Several victims of the fire on board the boat carrying asylum-seekers continue to fight for life; as we’ve all learned in recent years, severe burns leave their victims teetering on the precipice for many days afterwards.
It seems that conservative politicians can’t get out of the habit of offering instant commentary on what happened, and have blamed the government’s policies.
One thing that’s not clear to me is what the motivation for deliberately setting the boat alight might have been, if that turns out to be what happened. Under current policies, the asylum-seekers would have been taken to Christmas Island, wouldn’t they, boat or no boat? If so, why would anyone on board – smuggler or asylum-seeker – deliberately burn their boat?
I, too, am puzzled about motives for similar reasons.
However, I’m also aware that boats, even modern, well maintained boats, explode on a fairly regular basis as a result of petrol fumes or LPG collecting in their bilges. Given that the boats used in people smuggling often appear to be time expired old hulks, I’m quite prepared to accept the possibility of a tragic accident.
For the time being, I think the government line of waiting for the results of the investigation before commenting is entirely appropriate and a refreshing contrast from the last lot.
I’m not claiming any particular insight into what did happen, but I think that yelling sabotage is quite irresponsible when the facts are still unknown. The HMAS Westralia tragedy showed that boats can catch fire, with deadly consequences, so surely it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the boat was in poor repair and the fire was accidental.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the Navy had already boarded the vessel to secure it. I don’t think that they will be pleased with the suggestion that they failed to do so, leaving it susceptible to sabotage.
I also struggle to understand why anyone would torch their own boat, it seems like a fairly suicidal act.
As I suggested on another thread, one motivation for burning the boat might have been the fear that the Australian Navy was behaving like the Thai Navy when the Thais towed the Rohingya out to sea and deserting them there.
To forestall moral outrage at the suggestion, I’m not asserting that this is what the Australian Navy intended to do.
But what do frightened Afghans know about the niceties of comparative civil societies in the Asia Pacific region?
(Neither, for that matter, are they likely to be abreast of the nuances of Australian refugee policy in the transition from Howard to Rudd. Various Right Wing commentators would insist the opposite, but they would, wouldn’t they?)
With the changes to the migration laws is there still any difference between arriving in Christmas Island as opposed to the Australian mainland? Didn’t the Howard government change laws so asylum seekers had fewer legal options unless they arrived on the mainland?
I just don’t understand how the Opposition thinks it’s a good idea to try to use this politically against the Government, when 3 people are dead, 2 are missing and 40-odd others are seriously injured, many of whom are fighting for their lives.
I don’t understand why these lives are worthy of such contempt and disdain.
I have no thoughts about the burning, but I must say I find the opposition to be fucking disgusting about this, and Malcolm Turnbull should be ashamed that he has sold the last shred of principle he had left on something so reprehensible.
Think about the kind of people that are making these comments and I think you’ll understand.
I’ve said what I have to say on Saturday Salon.
Mark L, are you really so devoid of humane feeling or are you (which I think is more likely) just trying to stir us up? To quote one of your idols, you naughty, naughty boy.
Katz said: “are they likely to be abreast of the nuances of Australian refugee policy in the transition from Howard to Rudd.”
OK – please explain why, when the Pacific solution was put in place the stream of refugees attempting to get into Australia dried up to almost zero? Then, when it is made easier to get into Australia, they suddenly start coming again. Coincidence?????
One thing no one can deny is the facts. And the facts are that since the Rudd Government disbanded the Pacific Solution and abolished Temporary Protection Visas, the number of people smugglers trying to get here has doubled.
Can someone please find data on asylum seeker’s boat arrivals over the last few years so that we can relieve these people of their ignorance?
The number of people smugglers trying to get anywhere has more than doubled in that period.
Jamo @ 11 – but that is not the only thing which has changed. Political instability in countries where people are coming from has also increased so I don’t think its as simple a relationship as you suggest.
Also just because making the conditions for asylum seekers more humane may lead to an increased number of arrivals doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Its not even clear that even with events like the most recent one that its an actual increase in deaths as in the past these people overwhelmingly have been found to have been genuine refugees. So they may well have still died if they didn’t flee. Its just they’d be a statistic in a country far away to us rather than a front page story in the local paper.
Leaving aside for one moment the human tragedy for the moment the Opposition has been really clever in their response.
They win either way.
Initially they can woo the traditional right (look! illegals are back!) and the left (look! people are dying because of the Rudd government.)
And now they can get in with the government’s non response. If the government continues to say nothing they can accuse Rudd of being absent “just like Latham in hurricane season.” If the government says something, anything they can say “OMG the government is trying to make political capital over this tragic loss of human life.”
Mind you , I’m with the rest of you at being curious about blowing up the boat. Maybe it was an accident?
Jeez the tenor of some of the comments here and by certain politicians and media is ……shameful!
Razor,
correlation ≠ causation.
There is a stronger correlation between the nature of the civil crisis in Afghanistan and in Sri Lanka and the rise in boat traffic.
Back in the early 2000s the bulk of the refugees were Iraqis. Why are there no Iraqis now, despite the fact that there are more Iraqi refugees than refugees of any other nationality?
Jamo, here are some other facts that “no one can deny”.
The number of arrivals *by sea* has doubled, from a tiny 200-ish to a paltry 400-ish.
The number of arrivals *by air*, and overstayers, continues to be in the tens of thousands as it was throughout the entire TPV and Pacific Solution regime.
That is to say, TPVs and the Pacific Solution did nothing to reduce the biggest component of arrivals: the air route.
It amazes me that the Liberals called it a ‘Solution’ when it only ever addressed 5% of the ‘Problem’. And biggest two years of asylum seeker arrivals by boat were the two years *after* the introduction of TPVs and the Pacific Solution.
And since anybody with a well-founded fear of persecution can legally seek asylum anywhere in the world that is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the Pacific Solution really was a solution in search of a problem.
MarkL opines,
Now, about the corpses that ALP policy change has started to generate.
If the 3 dead on the refugee boat are the result of ALP policy, then were the 353 dead of the SIEV-X the result of Lib-Nat policy? If not, why not?
Either Australian government policy affects whether refugee ships from Indonesia sink and burn, or it does not. If Rudd can be blamed for 3 deaths, then Howard must be blamed for 353 deaths.
Of course, I would just blame the shoddy ships they’re in and the shoddier people putting them on the ships, but hey, I think both the ALP and Lib-Nats are idiots, so there you go.
“Snakeheads”?
WTF?
Razor – the number of asylum seekers coming into Australia after 2001 went down because relations with Indonesia improved as their resentment over East Timor died down, and they stopped encouraging the people smuggling trade through the Indonesia archipelago.
Patrickg – to give credit where credit is due, I believe Malcolm Turnbull has said that he doesn’t want to politicise the issue. It’s Colin Barnett and Sharman Stone who have been stirring the pot.
MarkL (#7) literally doesn’t understand what “literally” means. What a tool! He’s using it as if it means “virtually” or “figuratively”. Duh…
PC:
Here you go.
Mercurius – it appeared to solve a few political problems for John Howard at the time. Maybe that’s why some Liberal commentators insist on calling it a “solution”.
Hannah’s Dad. Yep, agreed. I suggest the slogan for the Lib’s at the next election. The Coalition. Keeping it “classy”
MarkL’s comment is worth reading if you fancy an insight into a deranged and disgusting mind.
Strong hard right anti-Asylum seeker government in Italy brings in draconian anti-asylum seeker legislation, asylum seekers up 120%.
Katz and Mercurius have touched on some of the figures/reasoning but the statement on the sheer ignorance by some has hit the nail on the head and the racial blinkering by them is astounding, all the while completely ignoring the real flood of illegals who are here through methods other than leaky boats.
Also this sudden concern for the welfare and lives of these asylum seekers by the same commentators and politicians is also astounding, when they couldn’t condemn them and wish them all sorts of deaths and harm during Howard’s speech on being overrun by terrorists arriving in leaky boats, and these evil people throwing their children to almost certain death.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/bartlett/2009/04/17/asylum-seekers-in-boats-hysteria-20/
Andrew Bartlett has a good post on this.
Here are two brief excerpts.
“It is obviously too much to hope for such ‘debate’ to be based on facts or on a recognition of the multiple and complex factors involved in forced migration and other movements of people around the globe.”
“Picking just one example, the number of people from Afghanistan who applied for asylum in an industrialised country last year was 18 459. (That of course doesn’t count the millions who are living uncertainly in Pakistan and nearby countries.) Of that number, the number who applied in Australia was 52. (Don’t get Australia mixed up with Austria – they received 1365 from Afghanistan alone.)’
Worth a read.
Ive indicated a few likely reasons on the other thread. The new govt’s policy of taking intercepted asylum seekers to Xmas island has never been “announced” per se, for strategic (i.e. deterrence) reasons – so many may presume they may have been towed back to international waters.
I know ths can be hard to stomach for RWDBs – but Howard’s policy was a disastrous own goal in terms of a goal of reducing arrivals:- by denying family reunion under the TPV, it meant *more* people – ie women and children – came by boat. Not less. Before that, fathers and husbands had made the dangerous journeys alone. We never had so many onshore arrivals as the two years after Howard “got tough”. His policy was strictly for domestic consumption only.
Even so, the primary driver was refugee-producing conflict in Afghanisan and Iraq 2001-3/ That was the main reasons we received more in those years than before or since. Niow there’s a slight upswing again – Sri Lanka and resurgent Taliban being the main examples.
Even so, it always has been a mere trickle comared to numbers arrving in Europe. Its really no big deal at all in a global sense. The nonsensical uproar about the tiny numbers who arrived on our shores made us look like a bunch of really pathetic whiners among contries who actually deal with significant numbers.
Thats why Ruddock never achieved his dream of infleuncing global trends in protection – no one has could take us seriously.
Chris @ 13 – “they may well have still died if they didn’t flee.” What??? They were under threat in Indonesia?? From who??? Baptists???
FDB, thanks. Ick, but thanks.
Malcolm Turnbull may say he doesn’t want to politicise but then:
” “We do no service to anybody by being seen to be more accommodating or more receptive to people smuggling,” he said.
“We can see it puts the lives of many people at risk, not just those in these often very unseaworthy vessels but the lives of brave Australians who are doing their duty in our service, wearing our uniform, under our flag on the open seas.”
I reiterate: Fucking pathetic.
Also Razor, are you really so ignorant about this or just being trolly? The boat</em came from Indonesia: the refugees, poor desperate bastards are predominantly Afghani. And the majority of the last ten years’ refugees have been Afghan and Iraqi. Get a clue, mate, and please don’t be so flip, these are people’s lives here.
Barnett’s announcements are shameful, made even worse by his childish “well that’s what someone told someone else n they told me” weaselling. If the children overboard crap illustrated anything, it was the irresponsibility of making public statements based on incomplete scraps of information gained at second or third hand.
It suggests the meme is still alive and well amongst unprincipled Liberals that xenophobia is a vote-winner. I hope Turnbull has the gumption to kill any revivial of the spirit of 2001 stone dead, at least amongst his front bench.
Did anybody else see Sky News Pm Agenda, yesterday. Glenn Milne was disgusting, talking about the refugees being so well dressed etc. I thought I was going to be sick. Apparently 455 ‘by boat’ refugees have arrived since Sept, when the laws were changed. Why are the Aust people so unwilling to share. How come we still have this deep seated fear of the ‘other’. I can’t fathom it.
OK – you guys can’t work out why illegal entrants would try to destroy their boat in order to try and force Tha Australian Navy to either take them aboard the Navy ship or get them to the mainland pronto. It is a fairly standard tactic and if you aren’t aware of this then I suggest you do some more research.
What I can’t understand is why if you are:
1) a “refugee” from a muslim country,
2) and you are a muslim yourself, and
3) in a safe muslim country like Indonesia (largest mulim country outside middle east!) or perhaps Malaysia,
Then why keep travelling to Australia? Is this not country shopping? What exactly is wrong with Indonesia (nobody has ever explained that to me – we go there for holidays FFS) Why not apply through normal channels once you have left the danger area???
Thanks, Patrickg. I wasn’t aware he’d said that.
Debbieanne – who says we are unwilling to share – tens of thousands of refugees come legally to Australia every year and make a valuable contribution to the future of this nation. What most don’t like are people who have th ability to get not just from a bad place to a safe place but then travel half way around the world and force themselves on us instead of requesting to come here like the tens of thousands of legal migrants do.
No worries Tim.
Ohhh okay, Razor, I didn’t realise you were okay with refugees, as long they don’t come to Australia.
How generous of you.
Also love the latent racism. Australia is not a muslim country eh? And here I was thinking you could practise any religion you like here.
patrickg – who’s being flip? What’s wrong with them settling in Indonesia, or at least pausing there to ask permission to come here like everyone else does?
patrickg – I don’t care what religion you or anybody else is. I do question why so many Muslims who say we in the decadent west are infidels and our culture is an abhorence to them – yet they are gagging to get here?
And as I said to debbie above – refugees are most welcome and valuable as long as they follow due process.
Terrible and very sad stuff – the accident of course, but also the Liberal response.
Turnbull won’t touch it, but also will not dissuade party members such as Stone from giving it a flogging and singing to the likes of MarkL (I don’t think his post should be deleted, he represents the target audience that I wish and hope is only a small insignificant part of Australia but I fear otherwise).
As an ex-sailor, I can vouch that fires do happen on vessels and can happen for virtually no reason. Of course, there’s a possibility that someone on the vessel of not the stablest mental platform did a nutter when noticing the vessel being turned about and heading NW, back in the rough direction of whence it came. Idiots appear in many places everywhere, thus refugee boats presumably would not be immune.
The Libs (well just the nasty ones, there’s a few with moral fibre such as Russell Broadbent on this morning RN Breakfast who was distancing himself from this rubbish http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2009/2545309.htm ) trying to make “Child Overboard”-like political mileage from this .. I only hope it fails
If I may venture an educated guess on what happened at sea.
The asylum seekers boat made it past Christmas island heading roughly South east.
The navy intercepted them, boarded and began to Escort them back towards Christmas Island, Roughly NorNorWesterly. Many of the refugees may have been under the impression they were being returnrd to Indonesia.
As for the fire, again based on incidents I have attended this is likely to have been an attempt at brinkmanship gone tragicly wrong.
(this is the bit I might be wildly wrong on)
I believe the report of fuel being poured onto the boat (decks most likely) is probably accurate.
Most probably with the intention of using the threat of self harm to get the boat pointed back to the mainland, most likely in ignorance they were headed back to Christmas not Indonesia.
However I would be astounded if the fire was deliberately lit. More likely some leaked into the engine room and contacted hot engine parts, or a stray ciggarette or spark set it off.
In which case (as per usual) its not a clear cut they did nothing/they set it alight, but something in between.
It strikes me the smugglers are the key here to the boat burning. My understanding it is them who advise the refugees to damage their boats. Whether that is rational or not the refugees are just following the “advice” of their “experts”. To my mind the smugglers are probaly thinking burning the boat just makes doubly sure they’ll be towed to Christmas Island, why rely on legal interpretations when you can make damn sure of it. The smugglers also are reputed to be using the softened policy stance as a marketing ploy. That again may be right or wrong in fact, but they are using it and who are the refugees to believe?
I think it is reasonable to point to uplifts in violence in war torn nations as increasing the overall supply of refugees but there seems to be a willingness here to believe that this is the whole cause and that lessening of legal hurdles is irrelevant. Surely a mixture of the two is the most likely scenario.
The rational and most humane response would be to increase our official in-take but to maintain a strict policing of that. That way we are doing our bit but are not encouraging people to take huge risks with their lives and their loved ones nor enabling those with enough cash to pay a smuggler to accelerate their chances of sanctuary above others who don’t.
It is my guess ( and yes that is all it is) that most people opposed to slackening the rules are happy for refugees to come to Australia they just think it should be fair to all applicants. For most Aussies it literally is just as simple as seeing someone pushing into a queue at the footy or something. The Left are so keen to see a racist motivation and no doubt there are some that do have a racist motivation but I think the majority of Aussies just think it should be fair to all and circumventing the official process is unfair.
I note that when you see most commentary or even average Aussies interviewed in the street about this who want the tougher policies they rarely if ever say “we want ALL refugee migration to stop not just the boat people” It really is first and foremost about people circumventing the process.
Katz @11:55 – I believe you have nailed it. The perps feared what the RAN would do to them
adrian @ 12:31 – I thought dissent was good. What was so bad about #7? (gone before I saw it)
Kaishu @ 12:53 – The Pacific Solution successfully prevented a reocurrence of SEIV-X.
This current tragedy, whether an accident or otherwise, is partially attributable to the relaxed policy to people smuggling. Like many feel-good lefty policies, it comes with feel-bad consequences.
Labor well knows the dangers here, which is why we are being treated to another one of their disciplined displays of media management. When you hear a Labor politician say “we don’t want to politicise this”, you can be sure that it is potentially damaging to them.
As to this thread, the usual suspects are displaying the usual knee jerk responses when confronted with the consequences of dumb policy. Denial, and abuse of any who dare to point out the connections.
Kingsley – apparently you are a racist if you would like to see people go through an orderly process instead of just allowing them lob up uninvited.
“Australia is not a muslim country ” It’s not a christian country either.
The question of whether the explosion was deliberate has pretty much no relevance to numbers and policies otherwise. Certainly prosecute anyone proven to have done so.
Before jumping the gun note that a cheaparse inboard engine can ignite easily if fumes aren’t adequately ventilated. This in fact happens quite frequently in Australia. This also results in explosion, whereas petrol poured everywhere would be more likely to build as a fire. But, who knows, let’s see.
Back on policies, as Grattan pointed out today the idea that Rudd has adopted ’soft’ policies is bizarre. They softened a few extremes, so what we need Malcolm to do is stop hiding behind vague criticism and spell out exactly which of the ’softening’ initiatives he has an issue with…
well razor, if you want to know – a great proportion Afghan refugees we receive are Shi’a Muslim from the Hazara minority. They are persecuted by Sunni Taliban.
Your “average” Afghani refugees lives in a camp in Pakistan or Iran. Thiose two countries do all the heavy lifting. But they do not provide permanent protection, nor are they Refugee Convention signatory nations. Nor are Afghan refugees especially safe from harm in those places.
Of the trickle that go beyond those two countries in search of ACTUAL (ie permanent) refugee protection – most go to Europe. The ones who come here are those who have LESS MONEY.
Thats right- all those idiot shockjocks and Tory pollies are full of guff – we get the less wealthy ones.
Why are soke of them nicely dressed? Its a no-brainer: if yuo are a Taliban wanna-be dictator, pf Saddam Hussein, you are not frightened of the lumpenproles. You persecute the ones who threaten your regime – often educated, often middle class teachers and professionals are they ones you’re actuqaly worried about.
The idea that refugees should be in rags to be ‘genuine’ is compeltely ILLOGICAL. Its a stereotype that reinforces the ida that its actually a form of economic migration. Which it (normally) is not.
As for Malysia and Indonesia – well, in malaysia they often get robbed and sent on their way by the army (no joke, no exaggeration); and neither country is a signtory nation – and neither country offers permanent protction. Simple as that.
The Right wants us to be a beacon of democratic values – and yet, at the same time, doesnt want to be any better than these countries? Makes no sense to me!
Can I suggest, just to try and be bipartisan, that a more decent, and probably more rational and relevant line of criticism might be to look at the approach and resourcing applied to convincing and assisting Indonesia to help us?
Remembering that they are helping us… it hardly makes sense as an issue to them that we freak out so much about a few hundred refugees when they squeeze over 200 million onto a string of islands. Cajoling and threatening them obviously isn’t going to work.
It is interesting that certain subjects always bring out the ‘usual suspects’.
PeterTB, dissents fine, racism isn’t.
Razor, you are not a racist if you believe this, but you are certainly not conversant with the facts if you believe that an ‘orderly process’ actually exist in all situations.
You seem to lack empathy. Try to imagine the situation in which these people find themselves.
I seem to remember that not long ago many on this site showed a great deal of empathy for your circumstances, which I’m sure are not as harrowing as those of a typical refugee.
Razor @ 38 – because the Indonesian authorities don’t allow them to settle permanently – they just get left in limbo. Indonesia is not a signatory to the refugee conventions. Remember that Indonesia already struggles with many internally displaced refugees.
FWIW I think a more orderly process where we don’t have people coming across in boats would be preferable. But thats only going to happen if well off countries like Australia accept a whole lot more refugees through official channels. It’d also help if we spent a lot more on foreign aid too.
Like some of his astute colleagues, Alexander Downer thought it useful to try to link the Ashmore Island explosion to the Rudd govt’s asylum policy.
Apparently Indonesian smugglers were all over the election, preying for a ’softening’ of asylum laws. In an ABC radio interview Downer asserted that he ‘knows people in Indonesia who know people smugglers and have seen material to that effect’.
Forget Labor MPs’ links to china; how about Alexander Downer’s links to Indonesian people smugglers???
Yes Armagny, it doesn’t take too developed an imagination to guess how people in Jordan, Iran, Syria, Indonesia etc feel when they see Australians go into such hysterical overeactions about a handful of refugees, when we have been so complicit in creating the instability that helped create the problem in the first place.
We spend $300 million building a ridiculous new refugee centre on Christmas Island but basically refuse to do anything to assist the Iraqi refugees from a war we helped launch as an act of unprovoked aggression. We bleat to the world about our superior Western valueas and how a few hundred thousand dead Iraqis are a price worth paying to bring them the glorious gift of democracy but we won’t even acknowledge our own war guilt or meet our moral obligations to clean up the mess we helped make. Now we are doing the same thing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and once again we will take the high moral ground and boast about the nobility of our professed motives while ignoring the reality of the consequences of our actions.
Stop being rational Ken.
Ken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgMhnI3QOI&feature=related
[for j_p_z - we hardly knew ye]
Razor: check out The UN convention relating to the status of refugees.
Look at the map. Notice how many countries are signatories between us and Afghanistan? Yep, Cambodia… That’s it. And they’re not even necessarily on the way…
Another demostration of the UN working for us. Why am I so underwhelmed.
Well at least Afghanistan’s a signatory. Surely that means they could just go home, right Razor?
Imagine going to Pakistan, an impoverished nation that had to cope with 300,000 refugees in 2001 fleeing from the trouble we helped start by invading, and telling them we’re really concerned by the huge numbers of refugees heading for Australia … dozens, sometimes even hundreds at a time. One wonders why they don’t just tell us to piss off. Ditto the Indonesians, who could understandably say that if we would only stop invading and occupying other countries they might not have so many displaced people to look after in their own islands.
Our foreign ministers need the hide of a rhinoceros at times. Fortunately the incumbent and his predecessor amply meet that criterion.
I’m getting a bit tired of your rationality, Ken. Don’t you know that the Pakisatanis are well…you know…not like us, not to mention the Indonesians who are OK if they live in Bali. Otherwise, well, they’re just not quite as civilised as we are.
Yes Ken – we westerners are sooooo evil. We are responsible for all that is wrong in this world.
Possum gets cranky, and is magnificent.
Well said Ken!
What a shame the last chap had the eyesight of one as well, or he might have been able to read his emails.
Well Razor, it is Western governments that are currently bombing the crap out of the refugee’s former home.
Umm I hate to break the news to you guys but there was the odd refugee fleeing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein prior to both invasions. One might say it is kind of odd to claim to be sooo concerned about refugees but we oppose removing the regimes that they are fleeing but hey that wouldn’t be GWB’s fault so it can’t be right.
“One might say it is kind of odd to claim to be sooo concerned about refugees but we oppose removing the regimes that they are fleeing but hey that wouldn’t be GWB’s fault so it can’t be right.”
That would indeed be an odd claim – verging on utterly incoherent – if anyone were actually making it.
I might counter by observing that it is plainly absurd to support removing the regime but not be prepared to accept the resulting dislocated people. But then, that’s FUCKING OBVIOUS.
You guys are also putting an awful lot of faith in the idea that if say Indonesia signed the UN convention they’d all dutifully stop there.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t take our share but I’m not so sure that’s why they traverse Indonesia to come here. In some cases it might be enough to for them to say “Yep Indonesia will do for me” but I’m sceptical that’s the whole story.
FDB – if you want to play the “that’s not what I absolutely word perfectly said game then knock yourself out.”
I might also point out that if the COTW had packed up the day after they deposed those regimes your last point would have some merit but given they are there years after with thousands of their own service personnel lives lost trying to repair those countries so people don’t have to leave the claim of them not taking responsiblity rings a wee bit hollow.
Indeed Liam, though I still have a fondness for Old Rice and Monkey Nuts rather than the newfangled Undescended Testicle……those were the days my friend.
Perhaps kingsley you can enlighten us. What resources has Australia devoted to undoing the human cost of our participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan? I’m not talking about resources devoted to military occupation. I mean resources devoted to helping ordinary people overcome the catastrophes of bereavement, loss of property and homelessness.
As some of you might know, I now work for DIAC in multicultural affairs. A major issue I’m grappling with is racism.
I can’t comment on the specifics of this case or broad current policy for obvious reasons, but I will say this:
thank you to all those on this thread – too many to list – who have so clearly articulated what is so appalling about Australia’s fundamental racism as a country. Although I think I would more correctly term it xenophobia – I think. I hope you champion those views as civilly as you do here with all your friends, because it’s the conviction of the people that creates positive taboos.
I also want to say – and this is purely a personal belief – that I believe the previous government’s asylum seeker policy was a profound practical and moral failure. It was shameful for all the reasons people have described here, and one more I will add.
When people are forced to flee as refugees, it is because their home governance has disintegrated so that they have been stripped of their humanity, and thus their legal rights. By using the law to greatly decrease the circle of ‘legal’ ways an asylum seeker could reach Australia to claim asylum, the Howard government took the one last right people have on this earth – the right to seek safe harbour and thus be recognised as part of our common humanity – and shredded it.
This policy named the most vulnerable in our global community as un-human.
It was shaming
…then what?
Anyway, I was always for toppling the Taliban – you’re making unfounded assumptions about the things I believe. Is this because one of them happens to be that you’re a bit of a dill?
It’s perfectly consistent for me to oppose the Iraq war, support the Afghanistan war, oppose some of the ways both have been conducted, and still want my country to do more to help out the victims of both. And for that help to be both on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by means of settling refugees. If you think any of the above are logically inconsistent or hypocritical, can you explain why?
I notice you haven’t addressed your own glaring hypocrisy I outlined above.
what is so appalling about Australia’s fundamental racism as a country
What utter crap myriad. I defy you to name even half a dozen countries which are less racist than this excellent one. To quote a Sudanese friend of mine “Best society in the world”.
It is not a racist attitude that gives this country a bad name in some circles – it is ignorant people like you make dumb statements like that.
Well said myriad. I wish that there were more people like you in DIAC.
And a great link Liam. Magnificent alright.
Possum at his “Well worth burning a disc for posterity” best. We’re thinking that Offspring of Colossus in Canberra might not be too small.
Peter TB – and what la la land do you inhabit? Of course Australia is a racist country – as is every country. Racism and fear of the other is the one great universal trait. It is neither ignorant nor dumb to acknowledge the obvious. It is however a delusion to suggest this country is not racist and that, rather, it is ‘excellent’. And this view of the nation as racist free is not very convincing to other countries, particularly when one examines its appalling history of racism towards Indigenous Australians. There is an infantile narcissism attached to this idea. And which Australia do you mean by the way? Do yo mean the metropolis, the suburban sprawls, the country? and on whose behalf do you speak by the way?, in order to unproblematically deem Australia as non racist? Oh please, a little nuance would not hurt.
Rubbish Tip Road Nauru Fire Sale Specials
Recycled rodents
Born again rodents with ’scum’ side salad
Hammocks for the digital & rectal challenged possums
Mirrors for Bolts
Bex for Ken
& a good lie down for Mr T
Tim Tb, if you want, you can take a look at some investigations in to race and rasism in this country via this report from the Australian Human Rights Commission.
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/racial_discrimination/conferences/Durban2009/Report_Preparation_Durban2009.html
To quote at length – sorry, but it puts it in perspective – here are some of the asylum trends in industrialised countries from this report from the UNHCR
http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/49c796572.pdf
“The increase in 2008 is not evenly distributed among countries or regions. Out of a total of 383,000 asylum applications registered in 2008, countries in Europe
received close to 290,000 claims, 13 per cent more than the previous year’s figure of 256,000. This takes into account the important decreases observed in
Greece and Sweden, two of the major receiving countries in 2007.
A similar increase was observed among the 27 Member States of the European Union
where 238,000 asylum applications were lodged in 2008, a 6 per cent more than in 2007 (224,000). Theoverall figure for the EU-27 countries hides significant differences between the 15 ‘old’ and the 12 ‘new’ Member States7. There was a 9 per cent increase from 2007 to 2008 (from 198,000 claims to 216,000) among the ‘old’ Member States, contrary to a 15 per cent drop (from 25,600 to 21,800) in the ‘new’ Member States. The 27 EU Member States together accounted for 67 per cent of all asylum claims in Europe.
Within Europe, there are differences as well. In Southern Europe more than 75,000 individuals applied for international protection, 12,300 more than in 2007 and a 20 per cent increase, with the largest numbers being recorded in Italy (31,200 claims) and Greece (19,900 claims). In Malta and Turkey8, figures were the highest on record (2,600 and 13,000 claims, respectively).
In the Nordic countries, on the other hand, the number of newly registered asylum-seekers dropped by 2 per cent to 45,200 claims. Here, the sharp increase in newly submitted asylum applications in Norway was offset by the decrease in Sweden. Nevertheless, Sweden remained the principal destination for asylum-seekers, with roughly half of all applications in the Nordic region being lodged in that country.
In North America, an estimated 86,000 new asylum applications were submitted in 2008, 6,900 claims or 9 per cent more than in 2007. The United States of America registered approximately 49,000 new applications, a 3 per cent drop compared to 2007, whereas Canada saw a dramatic 30 per cent increase, mainly linked to
the higher numbers of Mexican and Haitian asylum-seekers. Despite the overall increase, the 2008 level remains at roughly half the 2001 level when close to 150,000 applications were lodged in Canada and the United States of America together.
The trend observed in Australia and New Zealand shows a diverging picture between the two countries. In New Zealand, levels have remained fairly stable in the past years (on average 260 new claims per year) whereas in Australia figures have increased in the past years. The latter recorded approximately 4,700 asylum claims in 2008, 19 per cent more than the year before. Despite this recent increase, figures in Australia are far below the ones observed in 2000 (13,100
claims) and 2001 (12,400 claims).”
So, to sum up: 4,700 asylum claims in 2008 in Australia!! Compare that to say Italy – 32,000 applications in Italy, a country which would fit into NSW 3 times.
So yes, as you can see, they are invading Australia in their tens! What we really have is a problem with is race, racism and fear of the other, and in this instance, as Tom Calma points out, its a cultural fear (teh muslim) rather than a biological one. I would further suggest we need to fix up our excised zones so that these tens that are invading us with such impunity can be processed appropriatel under the convention we are a signatory to.
I’ve just sent Ruddock the following email:
Philip Ruddock
I spent my first 18 years in South Africa before emigrating in 1965 to Australia. South Africa, as you will remember, was into excising parts of itself into places where the law didn’t apply to segments of the population with things like Group Areas acts etc. It was called apartheid and it was engineered by people with no optimism or hope or empathy or human spirit, people like Verwoerd and Vorster. You may remember this from your days as a member of the Parliamentary Amnesty International group.
In the late 1960s I read “On Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt. This contained the now-famous phrase “the banality of evil”, used to characterise Adolf Eichmann and his Holocaust bureaucracy/machinery.
Soon after you became minister for immigration I encountered Erwin Fabian, the Melbourne sculptor and one of the “Dunera Boys”. I suggested to him that if I were making a film about Eichmann, I’d cast you as the lead. His response was: “You’ve hit the nail on the head”.
Ruddock: You’re now re-entering the murky waters of asylum seekers and boat people – you can’t help yourself, can you? I regard you as THE most disgusting politician I have encountered in my time in Australia (1965-)
Paul Hodgson
Capital can flow from country to country, unfettered at all.
Labour should have the same right.
Let anyone who wants to come and live here.
I’d also suggest we set up quick process centres in Pakistan and other major refugee areas to fly whoever wants to here.
I think the Libs are drum beating racism, and Labor is softly whistling.
Great recessions see class polarisation and the ruling clique often respond with racism as a diversion from real problems.
Our country is a colonial settler state founded on anti-aboriginal racism. Our federation was based on a grand compromise between labour and capital – protection, arbitration and white Australia.
Those founding ‘principles’ flow through many sectors and attract some of the alienated working class.
A trade union movement that fought for jobs and living standards would drive this nonsense into the abyss of contempt.
Sorry guys, doesn’t matter what happened on the boat, but Labor’s soft immigration policies have killed people, and your encouragement of the same will continue to kill people.
Right on JP. Ruddock was always Minister for the Dead.
Margo – if you’re gonna be a two-bit ho, at least butt-up for something worthwhile.
Aha – straight for the ad hominem. Proves I’m right.
Or that you’re too easy to bother with.
and that you seem to have a problem with women.
Or with cheap ladyboys.
Casey: Of course Australia is a racist country – as is every country. Racism and fear of the other is the one great universal trait. It is neither ignorant nor dumb to acknowledge the obvious. It is however a delusion to suggest this country is not racist and that, rather, it is ‘excellent’.
So Casey, if every country is racist, then none can be excellent? That’s clearly nonsense.
In any event, my reaction was to myriad’s “fundamentally racist” claim of this country – which remains an inaccurate description. It is especially galling coming from a Commonwealth Public Servant who is apparently happy to take an above average salary in taxpayer’s dollars while demonising the public he/she is meant to be serving.
I found it a pleasure having federal minsters talking sense and calming the waters. Particularly stuck by an interview on the ABC where an ABC reporter was trying to stir up the normal crap and the minister calmly pointed out the insignificance of our problems relative to those of Europe and for that matter Indoneaia .
You didn’t address any questions though Peter, before your finishing flourish of ‘Nonsence’! . We know where Myriad is coming from. We also know she has more knowledge about this issue than she can say on this site. which suggests she knows what she is saying when she say makes a statement like that. Australia is many things, some of them very good, but its record on race is not pristine. On whose behalf do you speak? From which group do you speak? From which part of the country do you speak? These are pertinent questions as depending on their answer, the unproblematic tagging of Australia as ‘excellent’ or its labelling as ‘racist’ will either ring true or hollow depending on this. Its a pretty simplistic binary isnt it, to siggest it has to be one or the other. There are many Australias and many people to tell you what it is. But you can’t unproblematically claim the authority to know all of Australia and all of Australians’ experiences. You are not master of the national space that you can erase a critique of australia as racist without showing your own hidden privilige in making your own claim that it rather, excellent. Well, tell by the way, in what way is it excellent? That’s one big category right there you might elaborate on. Just because other countries might have worse problems with racism doesn’t get rid of the fact Australia has its own racism right here. Of course its not Darfur, but it has a long history of problems with race. I point you again to our treatent of Indigenous australians. Its one of our lesser human traits. We don’t like difference. Spouting words like ‘dumb’ and ‘nonsence’ – its just not enough to convince anyone of anything. You might say well in what way is Australia racist? I might even counter with – Did you read Tom Calma’s report I linked to above? I might even consider you did not. Because if you did, to put it into your categories, you would cede, that while Australia might have been excellent to you, it has indeed been racist to others ok?
IMO its a simplistic binarist claim. Its not racist, its excellent.If we go by your reasoning – if a country is racist, it cant by nature be also excellent can it? Each country has its problems to varying degrees. But one of the solutions is not to deny such problems exist. Infantile nationalism is no answer to he complex issues of race which underly much of the hysteria of a very small number of people who have coe here by boat. Very small.
Countries aren’t racist. Racists are people. Well-reported research indicates that racism is a product of fear; a reaction to a perceived threat to basic, safety, social, ego needs – Oz historian Russell Ward identified fear of lowered wages & living standards as underpinning C19 white settlers reactions, first to calls for the reintroduction of convict transportation (c1842), then to Chinese Coolie labour introduced just over a decade later during the first Gold Rushes, just as white workers gained good wages & the 8 day in the building industry. Let’s face it, no way Coolies, or current Boat people, could be more criminal or carry more diseases than the mainly white UK Boat People who settled this country after 25/01/1788; and, after the Marbo judgment revoked Terra Nullius, they were all illegal immigrants who landed without the permission of those who owned the continent!
Recent (and well ‘replicated’) research indicates that racists are, on average, more poorly educated & paid, and of lower social status than non-racists. Racists are also more likely to be ‘other directed’, blaming external factors, inc foreigners, other religions, authority figures (eg governments, police, teachers, doctors) etc for anything that’s gone wrong with their lives. (Two recent parallel examples of ‘other directed’ blaming-passing – in both cases blaming authority figures – are fathers of disgraced olympic cyclist Jobie Dajka and swimmer Darcy blaming peak sporting bodies for destroying their sons’ dreams, when their sons’ dreams were destroyed by their own criminal behavious and, most probably, their fathers’ own parenting.)
Some religious sects are racist, including some self-styled Christian & Muslim sects, although, as other more rational members of the religions clearly demonstrate with reference to the religions’ teaching, racism is clearly at odds with the Founders’ teaching. Some politicians are racist – although, in most cases, that racism is a political strategy aimed at winning them power & helping them hold on to it by playing to the lowest instincts of the electorate (the politics of envy; IMO a far less ethical form of racism.
The fault is in ourselves, not in … external factors, that we are … racist/ sexist/ classist/ elitist/ sectarian etc. Look in your mirror, not at others, for the source of your attitudes!
No DeeCee I dont agree necessarily its about the individual. The culture into which we are born makes us IMO. A little Foucault! Terrible isnt it? Discourses can be racist! A discourse being a bounded area of social knowledge, within which the world becomes to be known to the individual. If its racist then we have a problem and must dissent to fragment the hidden rules of the discourse. Its a load of statements that are made which include assumed beliefs, prejudices, observations and directions but exclude other equally valid statements. These statements held up by the discourse become known as the ‘truth’ and everything else is excluded, like Myriad’s for instance. And what is going on here is a tussle over what exactly is the ‘truth’ over that area of social knowledge about Australia.
And, how boring, what I am sayng is that there is no one truth about it. Australia is many things – it can indeed be excellent, whatever that means – and it has its issues with racism. The Cronullua Riots proved that if our history doesnt. But thats enough from me. Im boring myself now.
It is possible for a country to be more than one thing at once – I would have thought that was fairly self-evident, a nation state being a rather complex thing.
That Australia has pervasive racism is something every other nation recognises about us, but we can’t, apparently. The bald statistics of mortality, impoverishment and systemic disadvantage for Aboriginal Australians are inarguable. Until Australia makes full reparations towards our first people and accords them equal rights and opportunities, we will never be accepted and nor should we, as a non-racist nation.
Thankfully there are signs that racism is waning, but anyone who thinks figures showing 40% of Australians think ’some ethnic groups don’t belong’ doesn’t show pervasive racism is kidding themselves.
I love how people trot out their ‘Sudanese friend’ as if a single uncontextualised anecdote is going to change all of the above. How about all my Sudanese friends who are regularly assaulted physically and verbally harassed, consistently involving racist abuse and motivation? And for that matter my Congolese, Ethiopian, Afghani and Sierra Leonean acquaintances? Or my Asian international student colleagues?
However while I personally agree that Australia can look to do more in terms of accepting refugees (I hope some people here were aware and commented on the discussion paper the new government put out on our humanitarian program – alas too late if you weren’t), we can also I think be proud of the fact that as a country we have accepted 670,000 refugees since 1945. Our current population is around 21 million – the maths does us credit. As does our rapid metamorphosis from the white Australia policy to becoming a leading global proponent of successful multiculturalism.
Finally, I find it bizarre that anyone would think that comparisons to other nations re: levels of racism are relevant. What we should care about is the dynamics of our society. There is abundant evidence that racism is a pervasive issue in Australian society. Regardless of whether it is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than other nations, we should be focussed on recognising the problem at home, and getting our house in order.
Oh, and Aidan – there are a lot of good people in DIAC. I have to say that as a relative newcomer to the dept., I have overall been impressed.
‘… if every country is racist, then none can be excellent? That’s clearly nonsense.’
It’s only ‘clear’ to someone who has already decided that countries (as opposed to people) are capable of being compared meaningfully and that there is a mysterious law by which some must be judged excellent and others crap.
An alternative perspective is that human beings everywhere have strong tribal tendencies which are poorly suited to a contemporary global community. A related perspective is that notions of national exceptionalism are deeply pointless and simply create unhelpful antagonism and conflict. People who adopt these perspectives would say the idea that countries can be rated for excellence or otherwise is clearly nonsense.
On last week’s Saturday Salon I predicted it wouldn’t be long (I think I said one and a half days) before Viscount Turnbull was dragged to the far right by the racists in his party about the burning boat, and start spouting the same disgusting tripe as them. I was wrong. It only took a day. (Last night’s ABC1).
At their fortnightly assembly, the children at my daughters’ school always sing the national anthem.
I’m finding the second verse a bit hard to take.
Smoking gun for these Rudd-caused deaths:
Rudd was warned by AFP about border protection.
Good work, Kevvie!
C.L.
Yeah, well, the country was warned about what a disaster a Howard Government would be, too, wasn’t it? We didn’t listen then, either, did we?
LOL!
Rates have trended upwards since 2005, but it’s current ALP policy that’s to blame. And when it was the harsher Howard policy in place at the start of the upward trend…well that was probably because Rudd was thinking about what he might do as PM. And moonbeams; can’t trust those lefty moonbeams.
And out come the usual Liberal rats.wont make any difference CL, the Liberal Party have more blood on there hands via there slavish following of Bush, then there’s always the boat where over 300 died on but then that was not your little heroes fault was it.
C.L. remember SIEV X? Over 100x the so-called Rudd-caused deaths. Bloody good day’s work, wasn’t it? And it doesn’t include the Rodent-caused suicides in his camps, or the mental and emotional toll on people who had already been through hell on earth. When Mr Rudd has those stats under his belt, start bleating!
I argued at the time Rudd abandoned Howard’s hard-line policy that strict border protection was the lesser of two evils, as between allowing people smuggling and accepting maritime assylum seekers.
All other things being equal, the following argument is conclusive:
1. the laxer the border protection, the greater the people smuggling.
2. the greater the people smuggling, the greater the people drowning.
Howard’s hard-line policy was fairly inhumane. But so is allowing or encouraging people to recklessly risk their lives.
Howard claimed success because after the tougher policy was introduced “the boats stopped coming”. Which was true, in early 2002 there was a massive drop off of people smuggling boats.
Its all very well for Howard-haters to hurl the stock-standard racist accusation at the border protective section of the community, (Paul Norton apparently thinks that a day spent not calling his opponents a “racist” is a day wasted.)
But how are they going to deal with the fact that their lax policy is the occasion of more mass drowings and burnings, it now appears.
28 Lefty E Apr 17th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Thats a falsehood. People smuggling by boats dropped off massively in 2002 after Operation Relex and sundry other disruption, detention and detection processes were ramoed up in 2001.
So Howards policy probably saved lives.
I understand why people have some sympathy for asylum seekers. I do to, a bit. Although I have an instinctive adverse reaction against people who appear to be doing an end-run around our system, no matter how good their reasons.
But RWDBs have their reasons for their “xenophobia”.Ita unfortunate that the humanitarian program got mixed up with the far bigger systemic failures of the immigration program. The RWDBs have well-grounded suspicions that AUS’s overall alien intake system is liable to rorting and racketeering.
And is, in any case, run on agendas that has little to do with the interests of the majority. (Right-liberals who want to exploit cheap labour, Left-liberals who are into the diversity racket.)
These are the same kind of people who are soft on people-smuggling. So suspicions lurk that another repeat of the mistakes and criminal negligence of 1979-89 (Fraser through Hawke on immigration) is underway.
Jane only the barking mad would hold Howard responsible for SEIV X any more than Rudd for this sorrowful event.
Nice try though.
Casey: “Its a pretty simplistic binary isnt it, to siggest it has to be one or the other.
Ken Lovell: “It’s only ‘clear’ to someone who has already decided that countries (as opposed to people) are capable of being compared meaningfully and that there is a mysterious law by which some must be judged excellent and others crap.”
Well quite. Which is why I reacted as I did to myriad’s original statement “what is so appalling about Australia’s fundamental racism as a country“
Dumb and damaging statements such as this need to be challenged lest they give air to truly racist competitors! Australia can rightly and credibly take a seat at international conferences on Human Rights because we generally address our flaws honestly and work to correct them. Dumb statements like myriad’s – to the extent that they are aired overseas – provide the leaders of countries with more serious human rights issues with a pretext to disregard our views.
Oh. And in case my position is not clear in respect of Australia, let me clearly state that I think it is an excellent place. I don’t know of a more tolerant and open society than Australia’s anywhere else. Do you?
Here is a Useful Link from the ABC on the effectiveness of the Pacific Solution.
69 myriad Apr 17th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
I dont know. But I am not surprised that a self-confessed multiculturalist is involved in a serious breach of professional duty by engaging in politicised work-related activities. Confirming my worst suspicions about such agencies.
Get a real job. All you are doing now is mischief making.
And, in any case, you are clueless about your own ideology. Racism is the institutionalized privileging or persecuting of biologically identified classes of individuals.
Once upon a time the accusation of “racist” had genuine and serious import. My father fought the Third Reich, they were racist alright. Then there was the Klu Klux Klan, White Australia…all racist by any sensible definition. Any institutionalization of that policy stopped in this country over a generation ago.
Nowadays “racism” means someone who notices “stereotypical” differences between peoples. A faculty which is fundamental to the human mind and evolved aeons ago, and for good purpose.
This “noticing ability” might be expressed in various ways when the occasion warrants. Such as an aversion to say, wife-burning, sharia law or voodoo popping up in you neighbourhood. “Xenophobia” is the only right and sensible reaction to such practices.
This is no longer an academic possibility in some parts of Europe. Ever since the counter-Enlightenment ideology of multiculturalism has taken root amongst the more feeble minded or poorly educated in the chattering classes.
That is why mainstream populations get anxious about boat people washing up on their shores. The practice is recklessly unsafe and the product is of very uncertain quality. Requiring stringent checks to make sure we are not being the victims of yet another scam from ethnic lobbies, people smugglers, activists and their like.
That is not “racism”. It is common sense precaution.
Norway.
Peter, those low arrivals years coincide more or less exactly with the fall of the Taliban until their resurgence.
Its pretty clear asylum seekers have never had a a good awareness of Australian laws – no matter what they were.
As for the “effectiveness” of the Pacific Solution – you ARE aware they all ended up here in Australia on refugee visas, aren’t you? No other country took them, except a very few who went to NZ on day one of the Pacific Solution.
It was therefore an expensive merry go-round – it didnt stop anyone ultimately coming here. Some would call that a pointless waste of billions.
I find it curious that, a line could be spun that, a slight shift in a government policy in Australia is taken into account half-way across the world when people in desperate situations decide to try to get to somewhere better. I would be surprised if the majority of Australians could accurately describe the change in policy. What a joke.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I think the government should do more to tell people exactly what is/isn’t permissible in immigration terms. Call it “forward defence”, call it what you like, but the detention system doesn’t work and is too expensive (not just financially). That’s how you shut down people smuggling and get some transparency into the asylum process.
‘I don’t know of a more tolerant and open society than Australia’s anywhere else. Do you?’
Philippines.
Thank you, thank you, Tom Hyland for this timely article to remind us that there is no “orderly queue” where asylum seekers, as opposed to ordinary immigrants, are concerned – This “queue” is an urban myth to which people like Kingsley and Razor, tabloid writers and shock jocks have given life.
” Ken: ‘I don’t know of a more tolerant and open society than Australia’s anywhere else. Do you?’ Philippines.”
Funny, I was just thinking the very same when i heard some Phillipino villages interviewed after john Saffron’s little self-harming-emo stunt last week. After being told who he was the general tone seemed to be disappointment that he had duped them in his intent. Imagine if he did something similar in, say, an Islamic festival?
As for racist countries, well i think we are a pretty racist species in general, and its something we all have to personally and collectively actively fight against.
Rudd’s tirade at people smugglers, while on one level justified, did strike me as simplistic scapegoating and a convenient political diversion. I mean couldn’t it be argued that these people trafficking scum are actually some of the greatest heroes of the world in the footsteps of Oskar Shindler – making fortunes from the misery of others, but in the process allowing some people an escape from a likely death?
Just throwing that out there.
SC @ 114,
You could say that if “people smugglers” (I hate that term – I feel like I’ve got a dog-whistle in my mouth) were’nt charging them heaps of money and weren’t transporting the refugees here in unseaworthy boats.
Cover Up
Is Australia turning into a third world country or is the Rudd government engaged in a cover up over the fire on the asylum boat?
How could any competent goverment NOT KNOW the circumstances surrounding the fire?
There were four RAN naval personnel on boarrd who had checked the boat and found it to be sea worthy only hours before the explosion.
They must have reported what they saw happen and how it happened to their commanding officer who in turn would have reported upwards to his superior who would have immediately advised the Minister.
If this sequence of events did not occur then the Navy is as incompetent as the Rudd Governmemt in handling the incident.
To suggest that all ’speculation’ must stop until the police and a coroner take months to hold an inquiry is a nonsense and an insult to the Australian public.
Why wouldn’t some asylum seeker set fire to the boat if he thought it was to be towed away form Australia? He may not have meant to blow it up but he may have meant to immobilse it.
In pretending it doesn’t know what happened the Rudd government is lying to the Australian people.
Well you know, Oskar Schindler was a Nazi using Jewish slave labour to become a millionaire, but he he also choose to actively save their lives at the same time
I’m just playing Devils Advocate here. People Smugglers are surely taking huge risks to do what they do. As my kids might say, perhaps they are ‘doing the right thing for the wrong reason’.
Or perhaps they are just like pimps. Pretty nasty types who are making $ exploiting other people’s misery? I’m just playing around with ideas.
Its Sunday, i’m supposed to plastering a ceiling. Its far more fun being contrary on a blog.
SC,
Na. Being on teh Internet is heaps more productive than plastering a ceiling. I appreciate you’re playing round with ideas. My previous comment wasn’t meant to be condemnatory in any way. In this case, I’d go for the pimp line. If they sent them off in classy catmarans and only charged them for petrol I’d put it in the other class.
Actually, SC you’ve made a very good point. Schindler was no saint after all.
Shorter Gino: I do have a heart, a bit.
Same like for those opposing Italian immigration post WW2…
Gino?
GregM, one would think so, but apparently Margo’s Maid @81 and C.L. @98 both seem to believe that Kevin Rudd caused the deaths of the asylum seekers whose boat blew up.
Surely, if they can make that rather astonishing leap of logic, they must also hold the Rodent responsible for the Siev X deaths and for the suicides and attempted suicides at Baxter and similar facilities. After all, they were a direct result of the former government’s “tougher approach.”
Jane on that basis I agree with your reasoning. It is unavoidable that where there are attempts to get to Australian territory in overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels there will be disasters and fatalities for which no government should be held responsible.
Those responsible are those who organise the trips and, sadly for them, those who undertake them knowing the risks entailed. The best the government can do is try to stop the trips at their points of origin in Indonesia and this is exactly what the government is doing.
“The best the government can do is try to stop the trips at their points of origin in Indonesia and this is exactly what the government is doing.”
Arguably that is the best a govt can do, but it’s not the whole story is it? When it fails to stop a boat, there are still important matters to attend to. Like, when you know a boat is in big trouble with hundreds of lives on board, you go and fucking rescue them lickety split whatever your immigration policy.
Cos y’know, they’re like, people.
Helen thanks for the link to Tom Hyland’s article, the gist of which is that because Australia doesn’t maintain an embassy in Kabul capable of processing asylum seekers’ applications there isn’t an orderly queue for processing such applications.
One would have thought that Maria Psihogios-Billington of the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, who appears to be his source, would have told him that under Article 1 of the Refgee Convention a refugee is defined as:
“A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it..”
and that therefore it would be pointless to set up a visa section to issue visas to refugees in Kabul as no Afghan would be able to get a refugee visa from it as they don’t meet the criterion of being outside the country of their nationality required for the issue of such a visa. (I don’t think there’d be too many non-Afghans who’d consider a journey to Kabul to get such a visa would be a very bright idea.)
Alternatively Tom could have done a tiny bit of research and found this out himself. Still, he works for the Age so I suppose the idea of doing that would not have occurred to him.
Malcolm Returnbill’s crew want us to believe that the refugees are increasing their attempts to enter Australia because of softened laws. They will no longer be towed away to Indonesia or whatever.
Malcolm’s crew would also like us to believe that the same people set fire to their boat to stop an attempt to tow them off to wherever!
So which one is it?
If you know where the boat is at the time it is foundering, which in the case of the SIEV X the navy definitely did not. It’s a big ocean out there, FDB, and the navy can’t be everywhere on it at once.
Yes, I noticed that error too GregM. The relevant issue is that the Australian embassy in *Pakistan* does not accept asylum applications. In fact, none of our embassies enroute do. So muhc for the queue – there is sort of one in the UNHCR in Jakarta – but we never take any from it. WHich I would have thought undermines our alleged beliefs in orderly queues.
I was interested to note the now conflicting stories from the Navy as to whether the asylum seekers were told they were being towed to Xmas Island. This is no surprise – it is the key issue that has never been clarified publicly. Like the Howard govt, the Rudd govt has been unwilling to advertise that we do indeed have legal obligations to asylum seekers.
As for this so-called AFP threat report – Im afraid it only says to me the AFP doesnt know much about other signatory nations’ policies. The facts are that Australia’s policies – even after becoming more humanitarian under Rudd – are still among the toughest around. Most signatory nations don’t have mandatory detention. In many jurisdictions, asylum seekers can access the courts.
As for the rest of the hoo-haa – I am glad the govt hasnt rushed out to reach conclusions ahead of the police. Surely we’ve learnt that lesson. Imagine if they had – it now appears that it while petrol was spread, the ignition incident itself was an accident. The reportage for the last 3 days may have been signifcantly wrong.
If I was the govt though – id stick with comparative figures. Good morning Australia – the news is we receive bugger all refugees owing to natural border factors. All been like this, always will. The few that make it we assess according to law, and to our own sense of fairness and humanity towards those escaping persecution. May they find a better life. And lets hope we never need to experience the same ourselves.
I think there is a significant difference between deaths on the Siev X and “the burning boat” on the one hand, and suicides and attempted suicides by refugees in what are effectively prisons on the other.
One key difference with the SIEV X is that the recent boat had mostly men aboard. Howard’s TPV meant that women and children came too.
If we’re concerned about dangerous voyages by sea, then Rudd has certainly changed the policy settings for the better.
Surely no-one thinks children should be have to travel on leaky boats for a family to receive protection?
None of them should be travelling on leaky boats but if there are children on board then place the blame where it lies; on the irresponsibility of their parents in placing their children at such risk and the avarice of the people smugglers, not the policies of the Australian government, whatever its hue. They could have remained quite safely in Indonesia.
If you consider having no legal status in a country safe, GregM. Bear in mind these people are normally on expired short-entry visas in Indonesia – paying bribes whenever they’re caught, operating on the grey side of the law.
Pretty vulnerable position to be in. I agree they were no immediate danger of persecution there. Thats different to having a state’s protection.
Incidentally – seems the last group didnt use smugglers at all. Hired their own fishermen and boat.
Well Greg M. that’s the whole point – they wouldn’t be “quite safe”. They’d face the possibility of a life of statelessness, without their husbands/fathers.
It was one of the stupidest, harshest and most self-defeating policies that last bunch of idiots ever came up with .
So why are people paying USD $12,000 for a ride in a leaky boat, when an airfare is cheaper than chips?
I don’t mind accepting people who have the enterprise to get themselves here. In exchange for every 10 that make it here (enterprising of them) I am prepared to send 20 home-grown no-hopers back to (insert name of hell-hole country here).
We gain someone who is prepared to work & eschew the welfare system.
The deported no-hoper gains a character building experience.
Everybody wins!
“I don’t mind accepting people who have the enterprise to get themselves here.”
Who could be more enterprising that someone that deals with providers of illegal services, those that get the least subsidies from the government, in order to achieve an extremely difficult outcome that their government just wont provide. Or even people who have to walk the fine line of bribing certain officials to look the other way while making sure you don’t attempt to bribe the wrong one with all the following consequences.
What a great way to shove it in the face of all countries that claim to be centre-right in nature: “In our country we deport citizens that are unable to wrangle a good deal.” Ayn Rand would be proud, screw that welfare system.
@Steve at the Pub:
Because in order to get on a plane you need a passport and a visa. Many countries don’t make getting a passport easy for their citizens, or indeed any sort of identity documents. Without valid identity documents it is impossible to obtain a visa.
People without any way of getting official documents get themselves here anyway, and that’s not enterprising?
There goes the ‘children overboard’ mantra that the left kept spruiking about John Howard. The term was always a disgrace and in light of what has happened recently, it now seems fairly likely that the boat was scuttled on purpose. If the left don’t now shut up about ‘children overboard’, I hope they can live with the rhetoric that might be returned.
“In exchange for every 10 that make it here (enterprising of them) I am prepared to send 20 home-grown no-hopers back to (insert name of hell-hole country here).”
Read Between the Lines: “Hospitality employer requires desperate, poor and powerless staff to put through the wringer at whim. Apply Far Norf.”
Barge@138. In the lead-up to a federal election, in October 2001, federal ministers claimed that the asylum seekers had thrown children overboard.
‘children overboard’ is just shorthand for the expression of that. No need to get so excited about leftish motives.
“in October 2001, federal ministers claimed that the asylum seekers had thrown children overboard.”
Fake but true.
FDB, even the (partisan) majority report of the committee enquiry into “A Certain Maritime Incident” said:
“9.143 On the basis of the above, the Committee cannot find grounds for believing that negligence or dereliction of duty was committed in relation to SIEV X.
..and finished with this pathetic “damp lettuce leaf” recommendation in respect of SIEV X:
“Recommendation
9.154 The Committee recommends that operational orders and mission tasking
statements for all ADF operations, including those involving whole of government
approaches, explicitly incorporate relevant international and domestic obligations.”
In other words, the committee could find no fault with the Australian procedures in respect of SIEV X.
Rest easy FDB, you can stop flogging that particular dead horse.
Barge, the “Children Overboard” meme is done and dusted. You can’t revive that old piece of spin. It’s dead, bereft of life, it rests in peace. Any attempt to pretend that it’s just resting smacks of desperation.
I suppose this is remotely on topic as it illustrates the desperation of many Australians, unfortunately, to demonise and ascribe the worst motives to refugees.
Helen – the left has been repeating the ‘children overboard’ mantra for many years now and I haven’t see any signs that it is done and dusted. It was a disgraceful allegation against John Howard to start with but now the boot seems to be on the other foot. I just hope the left can take it.
Barge, as I tried to explain@140, ‘children overboard’ is not “allegation” or left wing conspiracy, just fact. From your point of view you would do well not to remind people of the disgraceful behaviour of Howard and co in their vote rigging behaviour.
Sadly, we see this mob in opposition still playing with the unfortunate asylum seeker situation for assumed political advantage. They have no shame!
joe2 – it might be a ‘fact’ in your eyes but the reality is that the left accused John Howard of demonising illegal immigrants by suggesting that they scuttled their boat on purpose. The left decided that these illegals would never do that but I think we all are now aware of what they actually are prepared to do.
You have lost me on the ‘vote rigging’ bit. The only ‘vote rigging’ that I know about involves a number of Labor Party members who now mostly seem to be back in business (ie Mike Kaiser).
“You have lost me on the ‘vote rigging’ bit.”
I repeat. In the lead-up to a federal election, in October 2001, federal ministers claimed that the asylum seekers had thrown children overboard. This was a “Fake” claim, used for political advantage, at the expense of asylum seekers.
“Children overboard” is not a mantra but is used by many from all political viewpoints to describe what government ministers claimed. Just a “fact”, mate.
No Barge, the reality is that then Defence Minister Peter Reith made an explicit claim that children were thrown off a refugee boat by the adults on board and that he had the video to prove it. John Howard repeated that claim and uttered his famous pronouncement ‘we don’t want people like that’ [ie refugees who would throw their own kids into the water] ‘in Australia’. Reith lied, and Howard repeated the lie. So did The Australian, every other News Limited Newspaper, and every commercial TV news service in the country.
More reality: Reith learnt during the 2001 election campaign that there was no evidence of children being thrown overboard during that incident. Or he would have, if his mobile phone hadn’t been on the blink (Reith’s version). Somehow, that information never reached the Prime Minister (Howard’s version). It certainly didn’t reach the Australian public until well after the election.
Bollocks – all we’ve had in any of the news reports to date is rumour from unidentified sources – the facts about what happened are still unknown. What we’re aware of is what all too many Australians are willing to believe about what refugees will do, and which politicos and columnists and editors are prepared to pander to their fears for their own political and commercial gain. But over here on the left, we knew that already – this kerfuffle is just an unpleasant reminder of how low these buggers will go.
Turns out, of course, that the nasty conservatives were right!
Of course, this is followed by a bit of frankly silly spin that after deliberately dousing the boat with petrol it ‘accidentally blew up’, but anyone who owns a boat or indeed anything about petrol will see through that in a moment.
I wouldn’t take Chris Toolman’s word on the time of day, let alone information from ‘Government sources’ regarding a controversial issue such as this.
The man is a Liberal party propagandist and a member of the Christian right, having stood for the ACT legislative assembly for one of the fringe Christian groups.
I’d like to do a FOI application on how many complaints he has been the subject of. I personally know of quite a few.
The asylum seekers, both now and in 2001, may have deliberately sabotaged their boat. In each case it would surely be to ensure they are not left at sea or back to Indonesia when they are attempting to get to Australia. A dangerous tactic no doubt but given what they would have already gone through, not all that surprising.
As for children overboard, that was an explicit claim made by Reith and Howard. What’s more it was made before the reports had made their way to the head of Defence. And yes, three days before the election Reith was explicitly told by the then acting head of Defence, Angus Houston, that the Defence department could not back the claim up with evidence. The end result was the politicization of the members of the Navy and others involved in the operations, something that this government is clearly trying to avoid by waiting for the official reports to come in rather than relying on individual messages sent from the ships through the chain of command.
Anyone defending Howard and Reith should contemplate the interview between Virginia Trioli and Reith in the election campaign. He said he would provide evidence of the children overboard claim. He produced still photos of a boat sinking and people in the water with life jackets on. She questioned if that was proof of children being thrown overboard. He claimed this would mean questioning the reports of members of the defence forces. It was actually questioning the reporting of these reports by the government in the middle of an election campaign.
What, you think they intended to incinerate themselves Epetar?
Who’s being silly now?
Sorry Barge, but Reith and the last govt adduced misleading photos of a separate rescue incident the day after, showing people in the water. All the conclusions they jumped to in the first few days were found to be false or incorrrect by the Senate inquiry.
Im proud this government is refusing to reach unsupported conclusions about what happened until there’s a police investigation. For one thing, what if there were criminal charges to follow? Turnbull and Barnett are threatening the viability of any police prosecution, and have been acting like absolute asses.
In the meantime, the flow of information has been quite regular. I fail to see what some elements of the media are banging on about – they want ministers to fraw conclusions ahead of the police?
And more imprtantly – Ive never heard Debus or Evans suggest the asylum seekers *hadnt* put petrol on the boat. So where’s the cover-up? What a furphy!
“Turns out, of course, that the nasty conservatives were right!”
Ah, but Epetar, the “nasty conservatives” are always right just rarely correct. Morality is proving a weak spot, as well.
“I’d like to do a FOI application on how many complaints he has been the subject of. I personally know of quite a few.”
Adrian@150 that would be most interesting.
Last night on ABC TV News Chris Uhlmann was dreadful in his so called “news” piece on asylum seekers. I wish I could get a transcript of that and not just the report that Epetar quotes from above. He worked his right wing perspective into the item unashamedly. It could have been a Liberal Party advertisement.
Chris Uhlmann’s performance was always abysmal under the Howard government. However now that the ALP are in control he definately shouldn’t be sacked or warned. A tough media keeps government honest. If anything we need more Uhlmanns, Ackermans and Bolts.
“If anything we need more Uhlmanns, Ackermans and Bolts.”
Please explain.
Dear ABC,
I hereby request information regarding the total number of official complaints made to Audience and Consumer Affairs regarding journalist Chris Uhlmann.
I enclose a cheque for thirty dollars.
Many thanks,
____________
[signature]
Yes Liam, I know. Just have to work out if it’s worth $30 or not.
PeterTB
And anyone else pushing the “children overboard” line.
Fact: The Liberals were either incorrect accidentaly or deliberately lying about THAT particular incident, I dont mind which people chose to believe.
FACT: It happened and was threatened on other boats, as the senate report into a “certain maritme incident” explicitly states.
It is quite dishonest to pick one fact (children overboard never happened on THAT particular boat)without referencing the rest of the incidents which occoured.
In particular this one.
1.43 At this point:
Threats of self-harm and deliberate damage to the SIEV were made and attempted. Incidents included threats to jump overboard, threats to throw a child overboard, PIIs [potential illegal immigrants] actually jumping into the water, dousing themselves with fuel, damage to guy wires of SIEV mast, damage to railings, staring a fire in the hold, and splashing of fuel on deck.PIIs [potential illegal immigrants] broke through the SIEV’s engineering space bulkhead but were repelled by the TSE [Transport Security Element] using pepper spray.
In addition I have NEVER seen this factoid referred to in any of the reporting on the children overboard issue.
1.41 Two members of the boarding party have made sworn statements that a small child was held over the side by a woman passenger, then dropped into the water. The child was recovered by one of the male passengers already in the water, who bought the child back to the SIEV.[1560]All of those who entered the water were safely returned to the SIEV.
If anyone wishes to here is the link to the report here.
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/maritime_incident_ctte/report/f04.htm
It would be nice and intulectualy honest if any of the people commenting on this could at least have the decency to ralise it isnt as simple as “Howard lied”, or “Rudds responsible”.
Ahh tssk, keeping the ‘government honest’ requires objective, fact based reporting, and impartial, intelligent analysis.
Guess that rules out the tripe that you referred to. Using tripe in its colloquial sense of course.
“Yes Liam, I know. Just have to work out if it’s worth $30 or not.”
And besides, Liam, I bet Chris is now quivering in his Liberal Loafers that someone just might spend it on that, rather than the next Billy Bragg CD.
adrian.
That “tripe” is the senate enquiry into the children overboard affair.
If you think thats “tripe” then what do you consider evidence?
Or does it take you out of your “comfort zone” to read sworn statements about some of the negative activities on the boats?
Mole,
More precisely, that tripe was from the minority, government members report of the inquiry: far from being sworn testimony (available in the hearing transcripts, it’s the Howard government’s preferred interpretation of events, reinforced with carefully selected excerpts of testimony. That testimony had taken the government’s committee members were way outside their comfort zones, so it’s no surprise that their minority report was such a schemozzle.
mole- The tripe that I was referring to was not the seante enquiry, but certain individuals to whom tssk referred. Please read more carefully in future before making incorrect assumptions.
When I went to see Bragg at the Enmore Theatre during a tour in October 2001, I heard this middle-aged couple talking about the show—during which he’d talked at length about racism and immigration in the UK and Australia, and about the Tampa affair—afterwards. The bloke said to the woman that he’d enjoyed the music and that Billy was a great vocalist but that he “wished he could tone down the politics a bit”.
One of those WTF moments that’s stuck with me.
Apologes to Adrian, I misread yours as responding to mine.
Gummo, So you dismiss that section of the report I linked to as fabrication? Note I havent said it vindicates the last government if they lied deliberately, however given the full background of incidents dont you think there is a deliberate pattern of life threatening behaviour being engaged in?
I mean FFS theres even an incident of fuel being used in circumstances similar to what has just killed 5 people.
Asylum seekers are people under stress, not angels or devils, would it kill you to step out and say some of their behaviour was out of line?
Yes Liam, you hear that comment quite a bit in a relation to any singer who dares to include politics in their work.
Watching Eliza Gilkyson recently, it occurred to me that artists with political commitments have to develop, through force of personality a defence against these sort of attitudes. Or maybe they begin with that sort of personality in the first place.
Anyway, this is just one of her great songs: LINK
“artists with political commitments have to develop, through force of personality a defence against these sort of attitudes. Or maybe they begin with that sort of personality in the first place.”
Or just embarrassment and the usual excuses.
Good story Liam@165. I am not sure whether those kind of moments are designed to lead us to tears or laughter. Po-jama people, people!
I find the general reluctance to admit that desperate people who have been subjected directly and vicariously to hideous trauma may actually act out in ways that may seem problematic and difficult to understand quite self defeating.
Not sure why its so difficult to acknowledge. If my life and the future of my family was on the line, and i had just come out of a situation where seeing the corpses of my neighbours was almost normal i think i might just act out in some pretty bizarre ways. I may get a bit hysterical like a cornered rat. I might bite the hand of those trying to save me.
Pretending this is not the case seems a dangerous case of the Emperors New Clothes.
Why not realistically accept that these people quite expectedly may require lots of support, and move on from there?
The issue no longer becomes the ‘morality’ of illegal immigrants, but our capacity to humanely respond to the needs of others.
The really funny thing about your story, Liam, is that the Braggster actually has a pretty ordinary voice, and he still hasn’t learnt how to tune his fucking guitar (or at least he hadn’t when I enjoyed him at the BDO a couple of years ago).
The thing is, the politics is all he has.
He also writea a pretty good love song, David Irving.
OK, Fine, you’ve got me there. I’d forgotten the love songs, and they are good.
I should perhaps have said that the politics and the songwriting are all he has.
Yeah his loves songs aren’t too bad, but he’s not the greatest musician. I’ve still got half a dozen of his CDs though – he’s a great songwriter..
Thanks to Bragg, I can’t look at a map of northern NSW without singing to myself “I don’t want Inverell, I’m not searching for New England, I’m just looking for Armidale”.
… as you all were.
Sometimes erratic our BB, but Workers’ Playtime is an unmitigated delight.
His happy songs are shite though. Much better angry or whimsically sad or just plain sad (cf Levi Stubbs’ Tears).
The Mermaid Avenue outings with Wilco were pretty cool too – esp Vol 1 – but Woody Guthrie’s lyrics tend to the laughable.
But the roughness of the voice is what sells the songs in his case.
So… nobody saw what I did there at 168?
For shame.
I see it FDB, I see it.
I didn’t catch it until you pointed it out, FDB. But then I was in the middle of having my hair ethically cut.
Yep, ‘Ingrid Bergman’ always makes me laugh, with all its bad sexual innuendo.
Well now I feel like a total lamo for pointing it out.
Ethically cut, eh Liam? Do they send the cuttings off to a merkin factory for the lice-infested pubises of the developing world?
That’s the lyrical nadir of the album, I agree Fine.
Unfortunately, the tune’s great. I had it stuck in my head for days not long ago, but couldn’t repress the words. Gah!!!
That’s up there with Howard saying he liked Bob Dylan for the music.
Waiting for the great leap forward are we, FDB?
California Stars, Hesitating Beauty – wonderful, including the lyrics!
152 leftye
Diesel-powered fishing boat, so it was not a fuel leak. Navy people aboard called in some kind of ‘high threat problem’, then a few minutes later there was an explosion.
Someone poured petrol about in the boat, and it caused a petrol vapour explosion.
I’ve got no idea why they did that, you say you reckon it’s because they wanted to incinerate themselves. Why do you think that?
I wish Epetar would sat OT. Were we not talking about Billy Bragg?
“The Mermaid Avenue outings with Wilco were pretty cool too – esp Vol 1 – but Woody Guthrie’s lyrics tend to the laughable.”
A bit hard on two counts. Vol 11 has some good fun stuff with a couple of notable guest vocalist spots. And who could forget “All You Fascists”..bound to lose.(not for Andrew Reynolds eyes, though.)
Time to go ome. make that STAY OT!!!
Well, that’s the 2nd night of Chris Uhlmann banging on about Rudd “not being able to avoid these questions” without pointing to the slightest evidence that Rudd has avoided any.
Get this through your thick skull, Uhlmann: we have a thing called the rule of law in Australia. The last government was way out of line when it drew false conclusions in an unseemly rush to make political capital. That was ABNORMAL behaviour.
Waiting for a police investigation is the NORMAL way to proceed.
If you dont believe me, listen to the NT Police. Clowns like Talcum and Barnett are only compromising the possibility of any prosecutions taking place in any Australian jurisdiction.
And I ask again: name ONE piece of verified information that hasnt been immediately passed on to the press?
If you can do that, Uhlmann, why not go to Fox where your talents will be more suitable?
No, Alan@118, it’s standard practice. When some yachtsmen died in the 1998 Sydney-Hobart, nobody was Demanding Answers and carrying on like they are now. They knew what they were in for and, as yachting isn’t a cheap sport, probably had to pay for a trip that can be had for a coupla hundred from one of the red planes on a good day. Besides, I’d trust a well-considered and comprehensive report by experts in the tricky field of maritime accidents ahead of all the output of the Canberra press gallery added together and cubed.
I suspect that the Govt’s reticence is (in small part) to build some bridges with the Navy/ADF. ANY Government comment that turns out to be wrong will only open the ‘children overboard’ scars and deepen their mistrust of the Govt.
Gosh, imagine what Reith would have said if he were Defence Minister now, and compare it with Fitzgibbon’s low profile. (The Home Affairs minister is the proper person to be speaking for the Govt on this, of course, and his current reticence is also proper.)
joe2 @ 189 (and others) – there’s a nice Woody Guthrie cover here.
The words are OK, I reckon.
epetar @ 187, why the fuck would they have petrol on a diesel-powered boat (except maybe to run the cooking stoves)?
I want evidence, not innuendo or Howard-era lies.
I’m loving the govt not playing the media and opposition’s bullshit games.
Welcome to the new political culture guys. You might want to smell the wind. I reckon you’re in for 9 years worth at least. You sure you wanna piss the new breed off?
Bob Debus on Lateline tonight was brilliant.
Yep. Agree.
A dignified, old style, performance by Bob…stick to what you know is the correct approach and keep reminding the interviewer that his line is bullshit.
And David Irving (no relation)@194 that cover is bookmarked. Woody was writing great material well before his time. Think again FDB!
Uhlmann was amazing on ABC news last night. I ran out of shoes to throw at the screen after a few minutes.
Why did I say we needed more like him?
Easy?
For one it definately puts paid to the criticism that the ABC is some sort of left wing snake pit.
Secondly one of the biggest issues at the end of the last government was the complete capitulation of the press. Not out of some massive right wing pressure (which used to be my view) but out of laziness. Recrafting the same government press releases to suit the narrative.
The people that used to annoy me the most in the last political cycle are now the most important in that they will stop Rudd from becoming relaxed and comfortable.
195 David Irving
Good question. They usually use firewood or kero for cooking. Maybe leftye was right with his accusation that they wanted to incinerate themselves!
heh
Why have an old leaky boat when better boats are available. Happens time and time again that odl boats are used, and lives are lost. If this boat had not exploded, the asylum seekers would be in detention centres by now and having their problems sorted out.
“Why have an old leaky boat when better boats are available.”
Better still, why be poor, desperate, persecuted for your beliefs and from some shitty hellhole in the first place? What’s the matter with these people? Why, they don’t even have good dress sense!
“Woody was writing great material well before his time. Think again FDB!”
Okay, but I did say “tends” to the laughable – there are only a handful of tracks I don’t like (She Came Along to Me on Vol I being the worst offender), and then it’s only the lyrics – Wilco and BB (with an honoarable mention to Natalie Merchant) do wonders with the rest.
I’d give 10,000 honorable mentions to Natalie Merchant.
Maniac.
I’m guessing Epetar is the kind of person who’s comfortable with blaming the victim.
“I’d give 10,000 honorable mentions to Natalie Merchant.
And 5,000 to Corey Harris. I love “Aginst Th’ Law.”
“The ABC also understands that before the incident the Federal Government received advice from the Australian Federal Police – that Labor’s policies would lead to more boat arrivals.”
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2546987.htm
If that is correct representation of the facts by the ABC and not spin, another reason for heads to roll in the AFP.
Why?
“Why?”
Because they are leaking like a sieve, information designed to embarras the government. Just like Department of Defence, Liberal Party moles need to get the chop.
GregM
“Why ?”
Perhaps because the AFP does not have a brief to make political commentary ?
Joe2, if there was a leak what evidence do you have that it came from the AFP? Governments are known to leak as well.
Petrosaur, in what respect would it be political commentary for a governmnt agency to point out to the government the consequences of their policy? I would have thought that that is exactly what governments expect them and pay them to do- you know, all that public service “to give advice without fear or favour” stuff that LPers rabbit on about when it is convenient for them to do so.
It is the highly politically charged way in which the report is framed GregM…
“….that Labor’s policies would lead to more boat arrivals.” It may be mischievous reporting from the ABC but it does sound like a department pushing a political barrow. That aint giving “advice without fear or favour”.
And Greg, where else would such a leak come from other than within AFP? Given that Aunty didn’t make it up.
“Petrosaur, in what respect would it be political commentary for a governmnt agency to point out to the government the consequences of their policy”
In the respect that the Agency entered the “political” sphere of comment through the (public) proposition of value judgements (based upon ideology ?) as opposed to the provision of “value free” advice to their political masters – and it seems the AFP have some prior form in this area, judging from the Haneef fiasco.
I had assumed that you are or were a public servant, GregM (from some of your previous posts) – was it the Defence Dept.? Notwithstanding, if you are a public servant, I am quite sure that you are well aware of the limits placed upon your ability to use information gained in the course of your work to advance your own views. If my assumption is incorrect, well you’ll just have to accept that, in my experience, no politician has ever permitted public servants to use their “privileged information” to push their own view(s) without repercussion.
As an (unrelated) example – there was a “blanket” instruction given to Tasmania’s public servants at the time of the “Gordon below Franklin” dispute to the effect that any public servant who was found to have attended the protests would be dismissed. I state this categorically, as I was one of those so affected.
But then again, perhaps you are just trolling as usual.
Joe2, in what way is it “highly politically charged” for the AFP report (which neither of us have read) to state that the government’s policies would lead to more boat arrivals if that is the reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the evidence that the AFP has gathered? They do maintain agents in Indonesia for the purpose of monitoring and suppressing people smuggling.
Do you think that if the RBA considered that a government policy was inflationary it should not tell them because that might be “highly politically charged”?
Petrosaur, since you haven’t read the report how can you conclude that the report is advancing value judgements rather than just stating conclusions drawn on evidence?
The rest of your post indicates that you must have been a very junior public servant indeed in the Tasmanian public service, in complete ignorance of how the public service works, and is intended to work, at its senior levels. Senior public servants are regulary required to comment to governments on the consequences of their policies.
# 197 Lefty E Apr 20th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Lefty E’s unreconstructed Howard-hatred bubbling just below the surface shows that he has forgotten every inconvenient fact and learned nothing of value from this unfortunate series.
The media have always been overwhelmingly in favour of upholding the rights and dignity of unauthorised maritime arrivals, irrespective of the validity of their cases. Howard was subjected to a relentless barrage of media criticism for his distortion (along way from destruction) of the truth regarding the ditching of SIEV occupants.
So far as the ALP is concerned, Rudd just called people smugglers “scum of the earth…who should rot in hell” (Its unclear if he was referring to the arsonist-saboteurs). Rudd is frantically scrambling to protect his flank from Right-wing attacks. That smells more like the old “political culture” to me. I dont remember Beazley going that far.
Although Rudd relaxed Howard’s hard-line assylum seeker policy settings he did not turn them around 180deg. And the Govt is now in the process of tightening them up, as I thought it would when the policy was relaxed (although I did not publish a formal prediction at the time). The Australian reviews the Rudd record:
FWIW, I have always been cautiously in favour of relaxing border protection in favour of legitimate assylum seekers. Like about 75% of the country I subscribe to a wishy-washy Christian morality and the Australian “fair go”. I clumsily argued on 26AUG2004:
My reservations about increased border liberalism were based on the Left-liberals typically self-righteous grandstanding about the issue, indifferent or ignorant to popular concerns. Also the incorrigible multicultural philosophy which makes the business of integrating foreign dissidents and persecutees that much more difficult. As we have seen with the Somali case.
Both Rudd, the general public and Blind Freddie can see that, ceteris paribus, tighter border protection discourages people smugglers. And laxer border protection encourages people smugglers. (Although push may trump pull in total.)
More people smuggling, as I have been arguing for years, leads to more people drowning. Is that what Left-liberals want?
Comrades, I am getting tired of all this crediting the Tories with locking up the Vietnamese Bolts and Ay-Rabs. That was MY victory and Keating’s!
Jack, you claim that:
And that:
Yet:
Logically, it is you who favour increased drownings. Care to shed light on the internal logic here? I can’t see it.
Yeah Gummo, we all know about Mr Reith and his mobile phone. He’d probably given it to his son to lend to the friend of a friend of a friend of someone he met at the pub on Friday night.
thewetmale @152, as I remember, the photos had been cropped so that they only showed the children in the water. The woman from Defence who’d printed the photos said as much after Howard and Reith had them splashed over the front pages, so they could whip up anti-asylum-seeker sentiment prior to the election.
All their bullsh*t that they were unaware the photos didn’t show the true picture was just that! They peddled the photos and their disgraceful and outrageous lies to the world at large ever before the Navy had given them a true account of what happened! It was like watching vampires feasting on the bodies of their unfortunate victims.
The worst thing about this entire affair, imo, is that all the dog-whistling and subsequent appalling treatment of the asylum-seekers was pure cynicism. I don’t think Reith, Ruddock, Vanstone or the Rodent really had strong views about the asylum-seekers, but to satisfy their lust for power they were prepared to re-victimise people who were already very fragile and powerless to defend themselves.
I never had a very high opinion of the Rodent, but it sank to even more subterranean depths after his treatment of the asylum-seekers.
# 219 Liam Apr 22nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
My “anti-people drowning policy” is not stated in big, bold child-like letters but it is implicit in my argument or available to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
Obviously some forms of “tighter border protection” can deter the dangerous people smuggling trade and reduce the chances of people drowning without necessarily violating the rights of legitimate asylum seekers or submitting unauthorized arrivals to unnecessary indignity.
I am, as stated, more or less against the nastier bits of Howard’s “tighter border protection” political tactics and policy settings. As quoted in the comment:
I am also, FWIW, not very supportive of TPV’s. As I said in 17AUG06:
This analysis still stands. If Rudd wants to humanely solve the people smuggling problem he will probably have to do what Howard did to achieve that and write another big cheque to whoever looks after these matters in Indonesia. As I have constantly and boringly and pompously re-iterated, Howard Me-tooism is forever.
Perhaps, in future, you should not try and put too much weight on your logical analysers. They seem to have blown a valve along the way and are blowing alot of smoke.
Tens of thousands of people are currently fleeing the war zone in Sri Lanka. I was watching ABC News, watching a man sitting in a bus with the dead body of his child. He was weeping. All the people on the latest refugee boat intercepted today are reported to be Sri Lankan. Which is to say, it suggests that the push factors in the country of origin seem to have a lot more to do with who is on the latest boat, rather than a relaxing of govt policy.
Anyway, it’s a very sad sight indeed to watch a father weep over the body of his dead child. And to know that 50,000 people have been uprooted in this latest stage of the conflict.
Politics being talked in the front bar again;
General run of opinion as to procedure the govt should follow after sighting of a vessel varies from “the Navy should torpedo ‘em” to “the Air Force should bomb ‘em”
Always glad to get up your nose, Jack – its normally a good sign I’m on the right track!
Well, if we wanted to take this seriously – we do what Fraser did in the 1970s – assure Indonesia and Malaysia that UNHCR registered refugees will be resettled.
Creating an actual queue stopped the boats coming then.
Howard’s TPV was a joke – see the 32 men arriving today? Under Howard’s family-reunion denying TPV that would have been 32 men, 25 women, and 40 kids.
Anyone who bought that outcome as “protecting our borders” was, and is, a straight-up dill. Its no accident there was a massive spike in arrivals after it came in. Sooner or later, some people are going to have to stop swallowing the nonsense they’ve been sold.
The two factors leading to reduced arrivals were a. a drop-off in refugee numbers (wow) and b. improved co-operation with Indonesia and Malaysia.
Do you agree with them? Do you think that its appropriate to kill people in Australian waters? Do you?
If I ever visit your pub Steve, remind me which way to civilisation won’t you?
Yes, how are things down at the Noose & Pogrom?
*EPIC GUFFAW*
# 224 Lefty E Apr 22nd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
You did not “get up my nose”. You teed yourself up for a good smack down. Take that you wrong-headed person!
Nor are you “on the right track” when it comes to proper border control policy. It is possible to craft a policy that deters people smuggling-drowning without resorting to Howard’s heavy-handed tactics. A combination of “good cop bad cop” abroad and at home would probably be best.
Your claim that there is a “new political culture” regarding border protection is flat wrong. A handful extra boats have washed up on our shores and its been front page news for a week or more. Rudd is demonising people smugglers and back-pedalling towards Howard’s policy, as always. This is anything but “new”, its the same old song.
Also, you have completely ignored two basic inconvenient facts, which makes me think you are just crafting a case rather than trying to get to the truth:
– laxer border protection does, ceteris paribus, encourages a certain extra amount of people smuggling and therefore extra people-drowning
– the majority do not like leaky borders under any circumstances. They have their reasons, some of them bad no doubt. But they have good reason too, namely radical distrust of Left-liberals when it comes to anything to do with cultural policy.
Who can blame them?
Lefty E says:
Its also “no accident” that people smuggling and people drowning did drop off in 2002, in some part due to some aspects of Howard’s stricter border protection policy. Exactly which bits worked “best and fairest” is a tricky question.
And people smuggling has picked up a bit more than one might expect since Rudd has relaxed control. Again, its difficult to figure out how much of the extra passages are due to push and pull. One cant rule out the latter.
Also the latest incident involving sabotage-arson of a boat on the high seas does indicate that some of those involved in people smuggling are a bad risk. Howard made unkind suggestions to this effect in 2001. No doubt for decencys sake he should have kept his piece. But obviously he had a point.
If Left-liberals spent more time on the issue of border security striking a balance bw the majority rule and minority rights rather than fatuously denouncing “racism” or pricking their ears to imperceptible dog whistles shrieking in the media then they might get somewhere.
If Lefty E is anything to go by they are still stuck in the endless Howard-hating loop. Except now they dont have Howard to kick around anymore. And Rudd is obviously a poor substitute.
“…then they might get somewhere.”
Like, say, abolishing the TPV, and closing down the Pacific solution?
I suppose we can only dream, Jack.
# 230 Lefty E Apr 22nd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
I am with the Left-liberals on that and I am certainly no Left-liberal. So I suppose that one is just common sense and decency.
But the notion that Left-liberals far-sighted policies prevented further incidence of people smuggling and drowning sounds like a dream alright.
Jack, brevity is teh soul of wit. (Or something.)
I’ve just scrolled past several of your posts because, frankly, at this time of the day particularly, they are too long and too tedious to read.
Sorry, but there it is.