…” you mean they want to be just like us?
Whatever the reason that Australians are negative about boat people we had better address it as otherwise we open the door to extreme groups. In Britain the political class ignored the hostillity
of the population to large scale immigration and we now see the rise of extreme parties.
In my own experience I have not found Australians of Anglo background to be racists but found
minorities to be more so.
I have a feeling that it is not racist per se but class based that is why the clean cut types that come by air do not cause the same concern…
Why are the bleeding hearts soooo obssesed with helping economic migrants from Indonesia?
I’ll let you guys in on a few little facts:
1. There are 13,750 designated humanitarian positions per year
2. Everytime an Asylum Shopper rocks up from Indonesia they steal one of these positions and jump the queue.
3. This means some poor bastard who has sit in a decrepid U.N refugee camp for 10 years misses out because bleeding hearts in Australia don’t care about real refugee’s, they are more interested in pushing some rose coloured glasses agenda and letting economic migrants steal their spots.
These are the facts. I sleep nice and soundly at night, I often wonder how the bleeding hearts do. Please wake up to reality.
Peter,
“Jillian it seems an odd comment
Some people seem to think that asylum seekers do not have the same rights as established citizens
No non citizen of any state has the same rights as a citizen.
These are citizens of Sri Lanka Iraq Afghistan who are trying to enter Australia illegally.”
I was responding to what James said about depriving the liberty of some people to send a political message to other people. I am not a lawyer, but I imagine that long periods of mandatory detention would go against the the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
TTH, I sympathise with your bleeding heart for “some poor bastard who has sit in a decrepid U.N refugee camp for 10 years misses out”. But stop your whining on on time, will you? We’re attempting an intelligent conversation here.
Millions suffering far away from here are not within my power and not my responsibility. We do our bit under the UN program so that side of things is taken care of. My concern is that we must find a way to mollify the redneck voters like you, without defiling our principles and throwing away 300 years of the rule of law.
I found a great website for you — therealists.com.au
Go there and play your violin while the grown-ups try to figure out a compromise.
bit harsh James tth was stating a truth.. although he offers no answers to what do we do with those who just rock up he is right about those who try legally usually poor suffering because those who can afford 14000 a head try to jump the queue.
long periods of detention occur in the UNHCR camps ten years is not uncommon….
the periods under “Howards Way” were much shorter.. whilst they were processed i.e were they bona fide refugees…etc. 95% were found to be legit and allowed to stay…Now that is tough but humane…
Outsourcing the problem to Indonesia is neither…..
Peter Hatch and others. The queue to claim refugee status in Australia is in Canberra and has nothing to do with the bogus migration program we disguise as helping “refugees” in camps.
We don’t help them at all and we never have. We select some people who have been in urban areas for years on end on a loose humantiarian basis but that is nothing to do with the refugee convention and never has done.
It is a hoax, a lie, an expensive trick and nothing else.
http://thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/for-refugees-australia-should-rethink-the-indonesia-solution/340175#comments
This is what we are doing and it is illegal and disgusting. We can’t even say it is about saving lives because when our soldiers kick down the doors of Afghans and slaughter their kids no-one is ever charged and it is largely ignored and when we kept dropping bombs on Iraq or starving them under sanctions we can’t pretend we gave a toss about them either.
To claim refugee status in Australia a person has to be in Australia, it is illegal to claim anywhere else.
So get over this absurd nonsense for heaven’s sake.
And Peter, every refugee is outside their own country and they have all paid someone to help them get out of that country.
As we are the only place on earth that whines incessantly about this damn queue surely it is time you understood that it has never been true.
What you suggest is that we step over the man dying on the doorstep and walk 10 miles north looking for another man who might be dying.
You help the person in your face, that is the way the refugee convention works.
http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/66#transcript
JENNY BROCKIE: Richard, your nodding!
RICHARD TOWLE: Well UNHCR is not a substitute for state action, it’s very clear to understand that UNHCR is steps in where states haven’t signed conventions, where there are no international systems in place for dealing with refugees. We’re not a post-box for dealing with refugee claims, we step in where there is a massive vacuum and part of the problem that we see these days is that there is a very large vacuum of state involvement in refugees between these places of stability and Australia. And one of the emphasis that we are placing is raise the capacity and competence of states in south east Asia and in south Asia to deal with refugees in a more regulatory way according to the refugee convention.
See?
Information from the Get-Up website, in response to the comments by TTH:
“The vast majority of asylum seekers arrive in Australia by air. Last year, of the 13,500 people granted asylum in Australia only 206 of those arriving without visas came by boat: 2,291 came by plane - well over 90%.
There is also data to suggest that people who arrive by boat are more likely to be legitimate refugees. Of asylum claims made by people who arrive by aircraft, 55% are rejected. Only 2-15% of claims made by people arriving by boat are denied.
The number is also small when compared to the number of people who over-stay their visa in Australia each year, particularly those on travelling visas, the majority of whom are English-speaking tourists. Conservative estimates suggest that, on average, 50,000 people stay in Australia without the proper documentation each year.
Some media have been misquoting data that last year 13,500 asylum seekers were granted refugee status. The Department for Immigration & Citizenship has responded that the vast majority of these in fact came to Australia on valid visas as part of Australia’s dedicated offshore refugee resettlement programme or were proposed as special humanitarian programme entrants - largely, they were not asylum seekers. Over 11,000 visas were granted before entry to Australia through proper processes.”
The full document, including sources is available at the following link:
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/EndMandatoryDetention&id=818
I tried to post a link to information on the get-up website, but the comment is awaiting moderation, so I will post the information only and interested readers can look it up themselves.
Information from the Get-Up website, in response to the comments by TTH:
“The vast majority of asylum seekers arrive in Australia by air. Last year, of the 13,500 people granted asylum in Australia only 206 of those arriving without visas came by boat: 2,291 came by plane - well over 90%.
There is also data to suggest that people who arrive by boat are more likely to be legitimate refugees. Of asylum claims made by people who arrive by aircraft, 55% are rejected. Only 2-15% of claims made by people arriving by boat are denied.
The number is also small when compared to the number of people who over-stay their visa in Australia each year, particularly those on travelling visas, the majority of whom are English-speaking tourists. Conservative estimates suggest that, on average, 50,000 people stay in Australia without the proper documentation each year.
Some media have been misquoting data that last year 13,500 asylum seekers were granted refugee status. The Department for Immigration & Citizenship has responded that the vast majority of these in fact came to Australia on valid visas as part of Australia’s dedicated offshore refugee resettlement programme or were proposed as special humanitarian programme entrants - largely, they were not asylum seekers. Over 11,000 visas were granted before entry to Australia through proper processes.”
The reason people react negatively to boat people is, if the blo-dy editors would ever let my comments be published until after midnight, is because they can ignore the refugees who are coming in by the plane-load; out of sight, out of mind, but newspapers, on-line media and television present vivid imagery. These images can’t be ignored nor, by the time news reporters have drenched the words which accompany the imagery are subtly accented to strike even the remotest chord in the dimmest of minds.
Children and babies especially get lots of attention from the photographers which is perfectly understandable. But over an eleven year period the ground was artfully groomed by the Howard government to conjure up negativity. Coalition governments are essentially reactionary, this is their nature. With eleven years to plant a negative reaction to the words ‘boat people’ John Howard and his mentally constipated cohorts have had a field day.
As everyone knows that for every positive action there has to be consequent reaction. John Howard vilified boat people so comprehensively that there instantly sprang up large groups of people whose social conscience was understandably outraged and, surprise surprise they defended the boat people.
For right-wing commenters to then ask why the words ‘boat people’ trigger off alarms amongst the citizens of Oz is disingenuous to a truly astonishing degree. The right wing stirrers crying rape because they did the raping is breath-taking!
No wonder dictators and priests can seize the collective mind so easily.
I don’t think there is any argument with your numbers jillian…
I’m not sure what point you are making ….but a few comments…
regarding boat arrivals you say only 206 last year so far this year according too Malcolm it is 2,500 hence the surge after Rudd abandoned Howard’s way…
one of the reasons for the rejection rate being higher by air is that to come to Australia on a Visa you must possess a return ticket and have documentation otherwise the Airline is fined so it is very easy to turn people back at the airport….
If it is so easy by air why don’t the boat people fly it would certainly be cheaper….
the majority of over-stayers are Brit back packers on their break year who eventually go home….
te 13500 refugees we allow in each are meant to be for genuine refugees who have been sitting in UN camps for ten years not wealthy queue jumpers….
Mr Turnbull said Mr Rudd had ignored warnings by authorities that changing immigration policies would result in Australia’s borders no longer being kept under control.
“Our borders should be secure, they were secure. We recklessly unpicked the policies of the previous government that worked and as a result he has outsourced our immigration program to the people smugglers,” Mr Turnbull told reporters.
About 50 boats and 2,200 people have arrived this year, Mr Turnbull said, calling it a “real surge” in boat arrivals.
If the Tamils are truly refugees that is their lives are in danger in their homeland can you explain to me why they don’t join their fellow Tamils in India which at it’s closeset point is 45k away
instead they pay 14000 a head to travel 1000s of ks across the ocean.
I am receiving posts by mail that are not apopearing on the site what the…
Boy, this blog jumped the shark, didn’t it?
The Malcolm Turnbull fan club should have Dr Nelson’s diagnosis tattooed on their foreheads: NPD ( ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’).
Mind you, Mr Rudd’s peculiar brand of double speak makes me squirm too.
Now, how about a ‘solution’, huh?
#1 The “Howard Solution”:
Chuck a baby overboard and tell the remaining Sri Lankans that another one goes over in hour if they don’t get off the ship. (Pictures of ‘Hey Hey’ black faces throwing said baby overboard will go around the world in a millisecond! LOL)
#2 The “Indian Solution”
Sail due West until you find some impoverished pile of bird-shit in the middle of the ocean, and pay to offload them there. OK, if you can’t find guano, then Madagascar will do, or some similarly needy place.
#3 “Scream in the Desert Solution”
Re-open Baxter, and whack ‘em in there to languish for years. In the desert, no one can hear you scream, (even if your name is Cornelia)
#4
Send in one of our commercial TV crews and start a ‘reality TV show’, and run a competition to name it. My suggestion? “Soft Pawns”
# Give them a decent internet connection so they can read this blog! (That should scare them off)
PETER HATCH: There’s no love lost between the Singhalese/Sri Lankans and the Indians. Been to India lately hummm?
Peter, please see Marilyn Shepherd’s post at 5:40pm NSW time which has just got through moderation. Very instructive.
“What you suggest is that we step over the man dying on the doorstep and walk 10 miles north looking for another man who might be dying.
You help the person in your face, that is the way the refugee convention works.”
We don’t really know what’s going on over there. All we can do is follow the law, the 1951 Refugee Convention we signed, and the principles of our society. If you don’t like it, lobby the government to exit from the Convention. Either leave the Convention or honour it.
Marilyn, you said “we”. Are you part of the UNHCR? Can you give me any guidance on whether the “UNHCR Solution” I suggested (6:29pm Friday, NSW time, “option 7”) is in any way feasible? Assuming the Australian taxpayer foots the bill but the process is fully under UNHCR auspices.
I’m not asking “is it the most decent thing to do” — I know it isn’t — but as the media coverage makes clear, the most decent thing to do is not going to happen anytime soon. Is it a workable compromise between the hawks and the doves?
James of course we should live up to any international agreement we have signed….
But it is dependant on people being genuine refugees not economic immigrants.
I cannot see how the Tamils can be genuine refugees….see previous comments..
While I would agree that conflicts around the world provide a push factor, the pull factor in Australia’s case can squarely be traced to the Liberal party. Since Rudd’s election, they have run the biggest and loudest campaign to attract the attention of people smugglers that the world has ever seen. And to their delight, it’s working.
With each boat of haggard souls, they rejoice, and are emboldened in their campaign to fight the next election using the formula that won them the 2001 election. Rudd can either become the Liberals, and embrace the politics of fear, or flip the table and change the game completely.
Bernard’s idea may or may not be the right one, but it’s clear the PM needs to improve his leadership on this issue, because the current half-hearted measures are alienating voters on all sides of politics.
Peter: too many assumptions, not enough facts. Short answer: it’s complex. Long answer: the Immigration department makes an assessment of each individual asylum claim on its merits. Only those found to be genuine refugees are given asylum, the rest are deported. I’ve seen your arguments that the department is misinformed. If even the department, with all its resources, gets it wrong, how can you and I expect to know better based on a few Greg Sheridan opinion pieces in the newspaper?
Permalink
PETER HATCH: There’s no love lost between the Singhalese/Sri Lankans and the Indians. Been to India lately hummm
yes I have but the queue jumpers are Tamil who have fellow Tamils only a few Ks away in India
India was supplying the Tamil tigers so has some responsibilty in this to take in refugees?
so by the logic of some Howard haters on here Rudd must be responsible for the deaths of a recent boat that sunk off the cocos islands…
Venise,
I got an e-mail notification of your comment at 6.52, although I cannot see it on this web page.
You said:
“…As everyone knows that for every positive action there has to be consequent reaction. John Howard vilified boat people so comprehensively that there instantly sprang up large groups of people whose social conscience was understandably outraged and, surprise surprise they defended the boat people.
For right-wing commenters to then ask why the words ‘boat people’ trigger off alarms amongst the citizens of Oz is disingenuous to a truly astonishing degree. The right wing stirrers crying rape because they did the raping is breath-taking!”
I do not think ‘right-wing commentator’ is a reasonable label, as it sounds like Pat Buchanan etc. Just because some people admit to voting Liberal does not make them right-wing commentators. As we all know, not all Liberal voters were in support of the Howard policy on asylum seekers. Some of us were bewildered at best.
james i don’t know what you are referring to when you say you have seen my argument tht the dept is misinformed….
venise said
Coalition governments are essentially reactionary, this is their nature
peter says
Well the last idea the left had was communism..
the only new ideas have come from the right such as privatisation which has created competition
broke up state monopolies and increased wealth.
Rudd’s government even though he himself made millions out of Howard’s privatisation of the old CES is taking us back to a more regulated labor market and taking the govt back into business, without any business plan ,into the Tel-co market…
PETER HATCH: Ah ha! Over eleven years of the Howard government with ‘himself’ urging on his cohorts, especially his Richelieu, Phillip Ruddock,have left us with this magical queue jumpers terminology. Where does it come from, where’s the head of the queue? I’d like a queue jumper it can get cold here in Melbourne. First Dog could have a field day with that one.
If you had read my comment/s I said that it was the Howard government which had had a field day getting the electorates’ knee jerk reaction to the ‘boat people’. At no stage did I suggest that Howard or Rudd actually instigated the exodus from Sri Lanka.
As for fellow Tamils in India wanting Singhalese Tamils to join them, honestly! They may have funded the overseas Tamils which is a vastly different proposition to actually wanting to live with them. Heavens to Betsey! Look at Oz. We have taken over three million refugees since WWII, and who do you think are the most hostile towards new immigrants? Precisely: the older immigrants.
Northern Europeans hated, still hate Greeks, Turks, Muslims, the whole Caboodle with a rabid fire that puts the the original Anglo/Irish/Scottish immigration to shame. Then the next lot of immigrants settles down in time to hate the new immigrants. La ronde.
Responsibility, now there’s a nice word. But not the word anyone seems willing to assume. Indonesia is less enthusiastic about accepting them than the people trying to avoid going there. But it just isn’t their problem either.
These people have landed on an Australian ship and this means it is our problem. Back to my original remarks, instead of wringing his hands and striving to be a populist PM, our Kevin, will actually have to make a few decisions which will not be popular. And, without wishing to be rude about your own leader, Malcolm the Mad, and the failure of the Liberal Party to run a lolly shop, leaves their adherents wallowing in an unseemly mess. One way, or another the Labor Party will have to solve the problem.
Finally, all governments are misinformed. It just goes with the territory. They don’t want to be informed.
Peter Hatch, while Communism has been thoroughly discredited throughout the world, many still cling to the equally delusional concept of Free Market Capitalism. An economy run purely on altruism will collapse due to lack of incentive, just as an economy run entirely on self interest will cannibalise itself.
The countries with the highest standards of living in the world are well regulated market economies balanced by strong governments. The pendulum swung too far towards populism and corporatism under Howard, and Rudd is pushing it back in the other direction. To say he’s a Communist is quite ridiculous and shows a misunderstanding of the word.
Back further, you mentioned that majority rule on issues like refugees is democracy. You’re correct, but when it comes to human rights issues, this situation is often called the ‘tyranny of the majority’. Even darlings of the conservative movement like Ayn Rand recognise the political function of rights as existing to protect minorities from oppression by majorities. If every civil rights issue was put up for a majority vote, slavery would most likely not have been abolished.
Jeebus,
Rudd is a populist (as well as Howard) - otherwise this whole debate would never have started. He is trying to work out how he can get out of this scenario without losing votes. I don’t think Peter said Rudd was a communist - it’s more that we briefly got into a slanging match between the left and the right in general.
I agree that you can’t apply the idea of majority rule to human rights issues.
Let’s try to stay on topic?
Australia’s refugee policy is based on a 1951 view that any given source of refugee is both temporary and finite. That was true of the Jews, the Vietnamese, and the post Tiananmen Chinese. It’s probably true of the Iraqis and the Tamils. It hasn’t been true of the Palestinians. It will be true of the Pacific Islanders when they go under water. Bangladesh will be a different matter.
For some people, one refugee is one too many. But most people are prepared to accept some; the right sort of immigrants enrich us all, at least up to a point. And this seems to be where the fear comes in, that if we decide to allow some in, then it somehow means that we have given up control and we have to let the rest in as well? Peter, I may be wrong, but this seems to be your view?
Sorry Peter, I incorrectly mentioned you linked Rudd to Communism, when you did not.
Jillian, thinking about it further, I would have to agree with you that Rudd is a populist. Both on the refugee issue, and other actions like the cash handouts.
Actually I think that is probably the common ground among all of us on this thread: Rudd is a populist.
didn’t say Rudd is a communist….I actually not sure what he is. He appears to reflect whomever he is talking to… I don’t understand how he can be an economic conservative and be a keynesian
through money around grand in every pot at the same time… How he can accuse derivative traders of being the unacceptable face of capitalism but then hand them on a plate the biggest game they will ever have in trading in hot air….
I don’t understand why he wants to regulate the work force when it’s very flexibility in abling people to do less hours but keep in employment has got us through the latest downturn…and yet say he is going to increase productivity….
I don’t understand how he can stand up and say management salaries should be capped when his own wife’s is 1.8 million.
your explanation of an economy run purely on altruism will collapse due to lack of incentive is I presume a communist one.
An economy run purely on self interest…….I am grappling with are you referring to the need to make profits or what?
you say the countries with the highest standard of living are well regulated market economies
balanced by strong government but you do not quote examples but i can think of one Australia under Howard…..
if you think rudd the mother of all centralist control freaks is for individualism as an antidote to corporatism better get ready to be disappointed…..
I do agree with you that minorities need protection….however my point was that if the political class ignores the majorities concerns in the case i used was high immigration into the UK then we are inviting extremists to fill the void….
Can you imagine Rudd with a mustache plus his temper tantrums long boring speeches and love of grand projects…and complete dominance over his party…plus centralising all power into his office… crikey Adolph’s back
Peter, your description of Rudd is priceless:
” He appears to reflect whomever he is talking to…
I don’t understand how he can be an economic conservative and be a keynesian through money around grand in every pot at the same time…
How he can accuse derivative traders of being the unacceptable face of capitalism but then hand them on a plate the biggest game they will ever have in trading in hot air….
I don’t understand why he wants to regulate the work force when it’s very flexibility in abling people to do less hours but keep in employment has got us through the latest downturn…and yet say he is going to increase productivity….
I don’t understand how he can stand up and say management salaries should be capped when his own wife’s is 1.8 million.”
there is one word missing in this topic heading
Memo.. Rudd in an asylum, solution!
I have turned the description above into a ‘who am I?’ riddle to send around to people. ‘I reflect whomever I am talking to…’
Rudd persists with describing his policy approach on the 15,000 bucks a time “refugees” as “humane toughness”, a deeply Ruddesque contradiction in terms that fits well with his alcopops policy (Responsible Drunkenness) and his fiscal policy (Conservative Recklessness).
Mr Turnbull repeated his criticism of the government’s planned national broadband network, saying it had been announced with no business plan or feasibility study.
He suggested voters were losing faith in Labor because of dramatic policy differences between the present and previous federal governments.
“We are a party of freedom, enterprise, the individual and small business,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Labor is a party of government, of big government, of government-knows-best. And the arrogance of that approach is becoming more and more apparent to Australians every day
Good one Malcolm at last simple message but effective and true
On a small detail, I see this $15,000 figure bandied around a lot for the smuggler fare. This report in the Aus has it at $4,000 and I’ve seen other reports of smugglers charging $1,500. (The lesson is, shop around folks!) Seriously though, don’t just take one anecdotal report as definitive. That report also mentions the bribes required to get out of the camps in Sri Lanka, 500,000 rupees if anyone wants to look up the conversion.
See also this excellent report from Mike Steketee, again in the Aus, setting a lot of confusion straight. Straight answers to a lot of questions in this thread can be found in that Steketee article.
Peter, those last quotes from Turnbull about values reflect the kind of government I want. But the government needs to follow principles on principle, not just when they’re politically expedient.
“To claim refugee status in Australia a person has to be in Australia, it is illegal to claim anywhere else.”
Utter rot. Australia takes about 12,000 OFFSHORE refugee’s per year.
The bleeding hearts would like us to think the line starts at the Jakarta Hilton, but this is simply bull.
The line goes all the way back to Africa, the border of Afghanistan/Pakistan and every other hell hole in the world.
I would like to see the most in need get into Australia on one of our precious 13,750 positions per year, not the most cashed up, decieving, lying and cheating.
The bleeding hearts just don’t GET IT. If we turned back EVERY SINGLE BOAT, we’d still easily fill our 13,750 quota. EASILY. And it would be actual people in need, not asylum shoppers, country hoping around the globe checking out the best deals.
““The vast majority of asylum seekers arrive in Australia by air. Last year, of the 13,500 people granted asylum in Australia only 206 of those arriving without visas came by boat: 2,291 came by plane - well over 90%.”
Of course they do!!!
How the bloody hell do you think Australia gets them here from Africa after selecting them as approved refugees? Camel back?
The big difference is this: They were SELECTED and INVITED to come to Australia as the MOST NEEDY.
They didn’t country hop across the globe to the Jakarta Hilton, burn their ID papers and then sink their boat 1km inside Australian waters, they were actually SELECTED by the Australian government to come here.
So long folks, it was a good thread while it lasted. The Australian blogosphere’s most repetitive broken record, otherwise known as THETROLLHONKS, is here to take over the thread.
Jillian and Peter, I’ll catch you on the next one.
Marilyn Shepherd, likewise, I’d like to pick your brains of a few things.
By everyone.
Truth, why is the Bhutanese “refugee” who was smuggled into Nepal in 1990, lived their lives for 18 years and so on more worthy than an Hazara Afghan who has never had any papers to identify himself but is in danger from the Taliban today?
Your argument is as stupid is a stupid does.
Last year people arrived in Australia from China - 1181 with 424 being granted refugee status.
We also accepted onshore refugees from - Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Ghana, Russia, PNG, Togo, Liberia, Turkey, Israel, Fiji, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Latvia, Jordan, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Korea, Bangladesh, Nepal, South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Indonesia, Poland, Ghana, Mongolia and all corners of the globe.
Chinese were granted 424 vias, SL - 364, Afghans who sailed - 254 - 223 visas, Iraqis - 202 - 169 visas, Iran - 209 - 146 visas.
It makes no difference where asylum seekers come from or how they get here and every bloody refugee is off shore you goose, otherwise they are Australians.
Peter, I like that expression ‘conservative recklessness’. It’s very appropriate for the coming federal election campaign.
TTH, There is a distinction between asylum seekers who come by plane and refugees who are already recognised as refugees before they come to Australia. Asylum seekers who come by plane have not yet been recognised as refugees. They have the same status as boat arrivals - just a different mode of travel.
“I would like to see the most in need get into Australia on one of our precious 13,750 positions per year, not the most cashed up, decieving, lying and cheating.”
And we all agree with that!
Particularly the description of the number of positions as being something we’re a little too precious about. It’s an arbitrary number, well below the number we could and should take.
And the “cashed up” bit shouldn’t be taken as saying that we’d prefer them poorer please[*], should it? Even if so, should it override the “most in need” part?
“Deceiving, lying”. No evidence of that here - the refugees have been quite honest about who they are, where they come from, and what they’re doing.
“cheating”. This is interesting. According to rules as written, there isn’t any cheating happening. According to the rules as you’d have them written, there is. So the justification for keeping them out would become the justification for keeping them out.
Which leaves “most in need”. Judging who’s in need is hard. Judging who’s most in need is even harder. For starters, you’d need to assess all the potential candidates first, prior to letting anyone in. But I think it’s fair to say that anyone prepared to travel to Australia in a leaky boat has to be leaving somewhere that is worse than being in a leaky boat. They’re not the only ones in need. They’re probably close to the top of the list. They’re perhaps a bit more capable, a bit more driven, a bit more possessed of determination and motivation. But they’re “in need”.
And they’re here. The human heart is a strange thing. Given two people in need, most people will help the person on the doorstep first, before the person down the street and around the corner. Is that unfair? Perhaps. Is it rewarding imitative? Perhaps. Is it simply a way to filter out who gets helped first? Perhaps. Is it wrong? I don’t think so.
* What’s interesting about this debate is that it seems to reverse some of the normal left/right values. Normally the right sees itself as valuing initiative and individualism, and accuses the left of wanting equality of outcome.
Ben,
Some people on the right are still expressing the usual support for initiative and individualism in the context of the asylum seekers.
There is an excellent article from the Institute of Public Affairs. A quote from the article:
“…Aren’t people who are willing to risk their lives on boats propelled by motorbike engines to get to a society with social and economic freedom exactly the sort of people we want in Australia?…”
I won’t put up the link because it will lead to my comment going to moderation, but you can find it on the IPA website. The title of the article is ‘Being tough on refugees is pretty weak’.
“TTH, There is a distinction between asylum seekers who come by plane and refugees who are already recognised as refugees before they come to Australia. Asylum seekers who come by plane have not yet been recognised as refugees. They have the same status as boat arrivals - just a different mode of travel.”
True, but these people are also easily identified(must have passport to get to Australia) and therefore it is easy to verify their name, place of birth and country of origin. It is also a snap to send them back on a plane from whence they came.
We don’t have this priveledge for boatpeople. First off, after they sink their boat in Australian waters it’s near impossible to send them back to Indonesia. They KNOW this, that is why they do it. It’s also very difficult to identify someones claims when they have a made up name, no passport or ID papers and you aren’t even sure of their country of origin.
Therefore the people that CLAIM Asylum at Australian airports(a majority that come by air have already been processed offshore and pre-selected by Australia to come here as refugee’s at OUR invitation) have a lower chance of success of being deemed refugee’s.
What you don’t want to do is encourage people to come by boat because they think they have a better chance of getting in, which is exactly what is happening at the moment.
“And they’re here. The human heart is a strange thing. Given two people in need, most people will help the person on the doorstep first, before the person down the street and around the corner. Is that unfair? Perhaps. Is it rewarding imitative? Perhaps. Is it simply a way to filter out who gets helped first? Perhaps. Is it wrong? I don’t think so.”
Well it is wrong.
It’s like if you had someone ringing you from their phone 2 blocks away saying they had just been shot and are losing massive amounts of blood. Then the next minute you get a bloke knock on your door saying “gee i got a little scratch on my knee, gee it really really hurts, can you take me in and look after me”.
So you turn the blinkers on, forget about the more important person down the road who is bleeding to death to help someone who is exagerating their claims and only reason you are even paying attention to them is because they are on your doorstep.
I think thats wrong.
This is a really great piece, Bernard, and a terrific thread too, lots of meaty food-for-thought, (very deftly moderated). Bravo, bravo, Crikey. I hope some power hitters in Press and Parties both are actually, um, reading.
There’s a sane and decent path beyond this bleak, decade+ long impasse, and - please God - you can’t help but think it’s finally, creakingly, showing itself.
‘unfortunately australia does not have a conservative party or a tradition of Right thinking….’ (Quote: PeterHatch)
Oh please!!! At least this comment allowed me to bypass your copious comments here. Anyone who fails to see the conservative grip that has dominated globally for at least the last 25 years or so lacks credibility in any damn thing he/she says!
It is absurd to see Rudd/Keating/ or even Hawke as on the political Left. What utter tosh! Ye Gods! Hawke and Keating made an art form of lying on their political backs for the big end of town. Rudd simply embraces the New Labour format-conservative.
Australia has a lamentable record in its attitude and treatment of so-called ‘illegals’. It is globally embarrassing.
And boy! are we sensitive over any suggestion that we are racist or more accurately extremely xenophobic.
We bloody well are! ‘Put a hole in their boat’. ‘Clap them in irons’!! Sheesh! How constructive.
____________________
And of course those who don’t ‘go with the flow’ are labelled as trolls! Come now, don’t be coy? You simply can’t have others joining your private party and making it a tad harder for you to converse as one. Silly!
well Ben my view is that we have set a number I think it was originally 10% of economic migrants
for various categories of refugees. We have to set a figure somewhere as we are unable to physically or politically acceptable to accept all the worlds refugees.
We choose to fill that number in the main by people who have been declared genuine refugees by the UN.
We should discourage boat arrivals as much as possible for reasons that 1) you are taking away our choice to decide if you are a genuine refugee not just someone who decides they would like to live in OZ. According to the Sri Lankan Ambassador on television this morning the people on board our ship are people who have relatives in australia and want to join them. He also said they left Sri Lanka five years ago and have been living in Indonesia,..
b) if we do not discourage economic immigrants arriving in this way yes we will open ourselves up to uncontrolled immigration.
Yes we can debate the number of refugees we allow but we surely can not allow unrestricted entry by people just deciding this is a nicer place to live….
JILLIAN BLACKHALL: Actually I used the term right-wingers a few times as I didn’t wish to be seen as a Coalition hater. (Dislike yes, hatred no.)
The reason you couldn’t find me under comments, despite having received an email is because I am watched, like a peregrine falcon hovering in the sky, by the editor and sometimes I have to wait an entire day for it to actually appear. The reason being I can loose off the odd ad hominem remark.
PETER HATCH: I’ve always thought of communism as another form of religion. Same mind-set. Destroy the individual so that the gullible can have unfettered belief of god/the state.
JAMES McDONALD: God you can be a shocker! V funny but that last pot-shot at TTH!
BERNARDK: Terrific article, great suggestion! If nothing else emerges from the article and the comments which followed it, is the amount of dissatisfaction with
Kevin Rudd’s non-performance. Instead of going to church every Sunday he should take a course in daring to be bold and how to make unpopular decisions.
Thanks for a wonderful post.
See how THETROLLHONKS has turned the discussion back to one we’ve had a thousand times before: the question of whether boat people are deserving. A question which he very well knows will never be answered to the satisfaction of the Australian community — because it changes from event to event, boat to boat, and individual to individual. A question he delights in getting us bogged down in, time and time and time again, for reasons best known to himself. His boredom threshold is truly impressive.
And so, following a long thread which was discussing realistic solutions, suddenly the thread is bogged down in the same question yet again. Exactly as THETROLLHONKS intended.
Don’t get me wrong — excellent replies from others, especially the latest from Ben Aveling. (Ben, if someone half as smart and reasonable as you ever stands for PM, I’ll vote for him and then stand back confidently and wait for the next election.)
Still, it’s easy to forget — as THETROLLHONKS intended — that we had already acknowledged that the xenophobes, the hawks, the rednecks, are not going to go away, and we were already in the process of discussing politically and ethically workable solutions.
TROLL, read the article and the thread before you disrupt discussions again. We have already acknowledged the intractability of those who think like you. We are several steps ahead of you, already trying to find a humane way of achieving what you want. I’ve already recommended a website for you: therealists.com.au. I’m serious, I think you will be among kindred spirits there.
Peter Hatch, the question of whether intensive resources should be devoted to discouraging boat people has already been settled — in my view, the good guys lost and irrational paranoia won, but that’s how it is.
What we were discussing before the troll came, was how far do we go in order to effect that discouragement? Where do you reach a point that the ends no longer justifies the means?
For comparison, how far do we go in discouraging crime? Do we lock up every suspect, every person that the police know is really guilty, even if they got smart lawyers, every person with a demographic likelihood of being criminal? No, we don’t, for a good reason known as the rule of law.
For the most part, we don’t. NT and WA tried recently to do just that, using mandatory sentencing laws for juvenile offenders which were aimed at the Aboriginal populations. A case of the ends justifying the means. The Australian community have reasserted the principle that, as much as we want to discourage crime, we don’t throw away civil liberties in the pursuit of that goal.
The same must apply in the boat people context. Discourage them if you must — if you really think, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that it will make any difference whatsoever to the quality and quantity of our migration intake. But don’t throw away the rule of law and the concept of civil liberties to do so.
Otherwise we are no better than the bolshevik nanny-state fix-everything type of government that we were having a go at on Friday night.
James you do not appeal to the economic migrants to act within our laws…why?
ELAN: Totally agree with you re 25 years of conservatism in Oz. And yes many Australians are racist and xenophobic, also many of us are bleeding hearts-not me!
However, we have seen nothing, as yet, about the huge numbers of people who are going to come to this country. It is inescapable. The world has almost run out of space. Deserts need to be brought back to life. Rivers need to be brought back from the edge of extinction (MDB anyone). Birth rates have to be brought down to two children per couple. Religion needs to be replaced by something other than football. It is the nature of mankind to wish to believe in something. Religions have set people against people since the dawn of time. Something else needs to be thought of. Something to inspire awe, rather than “Joe the blow has just kicked a goal for the doggies!”
For all these tasks Australia needs thinkers, not tired old wankers looking to the past. I did have great hopes for Kevin Rudd who, despite being a god-botherer, seem to be a highly intelligent man.
It seems my hopes were born to be dashed.
Meanwhile, Bernard, and others, have come up with some fine suggestions re the refugee problem. I think we need to ram home Bernard’s suggestion, so hard that even Kevin Rudd will get the message.
I think I have laid out the why we need to discourage economic migrants arriving uninvited….
But the how well Howard succeeded by sending a tough message to the people smugglers..and yet acting humanely in letting 95% in quicker than the UN would have…
I think Howard’s success, because their must have been co-operation with the Indos. in shutting down boat arrivals, was to do it quietly no megaphone in this way Australians excepted the re-settlement and the Indos did not loose face.
I would have thought Rudd as an ex diplomat would have understood this,,,
We’re starting to go around in circles in our race to 200 posts.
Howard’s method of sending a tough message to the people smugglers was to lock people up for extended periods of time, often in remote locations.
James has spoken eloquently about how this is a violation of human rights - locking up one group of people to send a message to another group.
A friend of mine who has read this thread said “My solution to stop boats entering Australian waters is to play KRudd’s 7000 word essay, “The Global Financial Crisis”, 24/7 over loud halers.” I am confident that if we were to do that on the Oceanic Viking, the people there would gladly go elsewhere.
and rudds solution is to lock them up in remoter locations not under our control do you think 95% of them will make it OZ….
Elan
Posted Sunday, 8 November 2009 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
‘unfortunately australia does not have a conservative party or a tradition of Right thinking….’ (Quote: PeterHatch)
Oh please!!! At least this comment allowed me to bypass your copious comments here. Anyone who fails to see the conservative grip that has dominated globally for at least the last 25 years or so lacks credibility in any damn thing he/she says!
It is absurd to see Rudd/Keating/ or even Hawke as on the political Left. What utter tosh! Ye Gods! Hawke and Keating made an art form of lying on their political backs for the big end of town. Rudd simply embraces the New Labour format-conservative.
Peter
I understand your frustration since Maggie and Ron buried the corpse of the left we now have politics by management of which Rudd is the ultimate…
but i still long for ideas and it was in this context that I made my comment….
Peter, I don’t think Rudd really has a solution. He seems very mixed up.
totaly agree Jillian but he does like the gobbly gook of managerial speak… here comes a crisis form a committee… as Howard said this morning he actually hasn’t done anything yet
Jillian this is the first blog i have been on, so what do you mean ” in our race to 200.”
We are nearly up to 200 comments on Bernard’s article. This is comment 198. It’s as if we’re trying to get up to 200 - although I know it’s not really like that. I’m just being silly.
JILLIAN: Who’s racing?
For those people not old enough to know…we had all of these questions, and answers, after the fall of Vietnam. Thousands of Vietnamese fled the country to come here. I don’t think these immigrants/refugees did any harm.
None of which obviates Bernard’s original suggestion! Let us get behind the only sensible idea anyone has had on this topic.
Truth, there is no way anyone can identify the asylum seekers on planes just because they have passports.
Good lord man, 320,000 foreign students came here last year and you are still whining incessantly about the few hundred who sailed.
Is there a problem with synapses connecting in your brain.
Article 14 of the Declaration of Human Rights ratified on December 10, 1948 by all the nations of the world states “everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries.
Now that Stephen Smith has been goaded into stating these 78 cannot be sent back to Sri Lanka because it would breach the refugee convention he has to understand he cannot send them to be jailed in Indonesia either where he cannot guarantee their safety so he should and must do what he had to do a couple of weeks ago, bring them to Australia.
Not a skerrick of choice or wiggle room here boys and girls.
As someone who would prefer the coalition to win the upcoming election I can only encourage you in telling rudd to bring these economic refugees to Australia….
You raise a good point about foreign students why are we giving permanent residency to someone who does a cooking course….
PETERHATCH - the answer to your question is that the foreign students pay lots of money that ends up in the hands of Australian businesses and employment.
The boat-peoples’ money all ends up in the hands of those evil foreign people smugglers and their wretched footsoldiers.
Peter, you keep bringing up this point about economic refugees. I just noticed this earlier comment you made which shows a misunderstanding of our processes: “We should discourage boat arrivals as much as possible for reasons that 1) you are taking away our choice to decide if you are a genuine refugee not just someone who decides they would like to live in OZ”
That point has been answered many times by many people in this thread. All boat people that get into our system are subjected to intensive assessment by the immigration department — a very hard-nosed bunch of people, not many bleeding hearts that department — where the economic migrants are weeded out and deported.
The economic refugees are coming by plane on student or tourist visas, and either committing fraud or simply disappearing. Sometimes they are caught, then they apply for asylum and typically more than 50 per cent are found to be just trying their luck, and rejected. They are not all British backpackers as you have said, that’s quite wrong (and also a slightly worrying implication that British illegals are OK but Asian ones are not).
“economic migrants” I meant to say. “economic refugee” is a contradiction in terms
“Howard’s method of sending a tough message to the people smugglers was to lock people up for extended periods of time, often in remote locations.”
Yes and by doing so he saved countless lives by stopping the boatpeople coming.
Rudd has already indirectly been responsible for over 20 deaths THIS YEAR alone.
Also another little fact the left often seem to avoid is this:
Howard was CLOSING detention centres. This is a fact. This is reality. It’s something you can do when you stop the boatpeople coming.
There are now 1200 more people behind the “razor wire” under Rudd’s regime then the last few years under Howards Pacific Solution. Howard also closed Baxter, Woomera, Curtin and Port Headland detention centres. FACT.
Under Rudd he is reopening detention centres all around the country. He started with Christmas Island, soon it will be Darwin detention centre and then who knows where he will go from then.
The best way to deal with this problem is to reject all boatpeople. WE should decide who will take the 13,750 positions per year, not the people smugglers and not economic migrants from Indonesia. That is the MORAL thing to do, and the RIGHT thing to do.
Before anyone wastes time answering THETROLLHONKS, I suggest looking at this Push vs Pull Factors statistical analysis by Possum Comitatus. And the blog that follows, in which this broken-record troll gets himself canned for doing the same thing he’s trying to do here. It also answers his point — many times over.
venise yes the Vietnamese came in as refugees but infinitely more as immigrants and yes in the main they have been a good addition. Of those that came as refugees hardly any came by boat we selected from camps in Malaysia who we wanted they were seen to be genuine refugees as if they were sent back the communists would have imprisoned or executed them…
I think it was Fraser (coaltion) that brought them in.. I think Whitlam was against it and called them something like Asian Balts….
Peter, I went to school with the children of Vietnamese boat people, there were loads of them. They told stories of having to slip by the communist patrols to get off shore, and of losing what little possessions they had including passports taken by pirates on the way here.
Whitlam tried to block them because he wanted to be friends with Ho Chi Minh, who was insisting that there were no post-war reprisals. The Ho Chi Minh government was quite affronted by anyone taking refugees from Vietnam.
“Before anyone wastes time answering THETROLLHONKS, I suggest looking at this Push vs Pull Factors statistical analysis by Possum Comitatus”
Hahaha, that laughable piece, the one where he takes illegal boatpeople arrival numbers and dilutes the numbers by combining it with legitimate refugee’s who have been invited at Australia’s invation which no one, not even myself, care about?
And is that the one where he excludes the 2 most important years, 2002, the year AFTER the introduction of the Pacific Solution and 2009, the year AFTER the introduction of Rudd’s new soft touch laws?
Is that the one your are talking about?
Possum might as well have compared the price of tea in China to boatpeople arrivals, it would have had more relevance. Lemme know when he creates a graph that compares ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION between AUSTRALIA and other Countries year on year. Lemme know when he makes one of those graphs. Oh hang on… he never will because the numbers don’t suit his agenda and are embarrassing, my mistake.
There are no illegal immigrants in Australia but there are 12 million in America. There are however a few hundred refugees who have come to Australia and there are 1.94 million refugees in Pakistan, 3.65 in Thailand, 2 million in Syria, 1 million in Jordan and so on.
Refugees seeking asylum are not illegal immigrants truth and no matter how many times you think screaming it out in capitals will change that it will still be the truth.
“Refugees seeking asylum are not illegal immigrants truth and no matter how many times you think screaming it out in capitals will change that it will still be the truth.”
Correct, refugee’s are not illegal immigrants.
People however that arrive in Australian waters without passports, visa’s and permission from the Australian government ARE illegals. This legislation was introduced by none other than Paul Keating and Bob Hawke and I would love it if the bleeding hearts would do some basic fact checking now and again.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/MIG/detention/report/appendixd.pdf
Yes they are illegals, as specified by Australian legislation. End of story.
Michael Usher: The Human Tide23/10/2009 4:22:00 PM, Prev Next
I think this is possibly the most difficult and most frustrating story I’ve had to chase all year.
For the past 8 days, I’ve been in Indonesia tracking down people smugglers and the refugees waiting to get on boats to Australia.
It took some time, but we found a smuggler willing to tell his side of the story, and also located refugees who tell of their desperate struggle to start a new life away from the despair of lands they’ve left behind.
I think you’ll be surprised by the smuggler’s words. He’s a fisherman by trade who claims he’s successfully landed Chinese refugees just near Broome, and has acted a broker for other boat-loads of refuges who’ve been intercepted in Australian waters.
He runs smaller boats and tells Indonesian authorities he’s just going fishing. But hidden beneath deck under fishing nets are refugees who’ve paid up to $15,000 each to get to Australia.
Peter
I have posted the above because I feel the discussion particularly in relation to the Sri Lankans on our boat comes down to are they genuine refugees or people who would like to live in Australia economic immigrants.
I just cannot see how people who could afford to fly to Indonesia from sri lanka then pay 15,000 a head are mainly young males, who evidently have relatives here can be genuine refugees.
yes the whole thing is a mess so they will probably end up going to Christmas island where I think james quoted 95% are accepted…
The mess if it is true that they have been in Indonesia for five years has been created by the UNHCR
sorry the above is from 60 minutes….
I have enjoyed reading this thread immensely, but I have been a little concerned about how the concerns of those who are support a tougher stance on the asylum seekers are being ignored. Any long term solution which hopes to avoid the controversy surrounding the Oceanic Viking, and the horrible spectacle of politicians creating an international incident over a relatively small number of asylum seekers, will need to address the fears held by many people in our society and not just dismiss them as racists or xenophobes.
We have had years of politicians fostering fear in the community to decrease opposition to wars, exacerbated by the terrorist attacks in Bali, the UK and USA. In the community there are fears about globalisation and the perception that jobs are being moved off-shore, the idea that business owners encourage migration in a bid to lower wage costs, housing shortages, water shortages, and hospital waiting lists.
The popular media do nothing to soothe these fears, and focus on the immigrants who seem to actively dislike Australian society, and who do not try to join into the way of life we love. This will be reinforced at Christmas, when many of us will be asked to be “politically correct”, rather than expecting/hoping that our newest residents will embrace the festive season, celebrate with us, and get a taste of some of the things that we enjoy (not an entirely unreasonable expectation).
Australians regularly show themselves to be willing to lend a hand to those in genuine need of help, and it would be great to see our politicians and the media try foster that side of our nature.
@JamesMcD.
I don’t think TTH is trolling. The arguments are empty but the emotion behind them is real. For whatever reason, TTH deeply feels that it is important that boat people not be allowed into Australia.
@PeterH
Being a refugee isn’t about being poor, it’s about being persecuted. Sometimes people are persecuted despite having money. Sometimes people are persecuted because they have money. The richest and most powerful people in town are often the first targets in a conflict, because they are the community’s leaders. Sometimes an extended family will pool all they have to send one of their children, usually a son, to safety. Sometimes people borrow money. Sometimes there are a lot of people persecuted and only those with money get out.
If 95% of them are accepted as genuine refugees, then it’s safe to assume that about 95% of them are genuine refugees, however much money they paid to get here. They aren’t costing anyone else a place in Australia.
The most rational assessment of the situation I’ve read. Hope Kevie reads it too, and ACTS ON IT.
ben even if I accept everyting you say as reasonable, how can you say they are not costing anyone else a place when we ration the number of refugees to 13,500
So, assuming we need to stop or deter people smugglers (otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it from the Howardites) how can we do it?
With the constraint that — like fighting crime — we have to do it without violating basic human liberties. And yes, those liberties do apply to non-citizens the same as citizens, just as they do in the criminal justice system.
The Howard Govt did it.. so lets reintroduce their policies….
“The Howard Govt did it.. so lets reintroduce their policies….”
Game. Set. Match.
This is exactly what needs to be done. Howards policies stopped the boats, we still filled our 13,750 quota with GENUINE LEGIT Refugee’s, a majority of Australians were happy, the people smugglers were sent to the wall and our detention centres were empty.
Everyone was happy except for the bleeding hearts. They saw a tap that wasn’t leaking and said “We need to fix that!!”. They played around with the tap for a while and now it’s stuck on full open and they are claiming they had nothing to do with it. Talk about stupidity… don’t fix what isn’t broken is the rule of the day.
No, the Howard government dropped the 9-month time restriction for processing asylum applications, and imposed mandatory detention throughout the entire process. The holding periods were deliberately allowed to telescope out to years. People spent spent years inside. The detention centres were overcrowded and the High Court described the conditions as no different from prison. Children grew up in prison, women bore children in prison, people developed mental illnesses.
Three differences between them and criminals:
1. The detainees were not accused of any crime
2. They were granted rights that criminals are given, the government at one stage barred them from appealing to the courts and tried to prevent them getting access to lawyers, even when lawyers were beating on the door to work pro bono for them.
3. A prisoner knows the length of his sentence, but the boat people detainees never had any idea when their assessment would come or if they would spend their whole lives inside.
The purpose of all this was no secret; it was to send a message to others that coming here was a bad idea.
So don’t try and tell me Howard upheld human liberties. And it wasn’t just a special exception. Around that time NT and WA started using mandatory sentencing for juveniles, in an attempt to clean up the Aboriginal population. Extraordinary antiterrorist laws soon followed, which shocked all our allies. The erosion of human rights is a slippery slope and it had far reaching consequences, some of them closer to you than you think.
No. It’s got to stop. Find another way.
My error at point 2:
2. They were not granted rights that criminals are given …
@Peter. They are not costing anyone else a place because they are entitled to a place. It doesn’t change the total number, just the order in which they are processed. In theory anyway. In practice the ‘queue’ is so long that people die of old age before reaching the head of it.
yes ben the queue is long 22m -40m that is why we have to select…if one of the critera for selection was poverty i would go with it.
Agreed James - 10.02pm post.
Michelle K - I got an e-mail about your comment, although it has not yet appeared on the page (assume in moderation). You referred to “fears about globalisation and the perception that jobs are being moved off-shore, the idea that business owners encourage migration in a bid to lower wage costs, housing shortages, water shortages, and hospital waiting lists.”
These issues are not directly relevant to the treatment of asylum seekers. It annoys me no end when people are not happy with their lives and so they take it out on easy targets like asylum seekers - or aborigines or gay people or whoever is the current target. If they’re not happy with their lives, they should do or say something about it directly and leave innocent people alone. (This is not directed at you, as you are not taking this attitude yourself.)
The UN by your definition are breaking their own human rights liberties by holding people in camps for ten years or more..
If the Un camps are better than ours why arn’t the Sri Lankans racing off the boats….
Keating introduced mandatory detention not Howard…..
The process is designed to send a message that is why the boats the drownings, the need for camps stopped..
once you send a message that it is easy the whole cycle starts again….
Peter how come you talk about the political Right and bemoan its loss, and then you come out with a statement like that?
I’ll tell you what happened to the Right in this country: they forgot who they were and what they stood for. They now stand for nothing; one minute they’re elitists and the next minute they’re bolsheviks. And they don’t even know the difference any more.
Yep, selection should be based on Australians DECIDING who shall come here and who is the most in need and invited in at our invitation.
The selection process should not be based on who can get inside Australian waters and sink their boat.
This issue is not as complex as the left tries to make it. It’s not about Australians being racist, hating “refugees” or us being “inhumane”.
It’s about what is morally right… should we be deciding who comes here and the circumstances in which they come, or should it be the people smugglers and cashed up country hoppers? Thats the moral issue, thats what the debate is really about. Most Australians including myself support having a refugee intake, but don’t decieve by mixing refugee’s with boatpeople, because we see a distinct difference.
Just on the point of mandatory detention. Yes some may have been in detention for a few years(only a handful) but compared to the conditions of a U.N camp in say Africa it would have been a godsend living there. 3 square meals a day, access to internet, television, newspapers and sports grounds. No rapant diseases and famine in the camps.
And remember there are people who have waited in these U.N camps for 10 years or more, why should they miss out?
Howard brought in record immigration including record asian immigration Howard settled 95%
of the illegals or whatever term you wish to use Howard terminated kids behind barb wire
(keating) he stopped the people smugglers and the drownings he achieved this without an outcry
from the Australian public.
Compare this to the mess Rudd has created…….
James there is no right or left position on this……..
Truth, the people in the UN camps are not in jail old son and how many of them do you want to take?
We don’t take any so far so anything would be an advance on that wouldn’t it. Anyway I prefer folk with a bit of enterprise to those who sit around on the UN welfare tit don’t you?
Truth you goose, the Keating mob enshrined the refugee convention into law and cancelled all offences for entering or staying in Australia without a visa.
That means they legalised the refugee convention right of arrival without documents.
Sheesh, for someone who calls himself truth, you don’t know much of it do you?
sheperdmarilyn said
Anyway I prefer folk with a bit of enterprise to those who sit around on the UN welfare tit don’t you?
Peter
I am sure Ayn Rand would agree with you but in this case I do not……
James,
“I’ll tell you what happened to the Right in this country: they forgot who they were and what they stood for. They now stand for nothing; one minute they’re elitists and the next minute they’re bolsheviks. And they don’t even know the difference any more.”
I know what you’re saying. I don’t like the populism that has been going on in recent years. The biggest problem seems to be that when the Liberal Party puts up reasonable candidates in leadership positions, they are often not elected. At the federal level: John Hewson. At the NSW state level: Kerry Chikarovski & John Brogden. And so the party gets desperate and resorts to populism.
We don’t have a right don’t think we ever had…..
Truth,
“Most Australians including myself support having a refugee intake, but don’t decieve by mixing refugee’s with boatpeople, because we see a distinct difference.”
If the asylum seekers who arrive by boat are discovered to be genuine refugees, which they are in the vast majority of cases, then there is no real difference between them and other refugees. I do not blame them for being more pro-active in trying to have a reasonable life. What would we do in their position? The world is a harsh place and they are looking after themselves as best they can. Anyone who uses their money to buy something that people without money cannot afford is a “queue jumper” if we follow your type of logic to its conclusion.
Jillian.
Anyone who uses their money to buy something that people without money cannot afford is a “queue jumper” if we follow your type of logic to its conclusion.
Peter
Another Ayn Rand fan… careful you will give the centre right a bad name……
Peter, I have read several Ayn Rand books (the main ones), but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. She was quite bitter and crazy.
But the reality of our world is that it generally rewards initiative. If we want to be more generous, then we can take more refugees - but to deny genuine refugees the right to reasonable treatment because they present themselves on our doorstep instead of waiting for us to notice them is not something I would support.
“Truth you goose, the Keating mob enshrined the refugee convention into law and cancelled all offences for entering or staying in Australia without a visa.”
Please PLEASE read the legislation.
Keating and Hawke introduced laws making it illegal to enter Australian waters without passports and visas.
They also introduced mandatory detention. This is a fact.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/MIG/detention/report/appendixd.pdf
Those who believe in the theory of “queue jumpers”, are you willing to give up the benefits of capitalism and wait in queues for the government to give you whatever you need?
my point is jillian we take in 13500 refugees so we have to choose from the 22-40m I would select the poor non initiative takers the richer ones capable of initiatives are better able to look after themselves
Peter, you think Australia never had a Right tradition? Who do you think designed the Constitution — the union movement? For goodness sake, you take far too much for granted. Your prosperity, your civil rights, they didn’t just fall from the sky. You seriously need to learn more 19th century history.
James, I think Peter was thinking of more recent times when there has been the malaise that you described yourself.
The tradition of Alfred Deakin etc is at serious risk of being lost.
I say we should have both: some boat arrivals and some refugees chosen while they are overseas. This could involve a higher number than 13500 if necessary.
If the boat arrival refugees are able to look after themselves financially after arriving here, then they are not a cost to the welfare system. The infrastructure issues people bring up are caused by state Labor’s mismanagement - especially here in NSW where Bob Carr just gave up on trying to improve the infrastructure to allow for more immigration.
If they are not able to look after themselves financially, then presumably they are as deserving as the refugees waiting overseas.
what is right about the constitution it is all about housekeeping between the states and feds..
Today a real right position would be to devolve more power to the states and councils….
One of the elephants in the room is that the states have responsibility for all the hard graft stuff
like health education transport but no money….
the feds get all the sexy stuff like defence, foreign affairs and all the money…..
Peter, have you been listening too much to Nathan Rees or his counterparts in other states? That’s their main excuse for not managing health, education and transport. They supposedly don’t have the money.
The fact that labor are lousy managers and union interference in the democratic process is rife..
does not alter the fact that centralisation and big govt. are not right thinking.
Yes we need to take corruption out of state and local politics this is a different challenge,,
James Australia does not have a right tradition but a heavy socialist one..
I agree with you about big government - we should definitely move away from that.
But on the state-based decentralisation issue, even Tony Abbott thinks it’s a lost cause and I think it is as well.
Well if you don’t beleive in big govt who are you going to devolve power to.
You see this is the problem with the libs they don’t have convictions….
The answer to that is a combination of removing the ‘tax churn’ where some people both pay tax and receive money from the government; and devolving power to a regional level. Some people suggest getting rid of state & local and replacing them with one region-based level of government.
You know someone said once all politics is local….
In Australia people are very State based….
don’t you think it would be exciting and energising to go to the public and say we are against this nerd and we are going to give more power back to the local level….
Yes possibly - not local government as we know it though because it’s filled with too many bizarre eccentrics of which Clover Moore is just one example. A regional level of government replacing state & local could be ok.
I must go now. It’s been a very interesting discussion.
some people may Gillian how about you….
of course taking money off of people and giving it back less the cut for the civil service is crazy time like the family benefits….
I think we should do away with all welfare benefits and have a negative income tax…
we declare a poverty level say 20,000 a year if you don’t make this we make it up run it through the tax dept close the others down….
Well Jillian, that is how every country who has signed the refugee convention behaves but I have bad news for you.
The ‘refugees’ we import are actually urban migrants with vague humanitarian issues, not refugees.
It is a sick hoax.
One example is the Afghans we import. Past records show that most of them are Pashtuns who have been in Pakistan or Iran since the Russian invasion and are not in danger of persecution at all. The real persecuted group are the Hazara and they cannot get any sort of papers because they are not recognised as humans in Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan so they have to keep moving.
They are also pacifists on the whole and the most gorgeous people you would ever meet. One gorgeous girl I met when she was 18 saw her older brother kidnapped by the Taliban when she was 14, her dad sold their shop and everything they had in the Oruzgan province to save the lives of his other 6 kids. And this is a bunch of high achievers let me tell you.
They spent three months in trucks, on little boats, in cars and coming across borders until they got to catch a boat with other Afghans and Iraqis in 2000. They spent weeks in Indonesia where she almost died of dysentery and so did her baby brother. They got a boat, were left by the navy at sea for three days without food or water before being brought to Darwin. She lost 10 kg in three weeks, was then locked up in a basket ball court in Darwin, flown to Port Hedland, locked in a cell for three weeks with the whole family sick and no doctors in sight.
After 5 months in that hell hole they were flown to Adelaide and dumped like rats in the street.
The SA premier of the day helped them with housing when he saw how shamefully Ruddock had them treated and he defied Ruddock and supplied free English lessons for them.
Fatima is now 25 and a lawyer after working her butt off all these years after that start in life.
Fatima and her family are just one of the hated boat people truth reckons shouldn’t be here.
Michael Usher was conned. That man was just a fisherman, no people have come within a bulls roar of Broome in boats in years.
Will you scaredy cats get over the drivel. Everyone has the right to seek protection from persecution and one day it might be you.
Peter, I accept the proposition of a regional level of government replacing state & local.
Shepherdmarilyn, I take it you’re agreeing with me where I said I say we should have both: some boat arrivals and some refugees chosen while they are overseas. This could involve a higher number than 13500 if necessary. You don’t need to convince me that we should accept ‘boat people’ if they are refugees. Truth is the one who disagrees with that idea. Just re-emphasising that point.
No wonder this bloke comes in the back door he would never be accepted as an immigrant….
Asylum seeker Alex admits to criminal past
AAP
November 09, 2009 08:47am
Text size A SPOKESMAN for a boatload of almost 250 Sri Lankan asylum seekers in Indonesia has admitted he used to be a member of a violent gang in Canada and was jailed for making death threats.
The bearded 27-year-old known as Alex emerged as the spokesman for the Tamils after their boat was intercepted by the Indonesian navy en route to Australia and taken to the Javanese port of Merak.
Eight asylum seekers have disembarked but the remainder are demanding to be taken to Christmas Island for processing.
On the weekend, the Sri Lankan foreign ministry said Alex was actually Kulaendrarajah Sanjeev.
It said he belonged to the notorious Tamil Kannan gang in Canada and was deported in 2003 after being jailed for serious offences.
Sri Lanka also claims Alex has “been involved in human smuggling for a long time and it is believed that his office is based in India”.
On Saturday, Alex said the suggestion he was a people smuggler was “a joke”.
But he’s since admitted to growing up in Canada and falling foul of the law.
”It’s true,” he told ABC Radio when asked about his criminal past in Canada.
‘Send Sri Lankans home’
Courier Mail, 8 Nov 2009 ”I did get involved in some things in Canada that I shouldn’t have gotten involved in,” he said, adding he “did my time in jail”.
The most serious conviction was for making death threats.
Alex was deported in 2003 and returned to Sri Lanka.
He then fled with his family to India, but denies he started working as a people smuggler.
”I was working for an American call centre,” he said.
”On top of that I did start a small travel business where I just rented out my vehicle that I bought.”
Maybe Rudd needs some hard heads from labour past to advise not leftie libs like Fraser
how about ” two wongs don’t make a white” Calwell or Keating Asia is somewhere you fly over on the way to Paris or Whitlams “asian Balts” about the Vietnamese….
TTH that’s not legislation. Have a look at the statute and how the High Court deals with the matter. The High court considered the concept of illegal as ‘nugatory’.
Just a couple of corrections PeterHatch, I think Keating said that of Darwin not Asia and Fraser was not soft right, centre right or a crypto leftist. His contributions to this debate (and Tony Abbott’s and Colin Carpenters show that the issues cannot reasonably be defined as a left or right issue.
The whole idea of the queue presupposes that people are processed in the order they present. That’s not what happens. The thesis that you and TTH seem to be proposing is that the Government should exercise choice over who come in and who doesn’t. Leaving aside the fact that that is exactly what currently happens, isn’t that the nail in the coffin of the queue believers argument? How can there be a queue if the Government gets to select who get’s in and who doesn’t?
Marilyn, you’ve pointed out the falsity of Australia’s refugee intake program, being based on mercurial judgements of social class compatibility with Australian urban life, rather than the degree of danger they are in.
That agrees with my impression, anecdotally. But can you provide any hard evidence for this, such as departmental criteria or guidance documents, or a press release or a “please explain” letter from UNHCR to the Australian government?
This is a central point which, if it can be proven, would completely shatter the argument that boat people usurp places from those more in need under the Offshore Humanitarian Program.
Just on another point, Europe has had open borders for some time now and it continues to expand the countries whose citizens can travel freely throughout Europe. It hasn’t collapsed, yes there strife but there was strife when people tried to maintain rigid semi-closed borders.
Just what is the sound argument for our current closed border policy? Please, please don’t troll with disease terrorism not fitting in or your other pet xenophobic (as opposed to racist) view but if you have some rationale objection I’d like to hear it.
SBH you don’t think there is a queue waiting in UN camps? don’t these recent Sri Lankans after waiting in Indonesia for five years disprove that….
No Peter, the queue theology is disproved by there being no apparent criteria for joining or moving forward in the queue.
Marilyn,
In particular, I see that DIAC’s Form 842 Application for Offshore Humanitarian Visa: Refugee and Humanitarian (Class XB) visa (that’s the form for applicants coming through the UNHCR “queue”) asks a lot of questions about:
- Employment history (part H, p 36)
- Language, including “How well this person speaks English” (part I, p 37)
- Education attained (part I, p 37)
How is that relevant to the question of having a well-founded fear of persecution, and how do the answers to those questions affect the outcome?
The form also makes clear (p 3): “If your application is refused, it is not possible to obtain a review
of the decision by the Migration Review Tribunal or the Refugee Review Tribunal.”
I think I can feel a Freedom Of Information request coming on.
Sorry SBH but that sounds like some Rudd gobbledygook…..
the critera for joining a unhcr camp is to be a refugee…. the critera for moving forward is that those in front of you are placed….
Gobbledygook? Which bit? Not to rain on your parade but your criterion is incorrect. In order to be a refugee you need to leave your own country. Otherwise you’re considered an Internally Displaced Person by the UNHCR and as such not eligible for refugee status. I’ve posted above on the position in which this places Tamils in Sri Lanka.
How do you get a ‘place’ in the ‘queue’? It’s not time based. If someone comes after you but better meets government criteria they go first. As James Macs post illustrates there are many factors which are assessed other than when you applied for asylum.
sbh in reply to your european example Australia to has open borders between it’s states but Europe like Australia does not have open borders to Aliens..
As an Australian at Heathrow you will line up in the aliens line and be questioned….
then the sooner we reopen the pacific solution camps the better as we seem to have processed 100% in quicker time with 95% coming to OZ…
Peter, simply brain-dumping what a piece of information “sounds like” to you is not a substitute for evidence. It’s fine to respond immediately to things based on basic ethics and values, but when you knee-jerk respond to allegations of fact without checking yours, you are just clogging the thread.
The office of the UNHCR itself — the administrator of this “queue” — does not entirely share your faith in the comprehensive coverage of its own queueing process. In a statement dated 11 Dec 2000 the organisation that coordinates the international “queue” said:
“UNHCR shares the concerns raised by many States that criminal and organized smuggling of migrants, on a large scale, may lead to the misuse of national asylum or immigration procedures. However, given an increasing number of obstacles to access safety, asylum-seekers are often compelled to resort to smugglers.”
And perhaps an answer to the ‘gobbledygook’ post as well Peter?
this is my first time on a blog by the sounds of it I am being chastised have I broken a club rule
or some form of etiquette that I am unaware of?
Peter
we all love your enthusiasm, but fully 1/3 of all posts were written by you, and a large percent of the remainder was spent dealing with your somewhat flouncy assertions (nothing personal), that maybe you might wan’t to take on the ‘less is more’ maxim; and examine the evidence that your blogmates are providing before starting new assertions. I must say you lot are very refreshingly polite though…
thank you, Evidently, maybe I should spread my comments over several blogs so as not to hog.
Whom do you mean by ‘you lot’.?
So, SBH, aside from questions of what’s going on in the refugee camps of the world (a subject on which our knowledge will always be incomplete and/or out of date), the argument that boat people should “wait their turn in the queue” really is in tatters, isn’t it.
- Marilyn’s information (which is corroborated by a number of accounts, but we still need proof) argues that Australia selects people for its Offshore Humanitarian Program on criteria other than the well-founded fear of persecution.
- On the UNHCR’s own admission, those most in need of it sometimes have no access to it.
- And as you point out: “The thesis … that the Government should exercise choice over who come in and who doesn’t. Leaving aside the fact that that is exactly what currently happens, isn’t that the nail in the coffin of the queue believers argument? How can there be a queue if the Government gets to select who get’s in and who doesn’t?”
Peter
Hog away - Jillian did invite you back to hers though…
by ‘you lot’ I meant you that have been nattering away merrily here, you and your fellow bloggers.
PS: A a matter of interest here are some of the topics people weighed in with-whilst covering the actual topic, from time to time. Tianamen Square, Q & A, White Australia Policy, Gun Control, Chilli sauce, The Jewish Factor, A club rule, Free education, Whips, Checks and balances, Thomas Jefferson, Pork-barrelling, Principle, John Howard, Income-splitting, The Poms, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, The OzCar issue, Aliens, Queue-jumpers, Civil Liberties, Brain-dumping, Bill of rights, Cats, Canada, Possum Comitatus, Trolls. And that revolting old turkey, racist and extraordinarily rude: Written by the Mandarin speaking leader of the Labor Party, one Arthur Caldwell, “Two Wongs don’t make a white”.
I’m all in favour of free speech, I just think that some people probably give up in despair.
Not so much rules, there are best practices, all of which I have trouble following myself, such as “less is more” and “no personal abuse” and one that always challenges me, “don’t feed the trolls”.
Excuse me for a moment while I feed TTH who we haven’t heard from for a whole hour.
“Keating and Hawke introduced laws making it illegal to enter Australian waters without passports and visas.”
Now I followed your advice and checked the Migration Reform Act 1992 which, among other things, replaced the term “illegal entrant” with an alternative term “unlawful non-citizen”, a term which the High Court has made clear several times. “Unlawful” may have the ring of “outlaws” to it, but all it means is that the proper legal procedures for entry have not been followed. See this lively review of the High Court’s understanding of “unlawful” in the context of the migration legislation.
The Keating government also introduced the practice of tallying onshore refugees (people who arrive first and then successfully seek asylum) against the total refugee quota. Until then the onshore and offshore asylum intake were independent of each other.
The Keating government also introduced mandatory detention, with a time limit of nine months.
Howard later cancelled the nine-month limit, not because it was becoming administratively difficult to assess cases within that time limit (funny how it wasn’t such a problem in 1975), but because he hoped a certain degree of cruelty would deter other boat people from coming. As I’ve argued, that’s arbitrary deprivation of liberty for political purposes, in effect a punitive detention without any offense to punish, and without even the rights that a criminal prisoner has.
It’s also contrary to article 31 of the Refugee Convention we signed:
Article 31
Refugees Unlawfully in the Country of Refugee
1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their
illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory
where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or
are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present
themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their
illegal entry or presence.
2. The Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees
restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions
shall only be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they
obtain admission into another country. The Contracting States shall allow
such refugees a reasonable period and all the necessary facilities to obtain
admission into another country.
And while I’m there, I just noticed article 32:
1. The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory
save on grounds of national security or public order.
… which to me suggests (not that I’m a lawyer or anything) that if any of the 78 on the Oceanic Viking are in fact refugees (and those crowing about today’s revelation of Alex’s past — that leaves another 77 who don’t speak English as well as him) then Rudd is very close to forcibly expelling them from Australian territory (the Australian ship the Oceanic Viking).
But then, no doubt that little girl is a terrorist so it’s all justified on national security grounds.
Sorry Venise, I should have let you have the last word with that excellent summary. As Douglas Adams would say, “It’s all connected.”
Venise, we also talked about ice addicts. I warned people to be careful of them - this was especially for other people around Potts Point/Elizabeth Bay, some of whom are regulars on here. I can’t believe we have had a lull for over 3 hours! I think we still must have broken a Crikey record for number of posts.
and your point is venise
My turn to feed …
@HurtByTheTruth
Yes, we do that.
Yes, we do that. Some also arrive on their own. That doesn’t stop us taking as many, or as few, from elsewhere as we want.
That’s good, because it isn’t.
Odd. I would have said it’s not as complex as you are trying to make it. Or is this your way of asking us not to introduce facts you don’t like?
What is it about?
I’ve never accused you of hating refugees. If anything, I’d say that you sound scared, but I could be misreading you.
It is actually. Whether or not that is your intent, it is the outcome of the course of action you advocate.
No disagreement there.
We decide who gets to stay. It’d be nice if people who we wouldn’t allow to stay wouldn’t show up, but they’re such a small percentage of the small number who do show up that it’s hard to understand why you’re upset about it.
Honestly, I keep hoping you’ll explain that. You’ve given some reasons but, I could be wrong here, but for me, I suspect you’ve given as your reasons aren’t your real reasons. Perhaps because you think we’ll think less of you, or perhaps you think we’ll find these reasons more convincing. But as I said, I don’t think you yourself are convinced by the reasons that you have listed, so why not share with us the thoughts that have convinced you that these people must be stopped?
If we took enough refugees that there wasn’t a queue that is filling faster than it empties, no-one would use people smugglers. But we don’t. As for cashed up country hoppers, as you yourself have pointed out, there are cheaper and easier ways to hop countries.
About 95% of boat people are refugees, so I’m curious to know the difference you see. For me, boat people are one type of refugee. Compared to those still in camps, the boat people are a bit more desperate, have a bit more initiative, with a bit more access to resources, a bit more prepared to take risks, and a bit more luck. Apart from that, the only difference is that they’re over here instead of over there. I guess that makes them a bit less passive, a bit less obedient. But I shouldn’t put words into your mouth. Why does having initiative disqualify one from being a refugee?
what is wrong with darling point edgecliff or paddo…
I sometimes go for walks around there, but haven’t come across any ice addicts in the vicinity.
ms danziger rules although iIthink ms Robert Smith is ok
I should say no one who was recognisably an ice addict anyway.
are you an old ascham girl
No - good school, but I didn’t go there. I moved into this area as an adult. I grew up in The Shire. They tell me I am still a bit of a Shire person in some ways.
do you think you understand the eastern suburbs….
I think I understand the part of the eastern suburbs that is close to the city - I’m less sure of the parts further out.
yes I agree to me I do not go past Oxford st or William st..
in fact I think you should not go past walking distance of the Lord Dudley
Really? We must be practically neighbours, considering that this website has people from all over Australia, and maybe internationally, commenting on it.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/common-sense-has-no-place-in-our-burgeoning-bureaucracy-20091108-i3fk.html
i am in an argument at the moment about a sub station and sorry to say it but have got plhillip adams involved
If it’s a council issue, Clr Peter Cavanagh can probably help. He is on my facebook list. I would be happy to message him for you.
done that … he appears very wimpy says that the electricity board is beyond their control..
From:
To: peter hatch
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 2:36 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: re sub station Quarry st
I am equally appalled by these blots on the landscape. I spoke against them when the matter was first raised and got quite a bit of press about it.
Sadly we have little or no control over the electricity people.
These horrid things are not consistent with the historical and heritage area that is Paddington. However, rest assured that we will do whatever we can.
regards
Peter M Cavanagh
Deputy Mayor of Woollahra
Liberal Councillor
Paddington Ward
—
To:
From: “peter hatch”
Date: 11/06/2009 01:22PM
Subject: Fw: re sub station Quarry st
**********************************************************************
Please forward this email to Records if it is an official Council Document.
Records will register it for you
**********************************************************************
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 1:19 PM
Subject: re sub station Quarry st
Dear Sir,
I have been made aware of the intention to build a Sub -station on the street in quarry road. I have received no notification myself but was made aware by a neighbour.
The proposed sub station being on the corner of quarry and harris st. will not only be a visual pollutant but will present
an extreme traffic hazard.
At present the proposed sight is directly opposite the Councils works site and is usualy occupied (illegaly) by council trucks
particularly at 3-30 4-00 when I my daughters are coming home from school. This creates an extreme hazrd for my children
and can only become an impossible situation if the traffic into Harris st is blocked by this sub station.
We will have no sight of traffic coming up Harris St. and combined with council trucks and delivery trucks to the Lord Dudley Hotel we will have an extreme Hazard for pedestrians of which their are many going to and fro from the Lord Dudley and the bowling club and commuters and children going to the edgecliff centre.
Putting a sub station on the road in such a position has to be an act of gross negligence for the well being of residents.
and destroying what is a beautiful villlage atmosphere..
Ben, having read your recent message, which I assume is still in moderation, I think you must have the patience of a saint. Speaking for myself, I don’t think I could go around the circle again - but I will be interested to follow the debate anyway.
maybe with your contacts you could get malcolm involved,,,,
after all he is our local mp…
Yes, you have asked at a good time because I have two days off this week: Thursday & Friday, and I can go to Malcolm’s electorate office in Edgecliff. Please send me an e-mail at jillianblackall@primusonline.com.au with the details.
My comment has gone into moderation, probably because I put my e-mail address up there.
The comment without the e-mail address is:
Yes, you have asked at a good time because I have two days off this week: Thursday & Friday, and I can go to Malcolm’s electorate office in Edgecliff. Please send me an e-mail at …. with the details.
Wow.
Just a reminder, we’re still hoping for some hard evidence to support Marilyn’s claim that Australia’s Offshore Humanitarian Program selects people for reasons other than the need for asylum: “The ‘refugees’ we import are actually urban migrants with vague humanitarian issues, not refugees.”
If true (and anecdotally it seems very plausible) then that means the refugee program is being misused as a part of the skills migration program, under cover of meeting humanitarian obligations.
If anyone from DIAC has such evidence, please let us know, or post it at Crikey’s Anonymous Tips URL. It’s legitimate whistleblower stuff, and the evidence could be a game-changer.
MICHELLE.K at Sunday, 8 November 2009 at 9:19 pm
“I have been a little concerned about how the concerns of those who are support a tougher stance on the asylum seekers are being ignored. Any long term solution … will need to address the fears held by many people in our society and not just dismiss them as racists or xenophobes … The popular media do nothing to soothe these fears …”
Michelle, my impression is that the most effective (and most expensive) way to win hearts and minds is television dramas, not newspapers or blogs or talkback radio.
Television dramas can humanise a class of people in a way that feature articles and smiley photographs cannot. They can also reveal complex issues behind soundbites in a way that no other medium does effectively. The bulk of Australians get their understanding of hospital emergency wards and police procedure from TV dramas. (These dramas also foster a love of breaking rules to solve an immediate problem. In the police context is actually a form of corruption, and in a wider context it leads to a mentality of the means justifying the ends.)
The reality-TV show “Border Security” was implemented by John Howard to build a feeling of dependency on the thin green line between us and the great chaos outside — a completely fanciful view of reality. As has been pointed out many times recently, every boat-arrival asylum seeker is accounted for and subjected to intensive assessment, after risking their lives on the high seas.
In contrast, we know very little about the scores of thousands of fraudulent visa absconders at large in the country. And even then, I don’t think there’s any evidence that those absconders are any bigger a risk than native-born Australians becoming criminals or joining terrorist groups.
Errata for my comment to Michelle.K, which is awaiting moderation:
I said “… leads to a mentality of the means justifying the ends” but of course I meant to say “ends justifying the means”
James, in relation to your comment about the strong possibility that the refugee program is being misused as a part of the skilled migration program, under cover of meeting humanitarian obligations:
Maybe I’m too cynical, but that sounds like the kind of issue that could get tied up in the High Court for 10 years.
I would say the cause that is achievable is to get an acceptance of more immigration in general. Then there would be a better chance of getting more genuine refugees.
James McDonald: For those kind words I thank you. I don’t what those guys have/are smoking but it has to be a whole new mutation and a freshly harvested crop.
Peter Hatch: My point was, on the whole, and which ever way I look at all these posts, and to paraphrase Winston Churchill. Never, in the field of human endeavour, has so much gone to helping so few, out of a flood of many.
If I was a nasty people smuggler I would be rubbing the hands in happy anticipation of the fat fees I can charge. At last I can be peaceful with my task of feeding my extended family of 22 people for the rest of their lives.
Because now I am knowing that the intellectuals (?) in this strange country of my choice, have so little to do, that rather than work they can afford to spend hours on the computer mapping out scenarios which will never happpen.
Goodness gracious me, I see one among you has, for some strange reason, submitted a letter to a local electricity supplier concerning a sub-station. I must ask my lovely Aunt Raina whose number one son-worthless creature- has a company producing sub-stations for electricity companies, if he would have interest to trawl this post perhaps with a view to get a contract. Nephew Yoseph-worthless creature-could show interest.
As I staggered through to the last post I think there has been an agreement between two people that our government should exercise control over the people who come here. Doh!!!!
Sometimes I don’t even know what makes an Australian and for a time there I thought I did.
Jillian, Compared to Howard, Rudd did increase the immigration intake from about 150,000 a year to 170,000 a year, while maintaining humanitarian intake in Howard’s 13,000 - 14,000 band. On the statistical angle, Rudd is actually more elitist. His immigrants are part of the economic stimulus.
Yes, there has been a steady increase in immigration. I think Howard increased the numbers compared to Keating as well. I was thinking of a more substantial increase.
At the risk of starting another long debate, Rudd’s immigrants must be one of the few rational elements of the economic stimulus.
Well James. The Afghans we are importing are Pashtuns who have been in Pakistan, India, Russia and Iran in urban areas for over 17 years and as much as 29 years. Hazaras who face genocide cannot apply and anyway we have closed the Islamabad office so people have to apply from Beirut. Any idea how an Hazara with no education is supposed to know that?
And we only managed to grant 847 visas from among the 4 million Afghan refugees.
The Karen have better living conditions now after 25 years in Thailand, why do they need help more than Iraqis fleeing the ethnic cleansing we have inflicted on them and why could we only manage to find spaces for 2800 Iraqis out of the 5 million and why are we locking them up in Indonesia and here?
Meanwhile the real people smuggling here goes unchecked. Slave labour, sexual servitude, us deporting people to foreign countries without documents.
Over 50% of the world’s refugees are now urban and as urban refugees are the only ones who can find any UNHCR office it is commonsense that only urban refugees are coming our way.
Meanwhile we only granted 300 or so to Tamils, from India of course and many have been there for 25 years in urban areas.
Because the Tamils have to be outside Sri Lanka to apply you see, and they have to apply in Delhi.
The Humanitarian Program has two important functions:
• It fulfils our international obligations by offering protection to people already in Australia who are found to be refugees according to the Refugees Convention (known as the onshore protection/asylum component)
• It expresses our commitment to refugee protection by going beyond these obligations and offering resettlement to people overseas for whom this is the most appropriate option (known as the offshore resettlement component).
2008–09 offshore visa grants by top ten countries of birth
Countries Number of visa granted
Iraq 2874
Burma/ Myanmar 2412
Afghanistan 847
Sudan 631
Bhutan 616
Ethiopia 478
Congo (DRC) 463
Somalia 456
Liberia 387
Sierra Leone 363
Look at the numbers yourself
Humanitarian Program figures
Humanitarian Program grants by category 2003–04 to 2008–09
Category 2003–04 2004–05 2005–06 2006–07 2007–08 2008–09
Refugee 4134 5511 6022 6003 6004 6499
Special Humanitarian 8927 6755 6836 5275 5026 4625
Onshore Protection 788 895 1272 1701 1900 2378
Temporary Humanitarian Concern 2 17 14 38 84 5
Total 13 851 13 178 14 144 13 017 13 014 13 507
Note the onshore? All but 206 of them were people who flew here and applied under the onshore program, which is perfectly legal.
Thanks Marilyn
I also found a lot of interesting stuff in the SBS Insight transcript you linked to, from 15 May 09:
JENNY BROCKIE: Richard Towle, why does it take so long, we hear these stories over and over about people waiting years to be processed. Why does it take so long for them to be processed?
RICHARD TOWLE, UNHCR REGIONAL REP: I think it’s the sheer weight of numbers. You have to look at the global picture here, we have more than 10 million refugees of concern to the office worldwide, another 25 million internally displaced people. The number of resettlement places offered by countries like Australia, NZ and the North American states annually basis is under 100,000. You can sit in what some regard as a queue for lifetimes or generations before you get on to the top of that queue. We say there is no queue, it’s a mythical idea that many people because they can’t get security and safety in regions of origin have to keep moving, that’s part of the phenomenon we’re facing today.
…
JENNY BROCKIE: Sorry you two, but we have the man behind both of you who lost 14 members of his family. I would like to ask you, Mohammed, do you blame the people smugglers for what happened to your family?
MOHAMMAD AL GHAZZI: No, I blame the Australian government and who behind this, smuggler little bit, because a smuggler, we have no way, if we go to UN, UNHCR, or whatever, we have to pay a lot of money, there is bribe there, why don’t we say the truth, bribe in Syrian. To pay a lot of money. We take, we take a legal UN, like smugglers, smugglers take 2,000, 3,000 USA, but if you go to someone to register, will take $20,000.
JENNY BROCKIE: Richard, we have to get a response from you. Is it a corrupt system in some places?
RICHARD TOWLE: There are isolated examples of corruption in the resettlement process. UNHCR has a very very tough internal auditing process where any fraud accusations on behalf of staff are very thoroughly investigated. If you do have examples, we’re open about doing that.
Good point James. Of course there is no queue. It’s not like a public hospital waiting list. And even if it were, it’s acceptable to use a private hospital if you have the means. That doesn’t make you a “queue jumper”.
JAMES McDONALD: Thanks for your comment. I tried to leave another summing up-albeit in a different style-. Naturally I was moderated. there was an attack on no-one, no bad language, nothing. In future I’ll send my comments to you then allow you to post them for me. With your name attached, they will get through.
Bitterly I ask myself: Perhaps I shouldn’t have re-subscribed after all?
James I suspect that you are onto something with the idea that the refugee program is being used as an adjunct to the skilled migrant program.
I used to work for an organisation that misused the skilled migrant program, partly as an attempt to pay wages at award rates, rather than the higher rates that most other organisations were paying. Plus, the migrant program was also used to bring in family and friends of the owner. My job was never threatened, but the practice caused a lot of anger among many employees whose jobs were less secure. (I’m in a regional area where even before the GFC under-employment affected a fair number of people).
Just as you’d find with any locally sourced employees, some were great, and some were hopeless. The thing that really surprised me was how little vetting of applications for bringing in skilled migrants seemed to happen. No analysis of the local job market, no looking at the industrial relations history of the company, and no test for reasonableness of the people being sourced as employees.
I can’t see how there will be any improvement to the poor treatment of refugees until we have a bureaucracy that ensures that the skilled migration policy is not being misused. Combine this with people being under-employed, or struggling with housing costs/shortages, and there will be some resentment towards the people coming to our country. I know that statement will upset a few people on here, but most of the people here are smart, and probably have a certain amount of options and resilience built into their lives. A lot of people don’t have that, but that doesn’t mean we should belittle them for their fears.
Michelle,
“Combine this with people being under-employed, or struggling with housing costs/shortages, and there will be some resentment towards the people coming to our country. I know that statement will upset a few people on here, but most of the people here are smart, and probably have a certain amount of options and resilience built into their lives. A lot of people don’t have that, but that doesn’t mean we should belittle them for their fears.”
I agree that Crikey subscribers are probably an elite group and we should not belittle people for their fears. (I tend to become impatient with anything I see as irrationality.)
Venise,
Despite our obviously different perspectives, I usually enjoy reading your comments.
It’s a pity if all your comments are being moderated, making it difficult for you to participate in the discussion.
But what are they actually afraid of? A few refugees or the hundreds of thousands of migrants? There seems to be no understanding about the reality of the tiny number of refugees coming here and even less of the massive numbers of foreign students and migrants.
They’re afraid of two things.
(1) The trickle turning into a deluge if word gets out Australia is a soft touch. Even though that didn’t happen in 1975, or even in 1950
(2) The loss of control. As I mentioned before, the “Border Security” TV show is intended to make viewers feel that Australia is hermetically sealed from the chaotic world out there. That’s a complete fantasy from La-La Land, but a remarkably convincing one for many Australians.
I call the 7 million tourists each year drinking our water, eating our food and trampling on our environment a bit of a flood don’t you James?
Now Stephen Smith has paid the criminal government in Sri Lanka to stop people leaving to seek protection from persecution, sort of like Australia and others did in 1938 with the jews.
And he wants to jail them in the Philipines now that New Zealand have said no.
First I think the Australian public are smart as evidenced by their voting pattern and referendum voting over the years.. So trying to say that it is only the “elite ” that can have a correct view and hinting at racist or xenophobic views for the rest is truly bury your head in the sand.
I feel the discussion on refugees is not isolated from concerns over the push by Howard and now Rudd for a Greater Australia resulting in a rise in population from 22m to 40m in thirty years.
The concerns are around, the cost to the present generation for infrastructure, water resources,
the sheer inconvenience of living in such large cities. The need and yes the complete change to our society as this increase will have to come purely from migration as the Australian birthrate is below replacement level..
So yes I feel this frustration shows itself in concern over refugees seemingly deciding for them selves to settle in Australia, at the skilled migration programme being rorted my local Cole’s, veg shop chain, car wash etc are packed with unskilled young Philippians and Indian..with the foreign student scheme being rorted by students coming to dodgy colleges doing dodgy courses and being granted pemanent residency…
So whilst you trail through entrails of 13.500 people deciding whether they are genuine refugees
I think you miss the main game,,
All of this is none of Stephen Smith’s business. Or Rudd’s for that matter. Foreign affairs should be focussing on Copenhagen preparations, campaigning against post-GFC trade protectionism, and other matters like bringing Stern Hu home. Rudd should be reviewing post-GFC stimulus plans, scouring for infrastructure bottlenecks and preparing for the next trade boom to take up productivity slack. There is a huge amount of work to do. But, as Paul Howes says: “‘Question time is dominated by 78 people on a boat. “
Immigration is Chris Evans’ portfolio. He is more than capable of handling this, he does not need any help from Rudd and Smith.
What’s more, there is no career-enhancement in this for Smith, just a black hole which one or another minister is going to have to be thrown into before this is over. And it isn’t going to be Rudd.
James McDonald: You have to be joking, please tell me you are. You mean to tell me that people of Oz look at Border Control (the TV show, right?) and relate it to immigration? Try pulling the other one.
What do other people think? Is “Border Security” just your plain old thrill-a-minute reality TV show, or is it propaganda?
I think it is pretty boring watching petty bureaucrats going about their job…
There are plenty of television shows , West Wing,Boston legal Judge John Stteed. all of which I enjoy but advance an idealogical agenda…
Peter,
I wouldn’t make the statement that only the “elite” can have a correct view. In my earlier post, I was responding to Michelle’s comment where she described the fears of some people who do not have the advantages that many people here have. It would not be a good thing to have political opinion divided into elite and non-elite and I hope it will not come to that.
James,
I wouldn’t say that ‘Border Security’ is propaganda. Commercial television channels usually just put on programmes that get ratings, regardless of the political message.
there is under “fake Fielding” a discussion that could do with a little intellectual rigor from the folks on here
Peter, I think you must be on the wrong discussion page because I can’t see anyone by the name of “fake Fielding” here.
in todays issue of crikey there is an article by fake steve fielding with it there is a discussion sorry i am new at this…
Oh yes: Fake Stephen Fielding: PMS and a One World Government.
It’s been an internet marathon for the last few days. I am interested in the book importing issues and I haven’t even read that one of today’s articles yet because I’m exhausted from keeping up with this site and facebook, which have been about equal in intensity.
it’s hard being right.. especially in the lions den…
ayn rand boring? i guess orwell was too…..
I like this website, even if most of my friends cringe with disapproval. They think it’s left-wing.
well it is that’s why some of os from the right must engage….
when i said earlier that malcolm does not speak out enough for individual freedom we have an example today of Rees wanting to automatically enrolling people on the electoral roll.. which is not private….
or the poms wanting to record all telephone and Internet contacts…
or the proliferation of CCTV recording your every move..
this is not right thinking…
Peter, probably the closest I ever came to topping myself was upon reading Ayn Rand’s “We the Living”. But then, her brilliant non-fiction “Romantic Manifesto” made up for it and set me free, realizing I’d been right all along about so-called “quality” literature.
Marilyn, reading again your answer to my questions, I wonder if I misunderstood your earlier statement about those most at risk coming from the UNHCR. Is this due to an Australian policy of being choosy about those referred to us, or is it because no one in real danger relies on the UNHCR to save them?
Venise and Peter, it seems I’m outvoted, although Bob Burtonagreed with me in the SMH, and I still find it very plausible that they would have initiated and underwritten the show under the PR budget. Hardly the sort of thing the ABC would touch.
Michelle.K, it certainly is pretty rough when cheaper labour is imported to do away with loyal workers. In the long run, general immigration is an economic stimulus measure and results in the rest of us having more jobs, not less. But that’s an aggregate effect, it’s cold comfort for the one that loses his/her job to the boss’s nephew or others working for half the wage.
The problem is, abuses of a migration system are unavoidable. Any migration program will be abused, either by the government (currently using migration to boost home prices and to avoid having to spend money educating young Australians), or by sponsors (the organisation you said you worked for), or the migrants themselves. Generally the more rules there are, the more they will be abused. But I guess, there are others who put the program to really good use. And I get bored these days if I have to hang out only with my own cultural group. Worth the price of a few rackets and temporary job losses?
Actually Keating enshrined the refugee convention into the law and made it legal to turn up without papers.
61 The Refugees Convention is a part of conventional international law that has been given legislative effect in Australia: see ss 36 and 65 of the Act. It has always been fundamental to the operation of the Refugees Convention that many applicants for refugee status will, of necessity, have left their countries of nationality unlawfully and therefore, of necessity, will have entered the country in which they seek asylum unlawfully. Jews seeking refuge from war-torn Europe, Tutsis seeking refuge from Rwanda, Kurds seeking refuge from Iraq, Hazaras seeking refuge from the Taliban in Afghanistan and many others, may also be called “unlawful non-citizens” in the countries in which they seek asylum. Such a description, however, conceals, rather than reveals, their lawful entitlement under conventional international law since the early 1950’s (which has been enacted into Australian law) to claim refugee status as persons who are “unlawfully” in the country in which the asylum application is made.
62 The Refugees Convention implicitly requires that, generally, the signatory countries process applications for refugee status of on-shore applicants irrespective of the legality of their arrival, or continued presence, in that country: see Art 31. That right is not only conferred upon them under international law but is also recognised by the Act (see s 36) and the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth) which do not require lawful arrival or presence as a criterion for a protection visa. If the position were otherwise many of the protection obligations undertaken by signatories to the Refugees Convention, including Australia, would be undermined and ultimately rendered nugatory.
63 Notwithstanding that the applicant is an “unlawful non-citizen” under the Act who entered Australia unlawfully and has had his application for a protection visa refused, in making that application he was exercising a “right” conferred upon him under Australian law.”
I have never read the “Romantic Manifesto”. I have read “The Fountainhead”. “Atlas Shrugged” and “We the Living”. The first one I read was “Atlas Shrugged”. I read it 10 years ago because a friend at the time kept comparing people we knew to characters from that book and I wanted to understand what he was talking about. There is an element of truth in it. I think it was hard for intelligent women in older generations like that of Ayn Rand. She could not find an intellectual equal in the real world and so ‘John Galt’ became her hero. I also think that John Galt was more of a nineteenth century type of man than a twentieth century one. The nineteenth century was the era of men (not really women) who combined science with philosophy. By the twentieth century, specialisation was more the way and those two areas were much less likely to be the domain on one individual. So she was looking for someone who probably did not exist outside her imagination.
Big news today: Labor has taken Bernard Keane’s advice. A massive intake of UNHCR refugees from Sri Lanka will be arranged. Great work, Bernard.
Being government, they couldn’t help themselves going one better. The Oceanic Viking passengers will be fast-tracked for asylum applications within six weeks, and will receive settling-in assistance in the meantime. (There are folks in Chistmas Island waiting six months.) The anti queue jumper hawks will just love that.
In Greenspans autobiography he say that he was very close to Ayn Rand and in fact was part of her inner circle, and would read and dicuss Atlas Shrugged as it was being written…so her influence permeated the highest levels.
I remember once Malcolm Fraser saying he was influenced by her although he never demonstrated that whilst in power.
I think this will loose the govt support, and break the implied agreement between voters and govt
in that the voters will except large immigration as long as it is seen to be controlled.
I think now will come into play voters worries about a larger population….
game set and match to the sri lankans on the oceanic viking.. what will happen to the other sri lankans who are refusing to get off an indonesian boat with the famouse Alex on board…
Peter, The thing that really surprised me about Alan Greenspan is that he agreed so readily to the proposition that the way he conducted US monetary policy was basically wrong. He made that admission after his book came out. I was about a third of the way through the book and I stopped reading because it seemed out of date at that point. I’m not sure whether there is now a revised edition of the book - I haven’t checked.
James, Wow! That would be quite an achievement if the government changed its policy based on Crikey.
I don’t think he thought that Jillian after all he presided over the longest period of expansion in the US economy…
I think he felt that the banks own self interest was enough to regulate the derivatives market ,it wasn’t.
I think the problem started by the govt underwriting the sale of houses to those that could not afford them..
I agree that the problem started with the US government underwriting the sale of houses to those that could not afford them.
Alan Greenspan was under pressure to admit to having been wrong about keeping the interest rates so low. I expected him to withstand the pressure, but he admitted that he was wrong.
It would be worth looking further into it.
I think the RBA have had an appalling record on interest rates they made our downturn worse than it should have been by increasing rates when the world was cutting like mad in Sept 08 our mortgage rates were up around 9.5%…
Now they are raising again why? to kill inflation they say what inflation? the only rise in prices has been for electricity (see Miranda Devine today) and how do you kill inflation by charging one third of Australian house holds more for their mortgage.
I just bought a copy of the ‘Epilogue to the Age of Turbulence’. It covers the issues that have arisen since the initial publication of the ‘Age of Turbulence’. It’s an e-book of 30 pages.
I hear that the RBA is raising interest rates because the Rudd stimulus packages were excessive.
JILLIAN BLACKHALL: I rather thought we were of a similar mind. NO?
I think you write so well, and you have a similar, mordant sense of humour to me.
It is a great pity about being ‘moderated’ because It isn’t until well after the event that I may be printed, thus rendering my comments to be out of context. Still, it’s their website and I just have to put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (apologies to Will Shakespeare)
JAMES McDONALD: Yeah, I take your point, after all Joseph Gobbels knew a thing or two about propaganda. But the programmes have to be produced for the mass audience, and the mass audience gets very uncomfortable when it’s asked to think. Don’t forget they adore Andrew Bolt, because he doesn’t allow them to think. But to get under their radar enough for them to think in a visual media might be asking a bit much.
I was wearing my ‘Andrew Bolt is a dickhead’ T-shirt today, and my medico, bless her, asked, “Who is Andrew Bolt?”
Made my day. 
Thanks Venise. I do enjoy your comments - you have a unique perspective. I regret to say that normally left-ish people have a tendency to attack, but you seem more reasonable.
This thread has degenerated into a private conversation between a couple of people about other subjects. It is thread termination time.
Jillian! Such sarcasm!
Sarcasm? No, I’m being quite genuine.
SBH, if I wanted to attack, I would do it directly.
JILLIAN BLACKHALL: I failed to spot any sarcasm in your remark. As a matter of fact, I found it to be quite charming.
Cheers
Venise
Thanks Venise.
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