There’s been a bit of a debate over the rhetorical dimension of the government’s messages about asylum seekers. Is Kevin Rudd playing bad cop to Stephen Smith’s good cop? With Senator Chris Evans as straight man, and loud denunciator of the evils of the opposition’s inhumanity… (They richly deserve the condemnation, though. Even Malcolm Turnbull looked embarrassed trying on his Howardian “we will decide who comes to this country” lines in parliament the other day).
The truth is that this scenario is probably about right. It’s all part of the Rudd government’s famous balancing act.
But the more important questions go unanswered. Why are no political leaders prepared to speak the truth about why there’s so much angst out there about asylum seekers in the first place. Why won’t commentators stop hiding behind characterisations of the issue as “emotional”? (And I heard two journos on the ABC radio this morning dancing around the topic, while seeming to pat themselves on the back over the cleverness of the phrase “the Indonesian solution”.)
Bob Ellis puts these questions plainly:
Am I alone in finding this bizarre? If letting “these people” in is a disastrous idea, can we name one, just one, who shouldn’t be here? Who has proved a bad citizen? Just one? If not, what are we talking about? Who are we protecting ourselves from? Why are we burning their rescuers’ boats? If the refugees were Swiss or Belgian or white South Africans or white Zimbabweans, would we be making this fuss? If there were votes lost taking them why did Peter Andren triple his majority in 2001, three months after Tampa, by saying we should let them in? Argued his case well, I guess.
For the same reason no politician wants to talk about the fact that the vast, vast majority of people who actually are here illegally flew here on tourist visas from places like the US and UK.
Well, how about those guys who are alleged to have engaged in a terrorist conspiracy to attack Holdsworthy?
Oh, hang on, they came in through the frontdoor of our humanitarian immigration program, didn’t they? After rigorous offshore processes were followed.
Just as well they weren’t queue jumpers.
Surely there must be some Liberal/NP parliamentarian who wasn’t born here. (See, I named one.)
The issue is where responsibility lies for the asylum seeker should they die at sea, become lost at sea or even pay for journey that does not eventuate by scammers. The government will get blamed either way and they do have a responsibility to stop the trafficking of humans compared to years gone by where individuals were held more accountable for their actions. We are a nanny state now and many of us have lost many freedoms due to the blame culture that has built up over time. So part and parcel of the new world we live in. The government has to protect us from ourselves.
It is a fine balancing act discouraging voyages (which can be unsafe and costly for the refugees involved) and taking a humanitarian stance at the same time. You don’t want to encourage people to gain refugee status this way so the government needs to perhaps look at an extra migrant intake on top of the UN one, in order to help people in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq. The use of “illegals” “que jumpers” and all that terminology is just poor.
Bernard Keane in today’s crikey makes the point that our humanitarian immigration program has not been substantially increased for the past ten years. On Pollbludger recently I compared the 13,750 positions with the 15.2 million people identified by the UNHCR as refugees in their Global Trends 2008 report.
Unless I’m mistaken (yes, ok, mildly defensive about my maths skills) that’s 0.09%.
As I said there, perhaps bumping it up to 0.1% of recognized need might be slightly more respectable for a country that apparently has uniquely good economic fortunes at the moment.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that someone whose desire to leave their homeland behind was so strong that they would take such risks to get here would be making a pretty impressive stantement of their commitment to the new country …
One of the other odd things I hear is the proposition that these are people who are simply seeking a better life. Gosh! Seeking a better life you say? Can’t have that kind of attitude here can we?
While I do realise that an open door immigration policy would not be politically or economically maintainable, it does seem to me that there’s a lot of room between that and what we are doing now. On a world scale using immigration policies to deal with human rights abuses will almost certainly out to be more cost effective in fostering good outcomes than invading places and sending in “peace-keeping” forces.
Quite right, Fran. How dare these people seek to have a better life? Next thing they’ll be whingeing about dodging bullets and persecution!
Fran @7: “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that someone whose desire to leave their homeland behind was so strong that they would take such risks to get here would be making a pretty impressive stantement of their commitment to the new country …”
Actually desire to escape country A, does not necessarily translate into “commitment” to country B. Even if they “choose” to go there.
I was studying Norwegian at a community college at the time of the Bosnian crisis, and we had a lot of refugees in the classroom. Amazingly, for a bunch of people that had fled a war-torn country and were being housed, fed, educated, provided copious social/emotional support etc, they were a very ungracious and ungrateful lot.
They had a lot of negative things to say about the Norwegian system – about failure to educate their kids in their mother tongue (minor problem in supply of qualified teachers with relevant language skills), about lack of muslim facilities (schools, mosques, religious instruction, etc), about lack of jobs for people with poor English and poor Norwegian language skills, and not least about settling other refugees from the opposite side of the conflict in the same towns.
For goodness sake, as if the Norwegians should expect them to bury the hatchet as refugees? And worse yet, trying the refugees under Norwegian law for continuing to get stuck into each other with knives in their new country! And how amazingly slack of the Norwegian authorities not to tend to every refugee need perfectly and immediately?
They didn’t want to go back to Bosnia, even after hostilities ended. However, there was no detectable corresponding commitment to Norway.
The typical response to questioning about their motivations “you just don’t understand…” In the end, the Norwegian government decided that they didn’t understand either, and packed them up with free flights home after the hostilities ended. Many didn’t want to go, despite their dissatisfaction with their host country.
“In the end, the Norwegian government decided that they didn’t understand either, and packed them up with free flights home after the hostilities ended. Many didn’t want to go, despite their dissatisfaction with their host country.”
I think you should admit the possibility that those complaining and those wanting to stay may not have been the same people.
Well since we are doing “anecdote is data”, Elise …
Speaking as someone who teaches refugees from a wide variety of lands, I can say that they are absolutely thrilled to be here, despite the difficulties and challenges.
FDB @9, perhaps, but I can think of some that were one and the same people.
People are not internally consistent. Some are worse than others, in terms of simultaneously holding what appear to be mutually exclusive points of view.
To put it simplistically, I would guess that the apparent inconsistency is due to not wanting to go back to a poor and war-despoiled nation, compared with living conditions in a modern and wealthy nation, but expecting that they could create a small ethnic enclave to retain their own tradition and language.
That is, they were unhappy because they actually wanted a little Bosnia within Norway, and the Norwegians weren’t being overly obliging about that idea. Hence the apparently inconsistent views.
While P J O’Rourke was a pain in the a** on Q&A the other week, he was entirely right in that these educated people are an economic plus for Australia and we should find a way to welcome them. And what better test of their abilities than this kind of seafaring “Outward Bound” exercise a la Duke of Edinburgh program or the replica Endeavour. It’s more than a little like the type of rite of passage tests we apply to upper-class locals who are emerging as good citizens!
In support of Elise, there are ghettos in the southern suburbs of Perth chock full of people who won’t commit to Australia.
Even though we paid for them to come here as long as fifty years ago they still talk of “home” as being the UK and refuse to become Australian citizens. I say “Send them back!”. The ungrateful wretches.
Zoot:
Are those the pasty folks you hear whining about the Freo Doctor after moving to the windiest part of a famously windy city?
Give ‘em a dictation test in Gaelic.
Fran @10, I said “does not necessarily translate”. There is a difference.
Fran, you should be careful to distinguish what someone says to a person they consider to be an authority figure (including teachers and bosses), especially if they control evaluation or recommendations which might affect future progress. It may be quite different to what they say amongst themselves privately.
The Bosnian refugees were exceptional in their bluntness and outspokenness, especially when they were speaking from a position of religious righeousness about muslim values.
However, if you had ever lived in an expatriate environment, you would know that people endlessly ask how you are finding things. It becomes hard to find original replies, and people are generally wanting to hear compliments, so you develop a well-honed response. Most expatriates are discrete about any difficulties.
To continue anecdote as data, I was endlessly asked what I thought of living in the Netherlands decades ago. I mostly disliked it, partly due to an abusive bullying boss (the local Dutch staff called him “cancer” behind his back), and partly a lot of other reasons. A large proportion of expatriates in that division of the company had similar feelings of discomfort. Did we tell the Dutch management and inquisitive strangers what we really thought? How much good would that do?
It is indeed lower middle class spitefulness disguised as “rhetoric” emanating from the Coalition godhead and distributed through the usual channels.
But, as Mark alluded to, these conduits now include the ABC. And you can add SBS News in this fold as their nightly bulletins clearly eclipse commercial network news for “illegal immigrant” hysteria.
This editorial pollution of the ABC and SBS has been going on for years and I am surprised and disappointed that so few commentators have caught on to this shameless hijack.
And please get rid of this godawful purple.
No, Sir Henry
You’d have ‘em leaping onto the wharf, breaking their legs and filling up the Casualty departments of our major hospitals.
I say that Inspector Wilson Tuckey should be seconded to Christmas Island to assess the terroristic impulses of the detainees. In his lunch break, stand him under a tall coconut palm.
A second jolt may knock the sense back in, which the first jolt knocked out.
Bosnians and the like are crazy swordboys!
Rudd’s preposterous assertion, repeated again on the 7.30 Report just now, is that taking asylum seekers plucked on the high seas back to Indonesia is for humanitarian reasons. Think about it taxpayers. what if the ship wonders around in circles for a fortnight? Why is Kevin going on with this childish rubbish when even the most obtuse and unworldly among us can see that it is a crude political defensive strategy to gameplay an opposition who are baiting him to get a bit of political traction their way from the xenophobes in the electorate. It is turning out to be pathetically stupid, because traction there is little at this stage. I tried to follow Sharman Stone’s reasoning the other night. Thankfully, parliament is going into recess. I personally could do without parliamentary days altogether. Jeez…
I couildn’t be bothered watch K.rudd on the 7.30 Report tonight. Went on liner instead. The last politician who made me do that was Ratty. Is there a message there?
Rudd is simply covering his sorry arse a la ratty and the merchant wanker. None of them are prepared to admit to the vast increase in migration, and therefor using folk who arrive on boats make them seem to be doing something via the back door whilst welcoming migrants who suit the purposes of a select few through the media compliant front door. When was the last time we saw any main-stream media outlet object to the “legal” arrivals pouring out of the terminals?
Double standard all round, and the miserly amount of people arriving on boats shows these despicable bastards for the hypocrites they surely are.
Personally, I think the more refugees the better from many points of view. It seems that there is a funny sort of potential wedge in the Liberal Party on this. Many migrant groups, including those who effectively came as refugees(of a sort) from WW2 and eastern Europe actually vote Liberal. An influx of migrants of whom refugees are a subset really grow the economy. So what are the Libs? Anti-growth and anti-business, and anti-their own constituency if past trends are anything to go on.
Otoh, there is a potential wedge for the ALP in that there is plenty of ’shock – horror’ at the prospect of 35 million in this country as reported a week back. Add a few million refugees, and with a bit of natural increase in their population and we could easily bump that to 40 million. A bit angsty for the green factions in the ALP methinks.
However, if one then says one should limit any intake for sustainability reasons, you come bump hard back to prioritising and the politics of queue jumping.
I also find it pretty immoral to have a skills based program. We are filling skilled positions here, because we are not training enough of our own people, and robbing poor countries of skills they desperately need. If we bring in people on the cheap, I reckon we ought to compensate the countries that we nick them from fairly.
Marks @23: “…Add a few million refugees”
At the moment the coast guard are fending off, say, a boatload a week? Easy peasy!
Bangladesh has 142 million people. It is only just above sea level.
How many boatloads/day through the “back door”, if the sea level rises a couple of metres, and inundates a large proportion of Bangladesh?
There could be a lot of inundated folks in the Netherlands at the same time, with money to buy airfares and enter through the “front door”?
Don’t know why people are fretting over a future skills shortage…
Anyway, I thought the latest Aussie strategy was to outsource production, engineering services and even backoffice services to other countries with cheaper labour costs? Even highly skilled jobs like resources design work, and confidential matters like people’s banking information…
Aren’t you so glad that we have a coherent strategy for our future!
Elise,
“Aren’t you so glad that we have a coherent strategy for our future!”
That’s just about nailed it.
Shockingly, Elise, people are allowed to piss on the country they live in, and it matters not a whit. God, what is LP if not a bunch of Australians ceaselessly whining about their country?
If that’s the biggest problem you had with the precious few Bosnians you happened to meet (and that, by the way, is sooooooooooooooooooooooo relevant to Tamil refugees in Australia in 2009), then 1. You need a flipping reality check as to what real problems are, and 2. You should meet my nana. You two would get along like a house on fire.
Patrickg @26, the comments were specifically in response to the assumption that all refugees are automatically highly committed to a new country. I was pointing out that it was an unjustified generalisation.
In fact, what one more thoughtful Bosnian said was “It is easier for someone who has the luxury of choice to commit to a new country. We refugees don’t feel commitment because we don’t have a choice.”
It seemed like inverted logic at the time. I thought at the time that having a lousy alternative option would make the decision easier. Possibly Fran and others see things that way also?
In retrospect, a forced choice is not really a choice, so maybe people subconsciously resent and resist adopting something which is “put upon them” due to forces beyond their control?
LOL Patrick @ 26.
If you wanted to read ‘whining’, just visit some of the right wing blogs after the last federal election. My my, weren’t the Australian electorate all stupid then.
I sort of figure that the ‘answer’ to refugee problems is to fix the governance in the countries that they are fleeing from.
At the moment I think the world is where we were at a century ago with domestic violence. If someone was subject to DV, nobody would go onto the premises to solve a domestic dispute. It was a ‘domestic’. However, if someone had the resources to flee, they could find accommodation in a shelter. With the attendant argument about how we should not make those shelters too friendly or accessible – after all, we didn’t want to become inundated by people fleeing domestic violence. Until we worked out that it was important to make the violence stop, and make those perpetrating the violence face some consequences for their actions, nothing much improved.
I predict that until we have a robust system which protects human rights in the countries from whence refugees are fleeing, we will continue to have a flood of people who would rather be there than here, but for the violence.
They always refer to it as an emotional issue because it is, and always will be no matter what country you are talking about. People ‘not like us’ always give opportunity to play the groups evolved xenophobia, it is a part of nature that takes effort to overcome even for the educated rational. It is a base emotional reaction that can bite and all politicians know it.
The Howard Govt were the masters of knowing how to push those xenophobe buttons.
Rudd if had taken the high moral humane ground would have left the field wide open for any number of xenophobe tricks by the Liberals and ended up dividing the community and putting an end to discussion and instead have the populace lining up behind the one that represents their cause.
Rudd would have been making matters much worse if he did what many here say he should, but with the holier than thou hand-wringers and whiners of the hard left it is not surprising. Theirs is always an all or nothing position that is bound to fail and throw us back to HowardBush era racism and xenophobia.
Rudd has played this as best it can, making it very difficult for the Liberals to evoke the same old base emotion in the population with it also being hard for them to attack him from the left. By straddling the ground he has he removes much heat from the issue and has stopped it diving deep into an unpleasant mire.
The hard left here had their way we would be now in a racism based national debate that would legitimise half the population in letting lose their base emotion as they lined up behind the Liberals. Fools
I propose that Bob Ellis be replaced with a markov chain text generator which accuses everyone but him and his mates of racism. Such a program could continue to collect grants and freelance cheques more or less indefinitely, much as the original does. But it would require no smoke to be blown up anyone’s bum, thus being more climate-friendly than the original grumpy old windbag.
Elise, your mention of Bosnians in Norway has reminded me of something.
At about the same time, I was in Puckapunyal (doing some Army course) which, you may remember, had a heap of Bosnians housed in WWII tin huts (or something). I saw very little of them, and that little gave me a reasonably positive opinion of them. But. The course staff (who were there all the time, but possibly racists so who knows) had a low opinion of them.
Well said CMMC @ 18 (except about the purple). Having made a similar comment on another thread about the ABC and its deterioration into a pale imitation of commercial news media, I’d say most here have either come to accept this or don’t care either way.
I think it’s disgraceful that one of the few supposedly independent news outlets in the country has been neutered to such an extent that it’s often little more than an extension of News Ltd. The asylum seeker issue is just the latest example.
Elise, above, its great you have personal experiences to speak of regarding refugees (most don’t) – but I have to point out to you that Bosnians were only ever on temporary humanitarian visas in places like Norway and Australia. We had them in Tasmania for a few years – and then they were shipped home, when the conflict died down – as had always been the plan with that group.
They werent Convention refugees – who are individually assessed – but a mass displacement housed temporarily on an emergency basis, outside the Convention.
Might explain the lack of commitment to the host nation – compared to Convention refugees.
CMMC@18: if you were a more regular visitor at this purple palace of dissent you would know that adrian@33 has been banging on for ages about the right wing wallowing of the ABC News Rooms, and I have yet to see here any disagreement.
The ABC has the opportunity of a lifetime, with the implosion of the News Ltd empire around the world, to invest in and expand investigative reporting and raise the standard of independent journalism in this country.
Unfortunately, after a decade of Howardism, the ABC News Rooms are now bereft of any mature talent, high principle or institutional memory, and they now just lazily parrot the front page of the Australian, including the latest refugee hysteria. No longer does our public broadcaster set the daily news agenda, as it once proudly did,
It will be a long struggle for the ABC to crawl back up out of this swamp of ignorance and naivete, and Mark Scott is not the man for the job. He understands the strategic challenge as his recent speeches indicate, but he is doing what any mediocre bean-counter would, and investing in expansion instead of consolidation.
Incidentally, the outpouring of grief on the ABC over the past two days about the passing of Don Lane from Channel Nine is nothing short of hilarious, but a perfect example of how the ABC has completely lost its way.
I didn’t notice the Don Lane stuff on the ABC.
What I’m actually trying to do is get rid of that nasty little troll rebirthing old threads. Surely it can’t be accidental? Have we inadvertently upset some LP/NP staffer.
Born in 1935, I was a pre-war kid who did not know his dad, because he had enlisted in the second AIF by September 1939.
One day, he came home from the war ‘Shell Shocked’, a drunk and violent bastard.
As a result I have spent most of my life suffering PTSD. My mother fled to Victoria from Sydney because she feared I would kill my own father. At 13 I had become proficient in defending my mother and sisters by knocking him unconscious by hitting him with beer bottles and half house bricks to the back of his head, while he bashed or strangled my mother thinking she was a Nazi in the Afrika Corps.
So my interest in how he got that way, led me to join the Army so as to learn more about his war and what it was to be a ’Digger’.
By then wave after wave of Dagoes, Balts, New Australians and displaced persons of all kinds, among them Germans, fled to this country from an utterly destroyed Europe.
Through those years I found that Menzies was able to send us to war simply because we were British first and Australian second. That he sent us to Korea, to a ’secret war’ in Indonesian Sarawak (10,000 troops including SAS) in 1964, and begged the Vietnamese Govt to ask us for our help in a vain effort to ensure the US would remain our great and powerful friend.
All of this occurred without once consulting the Australian people.
When the UN led by Bert Evatt and aided by Jessie Street moved to make the declaration of human rights the wonderful commitment it is. I wept with pride at being an Ozzie.
But, as time proved in our history, it was all downhill from there because, while Menzies sought to re-create a conservative political force in this country after the United Australia Party self-destructed. The Labor government was knowingly admitting Nazi war criminals combatants and collaborators as refugees.
After 1945, the Chifley government found itself in an environment where the US provoked the Cold War against Soviet Union. De-nazification was stopped in Germany and fascists still dominated the police and military in Italy, Chile, Argentina and South Africa.
Chifley locked Australia into the western security web and in doing so surrendered our national sovereignty to the new intelligence order in Washington, and created ASIO, ASIS, DIO and DSD to enforce the interests of the ANZUS alliance over those of Australian citizens.
When Menzies was elected in 1949, his government set about implementing the Communist Party Dissolution Bill, the sort of law that made Singapore, Malaysia, Argentina, Chile and till 1994, South Africa, police states.
Before the bill was thrown out by the High Court, plans were eagerly drawn up for concentration camps and internment of some 16,600 unionists and their families known as listed persons, without trial on the grounds that they were “communist agitators”. Australia narrowly escaped becoming another South Africa when Menzies referendum to overturn the court decision was lost.
Into this 1950’s mess poured the Nazis, protected and used by ASIO to control and monitor the growing migrant groups. Together with the Croatian Ustasha, Hungarian Arrow Cross, Romanian Iron Guard, the SS controlled Slovenian militia. Groups derived from former members of these were organised with the tacit support of the Menzies and successive Liberal governments. With the deposed regimes of occupied Europe now represented in the Liberal Party, pro-Nazis held significant power over preselection of Liberal Parliamentary candidates.
Urbanchich came to Australia after WWII he then found a comfortable place in the bosom of the Liberal Party, ever happy to embrace, as “good anti-communists”, from the collapse of the fascist Axis. In the 70s he (Urbanchich) headed the “Liberal Ethnic Council”. His faction known as the Uglies, control up to 30 per cent of the Liberal Party State Council votes and are the power base of Tony Abbot, Bronwyn Bishop, Philip Ruddick, John Howard and others.
Perhaps the Nazi history in our conservative parties explains the present 9,000 Volt and razor wire fences around our concentration camps, (sorry, detention centres), the racial purity tensions in our immigration department and policies and the ever present need to have a strong Fuerer.
Going back in time, prior to WWII Egon Kisch, a Jewish communist an anti-war activist and a vocal critic of Adolf Hitler’s regime; whom as a result, had his books banned and burned in Germany.
When Kisch wanted to come to visit Australia in 1934, Menzies pointed out that; “every civilized country had the right to determine who should or should not be allowed in”, and that “since Kisch was a revolutionary and that revolution involved violence, he was not to be permitted entry”.
Did you notice that nothing has changed[jlw1] ?
Today, the AFP is finding a traffic in blank visa documents to overseas where ‘people smugglers’ can get false asylum seekers into Australia for a price, with the chance of being detected as very small, because this country has, like the US, no way of technically identifying whether you have not left the country. Other than, reports from citizens with an axe to grind.
The UNHCR set up a system to process asylum seekers in Indonesia, which is bound to fail because there are simply not enough protection officers (maybe 10 to 20) to cope with the demands placed upon them, a total of 30 people, including clerical assistants, are responsible for asylum seekers in Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and East Timor.
Australia is one of only ten of the 185 member states of the United Nations (UN) who have established annual resettlement quotas above and beyond their acceptance of persons arriving spontaneously at their borders. Australia has a quota of 12,000 per year, over and above those who arrive at our borders.
We made a commitment in 1951 and again in 1967, however, after Howard’s repudiated that promise, we live with the dishonour of our word and of our forebears.
Who by the way thought they had just fought a war against Hitler to make the world a better place.
Kevin Rudd (no Bonhoeffer), should be ashamed that he so readily took up the torch we voters snatched from the hand of that politicalpigmy and bigot John Howard.
John Ward
“In support of Elise, there are ghettos in the southern suburbs of Perth chock full of people who won’t commit to Australia.”
Troll alert!
Actually, sorry Zoot, I didn’t see the irony coming.
Ward’s history above of immigration and associated active policies of seeking ‘anti-communist’ individuals, especially from those countries previously known as the ‘captive nations’ of eastern europe, is accurate and relevant. The Libs have their dark secrets and it is time they exposed to the light of day.
Has anyone commenting on this blog, apart from John Ward (@38), ever spent time in a war zone? I certainly haven’t, unless a few close encounters in an American inner city count.
I can’t help but think that people who have not known war (or comparable disruptions to a functioning society), and have not even been near it, *must* be naive about it. This is a lefty blog, and one of the big preoccupations of the western left is world peace, so this naivete has alarming implications for the realism of any prescriptions for peace that the left dreams up. (Of course, an armchair warrior is, by this reasoning, no more likely to know what they’re talking about than an armchair peacemaker.)
This post is not about how to achieve world peace, but rather a much more local example of doing good, namely, taking in refugees, asylum seekers, etc. I just want to sound two discordant notes because I do not see them being taken up elsewhere.
The first is that if you invite a refugee from violent conflict into your home or your country, you are also inviting all their troubles in. I don’t know what the percentages are, but of refugees from violent conflict, some will really start over and some will not, that’s just common sense. In the headline case of the moment – Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka – it is quite reasonable to suppose that some of them will seek to use Australia as a base from which to reconstruct Tamil Tigers 2.0. The previous version, the one that ultimately lost in the civil war, was already supported by a global network.
It is well-known (or ought to be well-known) that trying to solve the problems of people who you know nothing about may be unwise or may lead to unintended consequences – so, e.g., if you propose to meddle in the centuries-old feuds of people on the other side of the world, in order to achieve a disinterested greater good, and don’t want to end up simply being used by one side or the other, you had better do your homework. It is also well-known in daily life that if you want to be a good samaritan, you need to consider the impact on people around you who did not volunteer to be samaritans, but who will need to endure the consequences of your charitable acts anyway. (People who have lived in student share houses, and who have had a housemate decide to play host to some unfortunate wanderer of the streets, may have colorful stories to back me up here.)
So my first point is that if you wish to insist that Australia should engage in the charitable act of hosting global refugees, then you owe it to your fellow citizens to think seriously about the potential negatives of the policies you advocate. Perhaps this thinking has already been done. Bob Ellis takes the empirical approach: has anyone in fact proved to be a bad citizen? If the answer is – no-one, that’s an important fact. Even so, the discussion is almost always framed (at least by public intellectuals) in terms of Australia’s “humanitarian obligations” and whether or not we meet them. I suppose I’d like to see some similarly serious reflection on what the consequences *for Australia* of such acts might be. Perhaps they’re even a net positive.
The second point concerns the future. It is hard not to be alarmed by the spectacle of the human race adding almost a billion people to its numbers in every decade. This very clearly has the potential to create huge population movements in the future, far dwarfing anything Australia is experiencing now. I frankly doubt that there is the will in this country to simply say no to the entry of desperate millions should they start showing up on our shores, as a result of some hypothetical future crisis. We would probably end up with refugee shantytowns that would become a de-facto permanent reality and the nucleus of future towns and cities, and a consequent cultural and demographic transformation of the country. But again, I think it is naive to express disdain for John Howard’s view that Australia should decide who comes here, when events like this may loom in our future. I don’t propose to know what the optimal course for Australia is, but I would like to see some consideration of these matters by people who *are* nominally discussing what our immigration policy should be.
Mark says:
The asylum-seeker issue is inherently controversial because most people (“the populus”) get a little xenophobic when boats full of strangers turn up un-invited on their door-step. Whilst some (“the elite”) take offense at this offence.
All this may seem a little petty and ingracious. Especially since the numbers are relatively few and most of the the uninvited guests are doing nothing worse than seeking a better life for themselves and their families.
But the milk of human kindness sometimes gets a little watered down. Especially since this country’s intake program has so often been rorted, and its traditional culture trashed, by the very same people claiming to act according to moral principles in their representations on behalf of asylum-seekers.
The situation is not improved by the unorthodox modus operandi adopted by incoming asylum-seekers: un-seaworthy craft making un-authorized passage loaded with un-documented passengers. All to often self-selecting their status and second guessing their destinations. The occasional bout of scuttling hasn’t helped.
All this has given rise to a phenomenal amount of bad blood on both sides of the debate. Those opposed to the asylum-seeker influx have tended to wrap themselves in the flag and demonise the aliens as terrorists. Those supporting the asylum-seekers have tended to take the high moral ground and denounced the nationalists as heartless red-necks.
One ugly aspect of the debate is the tone of aggressive moral superiority that pervades both sides. No partisan for one side is likely to be moved by the automatic assumption on the part of the other side that he represents the spawn of Satan.
Both sides to this dispute have legitimate concerns. This is not a story of good versus evil. This is the stuff of tragedy, where two forms of good are in conflict. So perhaps its time to dismount from our, respectively wobbly, high horses.
I will start with myself to set a good example. I have been a strong supporter of Howard’s “illiberal” [sic] cultural policies which have been a great advance on the various disasters set in train by Left-liberalism in ethnic and indigenous affairs. In fact I voted for him in 2001 because, not in spite, of his strong line on the “national question”.
Generally I support the AUS govt’s long-standing efforts to deter the people-drowning smuggling industry by disruption, detection and detention. The business is unsafe for the incoming guests and unpopular amongst the over-crowded hosts.
But I’ve had my reservations. Howard’s treatment of asylum-seekers was unnecessarily brutal. The Pacific Solution, open-ended mandatory detention, TPV’s and incarcerated children went way beyond what is necessary to establish a strong anti-smuggling regime. As I pointed out on 26 AUG 2004, “fair dinkum reffos deserve a fair go”.
It would be nice if both parties to this conflict could go beyond this endless series of bitter re-criminations and acknowledge the legitimate concerns of the other side and the reservations they have with their own side. Thats probably asking too much of grown men in what passes for political debate in this country. But, as they say in cricket, “its worth a shout”.
Mitchell@42
One of the first places to start looking for fallacies is where someone adduces common sense. There’s nothing common at all about sense. Sense is the product of tutored systematic data gathering and modelling and the organised reflective process that that enables. What you want is a wave of the hand.
The record shows that Australia has had a number of waves of immigration in its history, including from places where there was violent conflict. To keep this post short, will skim the period since WW2 and what we find is that overwhelmingly, those coming in got on with their lives and became good citizens, despite the horrors of the holocaust, and in some cases guilt by association therewith, or the decolonisation process in Indochina or Tian An Men in China. They didn’t “bring their troubles here” and to the extent they did, these were their own personal demons rather than those having implications for Australia’s internal cohesion. Possibly Australia’s biggest violent internal disturbance in recent years was the series of tit-for-tat gangland slayings, and that had nothing at all to do with conflicts in some far away land.
So this is a failure, again, for “common sense”. Good sense would have been preferable, had you deployed it. You conceded you didn’t know what the percentages were but you also didn’t consider context. Part of the bonds of sustaining conflict is the robustness of the social “laager” — the circled wagons. While people feel isolated and marginalised and unable to adopt ordinary lives, they turn inward and look with suspicion and angst towards outsiders. Allow them to live as normal people do, and most prefer to make a break for it. If they are successful, others join them. Places far from the conflict zone and its usages can foster people reconsidering their possibility. The bonds of kin and clan and even language can be hard to maintain.
Not content with adducing common sense, you adduce also its twin brother, what is quite reasonable to suppose. More handwaving. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were certainly by 2000, a quite ruthless band of violent thugs who had the capacity to back their intimidation with something like state power, at least in the areas where there were significant Tamil communities. They murdered a number of rival Tamil autonomists so as to establish their hegemony within the community. It is quite wrong to assume that Tamil refugees, in addition to favouring a degree of cultural autonomy within Sri Lanka are also supportive by and large of the LTTE or its rule. Even those who concluded that the LTTE was the best shot at achieving a separate state in Sri Lanka are going to run into very significant practical difficulties attempting to maintain their authority within Tamil communities here. Those communities here are not under threat, and beyond perhaps publicising the issues of repression by the Sinnhala-led Sri Lankan state, their influence will be near zero.
The very first thing Tamils here are likely to want to do is to set to work rebuilding their lives and their wealth, much of which they’ve handed over to people smugglers to get out of the country. They are probably going to want to support friends and family at home, which will mean working here and ensuring that the situation in Sri Lanka settles enough to make that viable. That’s simply not consistent with trying to resurrect conditions that the regime could point to in ruling by military means.
Thanks, Fran. (From a Dunera Boys niece – A boatful of brains and talent, sent here to an internment camp because they were considered Too Suspishus.)
That raises an interesting account of an exception to what I outlined above, which is relevant to my ethnicity, on one side.
During the 1930s, (1934 IIRC) the Italian fascist regime provoked a substantial outflow of leftists to, amongst other places, Australia. In the early 1930s, the Italian consul visited Brisbane but when he landed on the docks he was met by a crowd of waterside workers, many of whom were Italian, and they promptly grabbed the consul, stripping him of his fascist regalia and threw him into the Brisbane River. A jury later exonerated those who had done it, despite them boasting of what they’d done. Later, when war broke out, many of them were amongst the internees. Much of the energy of the camp guards was expended trying to keep the overwhelmingly anti-fascist internees from lynching the handful of fascist sympathising ones.
It’s an interesting fact but true that David Suzuki had, along with his family, been interned in BC Canada during WW2, despite the fact that his family had emigrated to Canada well before anything like conflict between Japan and the Western Allies broke out. Their dry cleaning business was sold and even after the war they, along with other Japanese were forced to move East of the Rockies …
In the US, after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the Stalinists handed over their Japanese members for internment, which ought to have been bizarre.
Where where they interned Fran? What an interesting story.
I assume the question is about the internment of the Japanese members of the Communist Party USA …?
Many were held in inland California, in places like Manzanar and Tule Lake following the “evacuation” of Japanese from the west coast …
Re-reading my remarks above about internment in Australia I would like to clarify them to foreclose possible misconstruction. I said of the Italians:
This was accurate as a description of the balance in the camps when war broke out and for some time after. However after 1942 when significant numbers of Italian POWs began to arrive and when those who wanted to fight for the Allied cause could elect to do so and be released the balance changed sharply.
Fran, thank you for the excellent demolition job @43. And your follow up comments are fascinating
Seems to be some deliberate obtuseness above in the thread. The following meanings are NOT synonyms:
Visa Overstayer
Illegal Entrant
Asylum Seeker
Refugee
Invited Migrant (of circa 50 years ago)
Assisted Migrant
Anyone who cannot, or (more likely) pretends to not understand the difference, shouldn’t be online without their mum & dad’s permission.
YOu could do worse than to read this study that honestly acknowledges and explores some of the challenges facing refugee families, yet provides some wonderful ideas to engage, support and move forward.
http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/~/media/ProgramsandProjects/MentalHealthandWellBeing/DiscriminationandViolence/ViolenceAgainstWomen/CAS_Paper4_Refugee.ashx
The evidence of which is to be found in the ubiquitous refugee-fuelled civil conflicts that now rage across Australia.
Unless…wait…what?
Australia put out the invitation in 1951. That’s time for the grandchildren of the first lot to have grown into adults by now. If refugee intake was going to transform our nation into a balkanised set of warring ghettoes, it would’ve happened by now.
Fundamental premise fail.
Fran is a gem.
What no one is aknowledging in all this disccussion is that since John Howard looked out the hotel window and saw the Pentagon burning, we have been, as was the intension,
‘Terrified’ into disunity, fear and hatred and the ongoing limit of our freedoms by a political class that lost its courage and being trumatised into thrashing around wasting our treasure, invading other peoples lands pusuing a small number of murderers,while we earn the furious, bitter hatred of people who should be our friends.
Come now, admit it, Osama Bin Ladin has achieved more than he ever dreamnt of.He has as close to victory as one can get.
We have surrended our courage , strength of character by allowing a weak man such as Howard to plunge our tiny army into conflict when he did not have the balls to say no to George bush.
Since then the terror has moved into Board Rooms, Stock exchanges, insurance schemes to the extent that those who put their tiny hands up to lead us, are paralysed into getting the ‘balance right’ and making themselves a small target.
The Generations who would have stood up to bullies and said “no more mate, just back off” are in their graves. We would have been better to have used our treasure to expand our cooperation with all nations affected, in relation to intelligence gathering and the expantion of the role of Interpol and accurate traveller tracking.
By the way, no one has picked up on our constitution being an act of the British Parliament and therefore has no mention of prime ministers having the authority to send one person to invade another country let alone an Army.
What if, we find that legally, there is no grounds to continuing to pay compensation to war widows or veterans because the actions of Prime ministers were not constitutional.
Will we be giving them the same answer that Queen Elizabeth I gave when she was asked about the wounded and dying of the sailors (privateers really), who fought the Spanish Armarda, she said” but why? I don’t need them any more”.
Look up the records the USA has many more safeguards to prevent just slipping into war. We have none. You see we all assume it’s OK because the boss made his decision.
Further to all of the above,I wish to bring to the attention of ‘you all’ , the draconian measures still largely hidden from public view, that Prime Minister Menzies and the Cold War political conservatives, were prepared to use against militant trade unions and the Left generally.
A plan named Operation Alien, 1950-1953, was to use the armed forces against organised labour.
This top-secret operation, was under the control of Prime Minister Menzies. It was part of a wider Cold War strategy to smash militant unionism in Australia.
Cabinet documents suggest that elements in the government sought to inflame industrial disputes during the period, particularly in the maritime industry, with a view to extending areas of dispute and justifying the implementation of Operation Alien.
The first use of the plan was in May 1951, trade union offices were raided by State and Commonwealth security agencies; the Crimes Act was used to prosecute prominent unionists.
Operation Alien never got into full swing; targeted unions were wary and avoided providing sufficient provocation.
Internment Camps were on the conservative agenda. Using the excuse of an expected Third World War, (hence a conscripted National Servic),the Director General of ASIO, Colonel Spry, began the compilation in July 1950 of a list of people who needed to be interned in time of national emergency. Whole families, including children, were scheduled for rounding up and incarceration in camps.
By December 1950 the list included ’selected’ communists and unionists. Enemy Aliens were also included; these were mainly Eastern Bloc, Chinese, and Korean, people between the ages of 16 and 65 who had entered Australia after 1945. With the inclusion of these people, the list blew out to 16,660 people by April 1955. Predictably, former European “Nazis and Fascists”, amongst them war criminals, were specifically exempted from Enemy Alien status, some of them variously cementing themselves within the Liberal Party organisation.
Many thousands of ASIO files now in the Australian Archives indicate that during the Menzies era it was regarded as ‘offensive’ and ’suspicious’ merely to criticise the government or society in general, and to exercise democratic rights.
The internment plan and Operation Alien were hidden from scrutiny until 1992-1993, revealed by the patient Archival research of Associate Professor Les Louis (University of Canberra).
John Ward
20 Grosse Road
Gordon
Tasmania
62921211
Sorry about the spelling. The Yard-arm went completly under the sun.
nite
Thanks John. This history will be news for many people.
The links between the conservatives and serious political repression go deep as do the links between conservatives and terrorism. Jenny Hocking’s ‘Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography’ deals with the connections between the Ustasha, the then Liberal Attorney General Ivor Greenwood and acts of both internal and external terrorism. It is available for perusal on Google books at p 145.
Cheers
The links between the conservatives and serious political repression go deep as do the links between conservatives and terrorism.
There may have been some links in the past – comparable to the links between some leftists and current day Islamofascism. You need to move on though, if a similar statement were made here about the very real historical links between Obama’s Democrats and slavery and the KKK, you would no doubt join in with the LP chorus pointing out that the Democrats have “moved on”.
As to the main topic, how about we ask the Australian people how many refugees should be accepted? I’m not fussed much what the number is – just so long as it is agreed, and the voters get to endorse it. Once we have that number, all we need is a process to ensure that the quota is filled with people who are the most deserving, and most easily accomodated. And that the quota is not exceeded.
I expect that the selection process will not involve consultation with people smugglers. Perhaps we could set up a prioritisation approach based upon the amount potential refugees could put up for registration fees? By taking the fees directly, we would be putting revenue pressure on the people smugglers.
Overall we would have a system which would reflect the (democratically expressed) compassion of the Australian people, the most deserving refugees would be resettled, the people smugglers would be out of business, we would be honourng our international commitments. All good really, except maybe that the left would lose one of its favourite issues with which to wedge conservatives.
PeterTB: thanks for the suggestion that I should move on from my own living memory but no thanks I’ll continue to allow my understanding of the present to be informed by my own past. I’ll also allow it to be informed by the past of others which is to say that I shall continue to read history.
As to your odd suggestion of a plebiscite on immigrant quotas let me point towards the policy madness that has engulfed California subsequent to citizen initated referenda. Study on that a while and perhaps also take a look at some theories of democracy to grasp the benefits of what we enjoy which is known generally as representative democracy.
There is nothing odd about some kind of a vote on immigration policy Anthony. Current policy is in the hands of an alliance of leftist ideologs and business population growth lobbyists – that is what is really odd. How about we put it to a vote whether Australia does or does not withdraw from the refugee convention? After the inevitable decision to withdraw, we could at least then have a national discussion without bush-lawyers continually pointing out section 8 subclause 47(c) and thinking how clever they are.
StudentT: the demand for a plebiscite as distinct from a referendum is distinctively the mark of those who feel disenfranchised. The history of referenda commenced with those designed to bring in compulsory conscription in WWI. All three failed.
Recent attempts to promote the idea of plebiscites (the democrats 2007 bill, for example) have flopped.
The problem with them is that they feed into the incorrect and crude notion that a majority expressed will equates to a democratic process. This is not necessarily the case where majority will, for example, adopts policy that violate the consitutional or other (human, shall we say) rights of fellow citizens who are a minority in relation to the subject of contention.
The whole issue has a long history in the political philosophy of democracy. The problem is usually constructed as one of the tyranny of the majority.
In Australia plebiscites are non-binding so far as I am aware. Referenda are binding but they usually fail at poll.
Finally, policy making by referendum allows peculiar consequences as the Californian example shows. Capture of public policy by specific interests is usually the problem. The alternative is to seek to influence party policy and public opinion. Clear and factually based argument supporting coherent and informed ideas are always a good start.
thanks for the suggestion that I should move on from my own living memory but
Fair enough Anthony, so what are these “links between the conservatives and serious political repression that go deep as do the links between conservatives and terrorism” that were still current in your own living memory? If they’re not still current, why don’t you put them behind you?
policy madness that has engulfed California subsequent to citizen initated referenda
It’s always a balance – people are more empowered, a few quixotic results have come out of the process. I’m confident that things’ll settle down in time as the populace matures with the process.
Mind you, I wasn’t specifically putting CIRs forward in my post at 58 above. Any mechanism that allows the electorate to participate will do. The important point is that a figure is settled upon – even if it is a figure that parties put to the electorate at an election – I don’t care – but without an “agreed” target, how can we put on orderly process in place, and know that it is working?
I understand that non-conservatives of both the left and the right are nervous of putting too much power in the hands of the people, but I think we need to push through our reluctance for the greater good – don’t you?
PeterTB,
I’m not Anthony, but – Menzies’ attempt to ban the Communist Party in 1951.
Sheltering of Nazi War crimnals from end of WW2 onwards.
Support of central European fascists up to the early 70s.
Misuse and abuse of State Special branches throught the Vietnam era.
Secret armies – 1930s, 1950s, 1970s including one alleged to have been behind plans for a fasist revolution after 1975 if Whitlam had won that election, including plans for Whitlam’s assassination. (Mind you, the RWDB who told me that might have been pulling my leg, but I don’t think so. At the time he could hardly restrain himself from killing me – but that’s another story and its a long time ago, but not beyond my living memory.
Right wing student organisations in the universities from 1990s to present identified with the Libs whose poloicies are more akin to the BNP*, and equally full of bile and hatred.
Is that enough for you.
(*The BNP, or British National Party is a neo-Nazi British party that has some representation in the European Parliament.)
Paul Burns,
All those things you mention are true, but one could also point to all sorts of historical connections between the far left and terrorism. The European Red Brigades and Red Army Faction didn’t have ‘Red’ in their name just because they thought it was a nice colour.
But still, there’s no point in getting into an argument over which side of politics was worst from that perspective. Neither side comes out of the Cold War smelling like roses.
What I really wanted to ask is: could you tell us a little more about what you heard about a 1970s ’secret army’? As a historian, did you find what that ‘RWDB’ said plausible? Was he in a position to know? Was there any supporting evidence, or were you just taking his word for it?
I note that you wrote ‘alleged’, but you obviously think it had some plausibility, otherwise you wouldn’t be mentioning it.
Right wing student organisations in the universities from 1990s to present identified with the Libs whose poloicies are more akin to the BNP*, and equally full of bile and hatred. Is that enough for you.
I find this unconvincing, frankly.
I have been asked to clarify my reason for presenting a small part of our history. I think I am asking who is going to raise the quality of our polity? Our National character?
I am a resident of Tasmania. The son of a ‘Rat of Tobruk ‘ a mentally disabled victim of WWII, I am a witness to how PTSD wrecks families. Moving like a ripple on a pond through successive generations. And a witness too of how successive governments wash their hands of veterans, for whom they have no further use.
The point of this message is; upon reading to the end of the piece, should you ask yourself; where are the leaders going to come from who will lift us to a higher level of self aware nationhood?
We have allowed some of histories most self serving intellectual bullies, to lead us into social, military, economic and environmental disasters one could imagine. Yet we go back time after time, to their ilk and ask for another dose of metaphoric porridge.
An example historically is ; our leaders did not tell us that the Gallipoli invasion fleet turned up two weeks earlier, realised the ships had ammunition loaded as last to come off and simply sailed back to Cairo , switched everything around and went right back. Fore warning Turkey.
The result was so terrible and the slaughter so great that Australian Journalist, Keith Murdock praises the ‘brave hearts’, endurance and ingenuity of the Australian troops and railed against what he saw as their needless sacrifice, describing the outcome of one battle as nothing short of the ‘murder’ of their own troops by allied headquarters.
Our leaders at the time Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes, spun the debacle into ‘Glorious dead’ and ‘Brave Sacrifice’ to bury their terrible decision making and culpability.
We still don’t acknowledge what ‘Lest we Forget’ really means. I say it means ‘Don’t let the bastards get away with this again and again and again’.
But we do!
What no one has accepted is that since John Howard looked out the hotel window and saw the Pentagon burning, he lost his bottle, suffered PTSD at the first shot and we have been, as was the intention, ‘Terrified’ by Al-Qaida and driven into disarray, disunity, fear and self hatred; into the acceptance of, the on going limit of our freedoms by a political class that has lost its courage and whom continues to be traumatized into thrashing around squandering our treasure; invading other peoples lands pursuing a small number of murderers, while we earn the furious, bitter hatred of people who should be our friends.
Come now, admit it, Osama Bin Laden has achieved more than he ever dreamt of. He has come as close to victory as one can get.
We have surrendered our courage, strength of character by allowing a weak man such as Howard to plunge our tiny army into impossible conflict, ill-equipped and under someone else’s command, when he [Howard] did not have the balls to say no to George Bush.
Since then the terror has moved into Board Rooms, Stock exchanges, insurance schemes to the extent that those who put their tiny hands up to lead us, are paralysed into getting the ‘balance right’ and making themselves a small target.
The generations who would have stood up to bullies and said “no more mate, just back off” are in their graves. We would have been better to have used our treasure to expand our cooperation with all nations affected, in relation to intelligence gathering and the expansion of the role of Interpol and the more accurate tracking and identifying of travellers.
By the way, no one has yet picked up on our constitution being an act of the British Parliament and therefore has no mention of prime ministers having the authority to send one person to invade another country, let alone an Army.
What if, we find that legally, there are no grounds to continuing to pay compensation to war widows or veterans because the actions of successive Prime ministers were not constitutional?
Will we be giving them the same answer that Queen Elizabeth the First (by the grace of God), gave when she was asked about the wounded and dying of Walter Raleigh’s sailors (privateers really), who fought the Spanish Armada, she said” but why? I don’t need them any more”.
Look up the records, you will find the USA has many more safeguards to prevent them just slipping into war. We have none. You see we all assume it’s OK because the boss made his decision.
Further to all of the above, I wish to bring to the attention of ‘you all’ , the draconian measures still largely hidden from public view, that Prime Minister Menzies and the Cold War political conservatives, were prepared to use against militant trade unions and the Left generally.
A plan named Operation Alien, 1950-1953, was to use the armed forces against organised labour.
This top-secret operation was under the control of Prime Minister Menzies. It was part of a wider Cold War strategy to smash militant unionism in Australia.
Cabinet documents suggest that elements in the government sought to inflame industrial disputes during the period, particularly in the maritime industry, with a view to extending areas of dispute and justifying the implementation of Operation Alien.
The first use of the plan was in May 1951, trade union offices were raided by State and Commonwealth security agencies; the Crimes Act was used to prosecute prominent unionists.
Operation Alien never got into full swing; targeted unions were wary and avoided providing sufficient provocation.
Internment Camps were on the conservative agenda. Using the excuse of an expected Third World War, (hence a conscripted National Service), the Director General of ASIO, Colonel Spry, began the compilation in July 1950 of a list of people who needed to be interned in time of national emergency. Whole families, including children, were scheduled for rounding up and incarceration in camps.
By December 1950 the list included ’selected’ communists and unionists. Enemy Aliens were also included; these were mainly Eastern Bloc, Chinese, and Korean, people between the ages of 16 and 65 who had entered Australia after 1945. With the inclusion of these people, the list blew out to 16,660 people by April 1955. Predictably, former European “Nazis and Fascists”, amongst them war criminals, were specifically exempted from Enemy Alien status, some of them variously cementing themselves within the Liberal Party organisation.
Many thousands of ASIO files now in the Australian Archives indicate that during the Menzies era it was regarded as ‘offensive’ and ’suspicious’ merely to criticise the government or society in general, and to exercise democratic rights. Almost seditious even.
The internment plan and Operation Alien were hidden from scrutiny until 1992-1993, revealed by the patient Archival research of Associate Professor Les Louis (University of Canberra).
Who, once again I ask, is going to lift the standard out of the national moral mess it has descended to?
John Ward
20 Grosse Road
Gordon
Tasmania
62921211
Paulus @ 65,
The evidence for all this is anecdotal, (not necessarily my anecdote, btw.) I have not seen any documentary evidence or heard any sound-tapes or seen any film. (I think it was before videos.)
In early to mid December 1975, a person I knew in Sydney who claimed to have connections to powerful business interests and whose opinions definitely verged on a far right wing ideology, though probably not as far right as a neo-Nazi, told me in all earnestness during a heated argument about The Dismissal that:
a) Kerr had sacked Whitlam because he knew of a far-right wing plot to assassinate him and Kerr was trying to prevent Whitlam’s assassination.
b) A secret army was ready to overthrow Whitlam and it was intended to assassinate him if he won again in 1975.
c) The secret army had been raised in rural areas and was ready to act when called upon. I’m assuming it had nothing to do with the Australian Defence Forces. My informant certainly never linked them to this so-called army, and despite the example of the White Army in the 1950s, I think it highly unlikely, though another informant who was in the armed services assures me they would probably have been divided right down the middle if they had been called by Kerr to quell a public uprising.
d) So far as I’m aware, both informants are deceased.
I was just wondering what this Tamil conflict was all about. Wikipedia has a most interesting page on it. Here is a short exerpt:
“As late as 1998, the Tigers clearly stated:
… the LTTE has resolved to work in solidarity with the world national liberation movements, socialist states, and international working class parties. We uphold an anti-imperialist policy and therefore we pledge our militant solidarity against western imperialism, neo-colonialists, Zionism, racism and other forces of reaction.[126]
The Westminster Journal further states:
Intelligence agencies are well aware that the LTTE was involved in the 1990s in training the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) both of which are closely linked to al-Qaeda. In 1995 and 1998, an LTTE combat tactician and an LTTE explosives expert accompanying groups of al-Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of MILF. In 1999, an LTTE combat tactician accompanying a group of al-Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of the ASG. At the apparent behest of al-Qaeda, the LTTE is recorded training members of Al Ummah (An Islamic terrorist group formed in India in 1992, believed to be responsible for bombings in southern India in 1998) in Tamil Nadu, India.[126]
The Times of India, in a 2001 article, highlights an alleged nexus between al-Qaeda and the LTTE, and claims that “[al-Qaeda links with the LTTE] are the first instance of an Islamist group collaborating with an essentially secular outfit”.[127] Additionally, the US-based research organisation “Maritime Intelligence Group” said the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiya, which has known links to al-Qaeda, had been trained in sea-borne guerrilla tactics by LTTE Sea Tiger veterans.[126]”
Sounds like just the sort of upright citizens we would want to let in through our back door, wouldn’t you say?
Hopefully those boatloads of young men are not Tamil Tigers. Hopefully the applications for asylum will be properly vetted?
John Ward are you open to snail mail at your address?
I grew up in Tassie during the 70s, I know of some interesting things tho I dunno if I want to type about them here, but you may be interested…
Paul Burns, being a historical sort of person, have you (or anyone else) ever come across GLADIO in Europe? Since someone brought up right wing armies and terrorism…
And the FEAR.
Funny you mention the secret farmers army and Whitlam, cos I know a few old rednecks who refer to the same thing …
I don’t think it was a plot as such, more a sort of groupthink idea… the idea was in the air and some people were worried enough about their future to act on it. Plus, his references could have been exaggerated by time and/or the tendency of some people to exagggggerate their political views to provoke others.
Jules
of course. I would be pleased to hear from you.
There are many things right about Tassie, but sometimes you wait for some time before the other shoe drops.
John
Elise
I spent 4 years in DArwin 62 to 66.
The Indonesians were flying Russian Beagle Bombers off our waters but in range of Radar.
The only fighters we had were F 86? Saber jets (they could not catch up with Comet airliners). Within 8 weeks of rotating our pilots in fur lined flying suits sitting on the tropical runways,leading up to our wet season. Australia had no air crew let with the strength to operate to protect our north.
This is why it is so important to equip our fighting forces to be able to at least do a competent
Job.
I assure you Elise, Darwin felt exactly like our front door then and to the many who have lived or served there since. That is still the view.
As for Queue jumping. those clamoring to get within our borders, with or without papers are not names like illegals, scum, back door merchants. They are people, Human beings like you or your loved ones. This is precisely why that cruel manipulator John Howard forbade any images to be published that might portray asylum seekers as people with whom we could feel any empathy for.
Please try to see these things with a clear eye, and understand that people who fight to get to control ship of state are usually butchers. The few decent heroes who try to alter this situation are almost always destroyed by the contest.
I am sorry to say these things but it is a foul, foul obscenity that rotten old men can promote the myth of ANZAC to cover the failure of their policies. Really think that the young men they send to die in the war machine, are simply the scum of the earth. I have heard them say it,and I have been sickened by their duplicity.
One more thing you may not know. Is that during the “Konfrontasi” between Indonesia and Malaya.
We were killing Indonesian soldiers in Sarawak (Borneo) and the Indonesians were in London buying up Land grants in the NT from British families and those land grant just happened to also be where some of the Air Bases built in WWII which were out of range of our radar.
The could have flown in an Army and Australians would never have known.
There is a Phd out there for some one to write once the archives are open in the coming years.
Good luck and thanks for all the fish.
Elise at 69:
Please find out the real history of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and you will find they truly had a cause worth fighting. Its a pity the whole world has turned their backs on them, but thats what happens in a world where money talks.
I will give you brief history of how I remember it.
Basically, the Tamils were brought into Sri Lanka in the 19th and 20th Century to work on plantations in Sri Lanka. these are referred to as Indian Tamils. Then, there are also the “Sri Lankan Tamils”, who are indigenous to the island. When the British left in around 1948, the New Sri Lankan Governemnt, which was comprised mainly of Sinhalese people basically stripped all Tamils of their citizenship, which effectively stripped them of any rights in the country, although many had now been in Sril Lanka for generations.
Basically the Sri Lankan government went on a racist ethnic cleansing campaign. thye wanted them deported to India (again, many who lived in sri lanka for generations). India wouldn’t take them. they had no rights at all in sri lanka and were forced to live their lives in poverty and as low class low paid labour.
Its all very sad and the world turned their backs on this. so, of course these guys eventually had enough and became militant, hence the Tamil Tigers.
It makes me so sad to think about these people and how the world has forgotten them while they were being persecuted.
One more thing…the Sri Lanka is full of racism. The sinhalese want the power within the country to be controlled by the sinhalase and do not want the tamils involved in the political system.
Racism is a sad thing brought on by fear. Fear is a result of ego. When we all let go of self importance and realise that we are all the same deep within we will also let go of our fears and greed. Just my opinion.
If I remember correctly there was an Australian women who was in a relationship with a tiger fighter and living on the run. It was quite some years back that it was in the news. I wonder what has become of her and her friend?
Paul@68 that is most interesting. All it needs is for someone to change the names and dates and create a ‘fictional’ story for television. If there was any truth in it, players would come out of the wood work…don’t you worry about that.
RWDB’S could not keep keep quiet at a time when they so desperately need something to gloat about.
Elise the last thing we want in Australia is people who are prepared to stand up for their rights and challenge the state monoploly on organised violence. I agree with you, send all asylum seekers back where they came from.
Obviously anyone who challenges authority should be banned, outlawed and damned to hell.
In fact we should expand the detention centre system to include Australians who would be in the streets challenging the power of the Australian state over pretty much anything, cos if you aren’t with us its obviously only a matter of time before you start crashing airlines into the MCG on Boxing Day.
There have been some interesting posts on this thread, especially the highly original and well-argued ones of John Ward.
I’d agree with his perspective that we seem to be lacking leaders of real courage. The saddest irony is that voters can and do recognise the difference. You would gain the impression from the media that rare acts of integrity and political courage invite political suicide. Yet in the Bob Ellis example of Peter Andren the reverse was the case.
I was in the unusual position of being an SA bureaucrat in Sydney during the Dunstan era and experienced such. Dunstan of course had a lot of popularity because of his charisma, but I think people also recognised his courage and integrity. He almost made a career out of taking up then unpopular, or at least (then) minority-interest causes from indigenous rights, womens rights, environmental and heritage protection and consumer protection as well as cultural issues especially the film industry. He stood up to a massive media campaign by the breweries and glass and can manufacturers over imposing a deposit on drink containers, promoting their return and recycling.
I remember most (amongst many things) his standing up on the steps of parliament house and dressing down and huge gathering of angry building workers, pointing out that thir actions were merely paving the way for the Liberals and how would they fare then. The workers slunk away. At a similar rally in Sydney a few years later, Carr did not even address the workers, but sneaked away from parliament house through an underground exit.
I think John’s view is correct. It is not a matter of unpopularity or hard-line leftism. It is a matter of making a stand for what is right.
Let’s hope the occasion can find the people.
Jules 2 71,
Haven’t heard of the European secret armies you mention.
joe2,
Given the RWDB’s contacts I would imagine his powerful businessmen came from the Darlinghurst Kings Cross area and may have been alleged to have had access to standover men etc, but I don’t really know because he wasn’t specific. Maybe one could check the late Justice Kerr’s papers for who his clients were?
I heard rumours of secret armies up here in Armidale too, when I first arrived to live here in 1978/9. I tended to dismiss them as some kind of National Party fantasy.
The problem with this aspect of the 1975 Dismissal stuff is it can so easily veer into the realm of conspiracy theory, of which, if you’ve noted my various comments about Dr. Who and Torchwood on the 9/11 thread,you will realise I have very little time for. (Though, since its pretty well documented in US sources , eg the book, The Falcon and the Snowman, I do suspecr the CIA might have had a hand in it somewhere. Denis Feney, of the CPA, also wrote a very interesting Aussie analysis re the CIA/Dismissal, but that’s a very rare book now, and I would imagine quite hard to get hold of.)
Sorry for going way, way off thread.
John Ward,
Ah, the Australian role in Konfrontasi, which has been somewhat blotted out of the national memory by Vietnam. You’re certainly right about it makingf a very interesting Ph.D thesis.
John Ward #73. Please name those NT Land Grants purchased by Indonesians.
John Ward @73: “… names like illegals, scum, back door merchants…”
Excuse me, I did not ever call people “illegals” or “scum”. Furthermore, I used the reference “back door” as many have, to refer to the fact that they have not APPLIED for asylum but simply arrived in a remote part of Australia (i.e. our back door) expecting to be rescued and processed. You are the one that has said it is our “front door” and inferred that they are “merchants”.
Gordon @74 and @75, I don’t agree with either the Tamil Tigers or the Irish IRA using violence as a means of pursuing their aims.
Jules @78: “I agree with you, send all asylum seekers back where they came from.”
Read what I said you twit, and stop putting words in my mouth.
Elise:
Well, when you and your people are being treated like animals and killed, while the rest of the world ignores this, it doesnot leave them much choice. Beleive me, you would do the same if you were in that situation. Or would you simply die?
We should be helping these people. After all we are the great nation that saved Iraq and East Timor. Or maybe there just ain’t no oil or gas to be had? And perhaps strategically it makes more sense to be friendly with Sri Lanka?
I ‘m not an expert on the IRA situation, but I do beleive it is quite different.
Look into the truth of what has really happened in Sri Lanka. Don’t beleive the reports that the Sri Lankan government make. Did not read what i said before. this is fact. the tamils in sri lanka were stripped of their citizenship and rights. What do you suggest they do?
Furthermore, I used the reference “back door” as many have, to refer to the fact that they have not APPLIED for asylum but simply arrived in a remote part of Australia (i.e. our back door) expecting to be rescued and processed.
Elise, there is no such thing as a back door. Ixnae. None. Nil.
Any person has the right to arrive in a Refugee Convention signatory country such as Australia and ask for asylum. That we happen to be a very large island which means some people arrive by boat to a remote bit of said very large island doesn’t change this.
There is no obligation to apply for asylum offshore. In fact, that’s one of the necessary distinctions between those who seek assistance to resettle and registered refugees, and those who may or may not be registered who flee to another place and seek asylum there. The whole process of seeking asylum is about fleeing first and requesting assistance second, not the other way around, and that process is completely legal. There’s no queue, back door, front door, etc.
And under our legal obligations, such asylum seekers have every right to have their claims heard and be processed – ie their ‘expectation’ is the correct one.
I’d also second Gordon’s recommendation that you do some far more extensive reading about the situation of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The IRA comparison is not a good one. Nor does your point about ‘not supporting terrorists’ (in effect) really help in distinguishing what you think is appropriate behaviour from, and treatment of, a minority ethnic group consisting of hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom are neither terrorists or supporters of same, but have been systematically brutalised and denied basic human rights. Of course if you read about the situation in Sri Lanka, you’ll come across the forced conscription of Tamil children as soldiers – should such children be denied the right to seek asylum? Like all internal conflicts, the situation in Sri Lanka has been long, bloody, complex and requires nuance. None of which removes Australia’s legal obligations to asylum seekers.
BTW I belief it is 50 years ago one Dalai Lama, fleeing his native Tibet, sought asylum in India.
Any rhetoric on asylum seekers, which does not acknowledge that fundamental to the problem is is not people arriving at a place to make a new living, but why they are leaving.
If such an acknowledgment does not exits then it is just empty rhetoric.
Young people have always spread their wings to get experience and find opportunities. This can be useful as in Backpackers working on farms and student exchage.
Some people need to move for work or business on foreign assignment.
Criminals have always fled their scene of crime and that is a police matter.
But a lot of people today leave home because they have no save home and one day that could be you.
Myriad74: The definition of “back door” is #1 “entry at the rear of the building” and #2 “clandestine or unauthorised way of operating”.
Check out your two statements:
“no such thing as a back door. Ixnae. None. Nil.”;
“remote bit of said very large island”
I rest my case on terminology.
As for “justifying” the use of violence, will you also be justifying Al Qaeda’s terror campaign, since in their eyes they have a just case.
Incidentally, I never suggested that the innocent victims of violence and persecution should not be given asylum. Where have I said that?
Are you suggesting that Australia should take in the perpetrators of violence and terror campaigns, provided you accept their side of the dispute?
Will you stand in judgement of “justifications” for terrorists killing innocent people, and decide which group is allowed to do it, and which not?
a minority ethnic group consisting of hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom are neither terrorists or supporters of same, but have been systematically brutalised and denied basic human rights.
Elise, there’s a quotation from what Myriad actually said – what part of that did you take to mean “Australia should take in the perpetrators of violence and terror campaigns, provided you accept their side of the dispute”? #87 is just bristling with strawmen and it’s based on the Murdoch/Hanson/Howard “Boat people = terrorists” trope which has been thoroughly discredited, I would have thought.
Elise, you are changing your argument re” ‘back door’ and you know it. All of a sudden we’re discussing the dictionary definition of the term because you apparently can’t admit that APPLYING (your emphasis, not mine) for asylum has got absolutely no relevance or basis in law in terms of how people arrive in our territory to do so, or where they land.
I’ve got no idea why you think people in crap boats with limited navigation and at the behest of people smugglers who know they will be arrested pulling up on a remote part of Australia – which is by definition most of our accessible coast from northwest to northeast = back door, but knock yourself out, it’s still got no factual or legal basis. Particularly as the vast majority of boats are apprehended well out from our shores. People hop in boats and try and reach our territory in order to make an asylum claim. We spend ridiculous amounts of money as a country trying to stop them claiming this legal right by stopping them entering our waters or reaching our land. That our government makes it more difficult for legitimate asylum seekers to try and make a claim when travelling by boat is not a back door, it is Australia abdicating from its moral and legal obligations to such people.
As for the rest of your hyperbole, I’m sorry, where did I say that the violence of the LTTE was justified? I missed it. Such a false base for your subsequent series of questions renders them moot. I think we need a neo-Godwins law re: the invocation of Al Qaeda.
Nor have you answered my questions regarding what you think is the appropriate response to the hundreds of thousands of innocent Tamil Sri Lankans caught and brutalised in a civil war; rather you continue to grasp at straws to hide your obvious ignorance of the situation there.
Helen @88, did you actually read what I said, or just make assumptions?
I said: “Hopefully the applications for asylum will be properly vetted?”
Only a wet-behind-the-ears, naive, heart-on-sleeve softy would think that only refugees try to relocate.
Think what happened to Nazis after WW2 – they went into hiding in foreign parts. Were they innocent refugees fleeing persecution, or war criminals evading justice?
Obviously most refugees from WW2 were innocent civilians who were simply caught up in the maelstrom. However, not 100% of those who fled were innocent.
The Tamil Tiger fighters will probably be pursued now, so they have good cause to try and relocate their operations. The Sri Lankan authorities probably have the names of many of them, and would probably trade these with the Australian authorities.
Coming without papers as a refugee is probably less risky for them than hiding in Sri Lanka hoping they won’t be eventually discovered, or trying their luck with a formal asylum application which might get them arrested?
I said: “Hopefully the applications for asylum will be properly vetted?”
That is exactly what I meant, no more and no less.
Build your own strawmen, Helen, and don’t write in between my lines.
Elise, no-one is talking about asylum seekers not being properly investigated. See what I mean about strawmen?! But the current “solution” involves preventing them from getting here in the first place, then outsourcing their “care” to small or large island nations, then left to rot for years. As Myriad pointed out, we spend billions on this shit. Instead, we could be letting them land and investigating them in a timely and proper manner. Remember that all but a handful of the Tampa asylum seekers who caused such a froth were found to be genuine, but they suffered considerable torment and in many cases lifelong physical and mental damage in the process. Which was down to us.
“Genuine” does not have the same meaning as “cannot be disproven”
(for those who are all dictionaried-up about meanings of things like “back door” and “front door” etc)
Those rescued by the Tampa may (or may not) have been refugees, but they sure were most ungracious to their rescuers.
The crew of the Tampa may (or may not) have been descended from Vikings, but they sure capitulated a tad too swiftly when some shipwrecked ragamuffins got shirty and started telling the Captain where to sail to “.. or else”.
‘As for Queue jumping. those clamoring to get within our borders, with or without papers are not names like illegals, scum, back door merchants. They are people, Human beings like you or your loved ones. This is precisely why that cruel manipulator John Howard forbade any images to be published that might portray asylum seekers as people with whom we could feel any empathy for.’
I think you are being hypersensitive, Elise, if you are prepared to interpret that statement of John’s as accusing you of calling people ‘illegals’ or ’scum’. The context makes it very clear what he is saying, and it is not against you. There has been a very deliberate campaign to dehumanise asylum seekers – for the very good reason that the bastardry used against them at Woomera, Baxter and Nauru would then seem at least marginally less unconscionable.
If you believe you have been misrepresented, you should be careful not to likewise misrepresent the views of others.
Elise:
“As for “justifying” the use of violence, will you also be justifying Al Qaeda’s terror campaign, since in their eyes they have a just case.”
Let me say that its very easy to take up this kind of position when you live in a country like Australia and have all the rights and liberties you deserve. Its a different story when you are suffering and no-one is there for you. Its very hard for people who have not experienced life like this to talk about it. Its basic human survival. There’s always two sides to a story. I don’t know if Al Qaeda terror campaign can be justified. Have you looked into why they have gone on this terror campaign? Let me just say right here, that I rather spread love than violence. but its all very easy to say when you live in a first world country, where you are nice and safe.
Australia certainly does not have a problem justifying the use of violence when it suits us. eg. vietnam war, Iraq, afghanistan, east timor.
“Are you suggesting that Australia should take in the perpetrators of violence and terror campaigns, provided you accept their side of the dispute?”
Its not about accepting one parties side to a dispute. But then again, someone should be eg. the Useless UN. However to me its a pretty clear decision of making a call on what is right and wrong. Its a pretty straight forward case if the truth was reported as much as the garbage that comes from mainstreak media. By the way, the victor always writes the history. The simple fact is that in 1948 the Sri Lankan government basically went on a ethnic racist cleansing campaign where tamils were stripped of their citizenship and given no rights. Now, if you can’t see this as wrong, then you must be blind.
“Those rescued by the Tampa may (or may not) have been refugees, but they sure were most ungracious to their rescuers.”
“may (or may not”? Come on, Steve, you can be a bit more gracious than that. It’s the majority of them (91%) accepted as refugees.
And there isn’t enough independent evidence to suggest that they were ungracious to their rescuers, intimidated them, or that the rescuers rather cowardly caved in too soon. With the Howard Government blacking out all media coverage, on grounds of a defence-security emergency we were only in a position to get one side.
And we know how honest and reliable that was after the Children Overboard episode
“Ungracious”? From the Ubersturmbangfuhrer of Ungraciousness? Irony fairy, verily you have touched LP with your fairy Irony Filing Dust tonight.
Thank you paul burns @64. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
To which I will add:
*the links between Reith and the spooks in planning and executing the use of serving Australian military personnel as scabs and strike breakers on the wharves (the Dubai option);
* the unaccounted for actions of the AFP who are suspected of engaging in irregular actions to ‘disrupt’ asylum seekers boats for which see serious reservations that many people have about what caused the SIEV-X to sink.
The
Serves Rudd right – his flirtation with failed and pointless dog-whistle gestures is blowing up in his face. Now he’s just going to have to back down.
Let that be an abject lesson to you, caucus. Take a principled stand.
Lefty E,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
But the Oceanic Viking [?] incident has even greater significance. When it comes to issues of real import that require moral courage – like refugees-wh-come-by-sea-from-the-North, and climate change, it shows neither Rudd or very few members of his goverment have that moral courage. A chilling rewminder of how similar they can be to Howard and his sickly crew.
I hope the Indonesian provincial governor holds out and the Oceanic Viking has to return with the refugees to Xmas Island. No mor dog-whistles, K.rudd. One of the reasons people voted you in is because they were sick of such immoral vacuity.
But LeftyE do you really think they will back down? I very much doubt it in terms of the poor sods in the two boats currently in limbo. The govt will never hear the end of it if they capitulate, the right wing hysteria will go into over-drive etc.
they’ve maybe got a chance to turn it around before the next boat of Sri Lankans arrive but they risk the same as above, plus I would be surprised if there wasn’t a bunch of ‘independent’ analysists who will come out of the woodwork to claim it will add to the ‘pull’ factor.
If the govt had any sense, we would have taken a step back and looked at this and treated it much more like the Vietnam situation; this would have started from the premise of recognising that thousands of Sri Lankans were almost certainly going to flee, and from that basis prep. the community & government for a more humane response.
myriad let the right wing hysteria machine go nuts.
This shit has to be confronted and knocked on the head once and for all.
“If the govt had any sense, we would have taken a step back and looked at this and treated it much more like the Vietnam situation; this would have started from the premise of recognising that thousands of Sri Lankans were almost certainly going to flee, and from that basis prep. the community & government for a more humane response.”
I completely agree.
Absolutely – Rudd is much more on the money with the idea of pressuring Sri Lanka about its human rights abuses. This is the cause of this forced migration pattern we’re seeing.
If SBY doesnt chuck Rudd a bone they will have to back down. Again, let that be a lesson.
Newsflash Rudd: There’s a section of the Australian population who wont accept asylum seekers under any circumstances – but most of them won’t ever vote for you anywyay.
A much larger group actually take their cues from the PM. Show leadership. Fraser proved this point in the 70s. Howard did too.
Hi Jules
what worries me from the pragmatic perspective is evidence such as the latest Lowy Institute poll showing 3/4 Australians are very fearful on the issue of boatpeople. You can’t turn that kind of public sentiment around in a few weeks in the midst of a increase in the number of boats arriving. While the government couldn’t necessarily predict what the Sri Lankan govt was going to do in terms of pursuing a final solution against the Tigers and their treatment of Tamils in general, the implications once that action started were definitely talked about and could have been considered.
we needed this government to be a lot more proactive than they have been, although I think credit is due in terms of rapidly rolling back the worst of the Howard laws and policies. However the ~ $60 mill in the last budget for ‘border security’ which included squillions to Indonesia and Malaysia etc. to a) [on the positive side] hopefully significantly improve their processing and handling of refugees as non-Convention signatories and b) [downside] build detention centres etc. was a warning sign.
What has been missing is active public advocacy and campaigns to actively address the Australian fear of asylum seekers and acceptance of refugees in general.
Lefty, I agree with what you’ve written entirely, although I don’t think the Rudd Govt has done nearly enough in terms of pressuring the Sri Lankan govt – in fact I think the international community has failed there pretty comprehensively, but as we’ve got a vested interest, an extra black mark to Rudd on that.
I hope you’re right about the back down and the leadership. I’m more confident on the latter.
I’m getting pretty sick of the blather coming out of the Liberals of late. Having spent years trying to discourage asylum seekers by presenting our detention centres as being only marginally better than Dachau or Belsen only to see the ALP make them slightly less like Dachau or Belsen, Stone, Bishop and Turnbull are now greeting the latest wave of boats as an opportunity for Nyah-Nyah-Nyah — we told yous … now the system is in chaos. In this, as in everything else, rock throwing is not a policy.
Now that would be defencible — if they would say how they were going to fix the problem, but of course, they’ve gone all squeamish about “kids behind razor wire” and promoting Australia as being the sort of place that is even more hazardous to your health than three weaks in a leaky boat on the high seas or a squalid camp in Indonesia or Malaysia or lving in Sri Lanka as a Tamil or in Afghanistan as anyone. No — they want an ‘inquiry’ which would find out what, exactly?
Simple logic applies. If the “problem” the Indonesians and Malaysians have is stopping their asylum seekers from bribing their officials for the right to ride in some about to be scuttled fishing boat across in the direction of Australia, then plainly, if you’re a Liberal (never was a name a better candidate for misnomer) it’s the Indonesians we should turn to for policy guidance. Over there, according to Human Rights Watch on RN Breakfast, you get to drink from open wells with floaters on the top. You get beaten. Best of all, promotion by the UN/HRW precedes you. They tell everyone your country is a s**thole run by sociopaths that no sane person would want to come to.
I think today’s Liberals are way too coy. Their slogan should be bring the Indonesian solution here! and for camps that make those in Malaysia look like retirement villages!
Either that or they should STFU.
The problem for Rudd is: He wishes to be reelected. If he opens the borders he’ll be out on his ear. If he does “howard-like” stuff he is backed into a corner (of his own making) that he is doing the very things he demonised Howard for. If he does not do howard-like stuff, he won’t be able to control the border, if he doesn’t control the border, he’ll be out on his ear…….
See the framing going on here?
Sean Carney: We should let them all in, we should keep them all out…Those most sympathetic to asylum seekers see those who want anything less than an open door as heartless.
SATP: If he opens the borders… if he doesn’t control the border…
So the media has succeeded in convincing everyone that the choices are either keeping everyone out or letting EVERYONE in! The choices were never this manichean caricature of a choice. Under our international obligations, we are supposed to take asylum seekers and investigate their claims (in a timely manner – not locking them in concentration camps for years), send back the unsuccessful and help the successful regain a foothold on their lives. Not just not controlling the border.
Australians have been sucked in.
I don’t think SATP does nuance, Helen. Don’t know about the other bloke.
Helen, Australians are not sucked in. You type as if the Australian population exist to serve the letter of the law, rather than it being the other way around.
The Aussie public does not know or care that somewhere a “law” says black is white.
Australia does handle asylum seekers in a timely fashion. Ask anyone who bothered to bring their papers with them how long they were in detention. The reason people are banged up for years is they are rejected, and then spend years appealing and re-appealing their rejection, or they “lost” their documentation, and were unable to prove they were who they claimed to be.
The issue is NOT that refugees, or supposed refugees, are arriving by boat. The issue is that the Australian Government must be seen to be in command of the Australian border.
If people smugglers (shifty underworld types in Indonesia) are seen to be in control of the border, ANY Australian Government is going to find they have sliding credibility with the voters.
SATP, please do some reading as you’re still trotting out the tired “lost their papers” argument. Fleeing persecution often doesn’t allow for niceties of applying for this visa and that permit, not to mention the traumatic journey in between countries where people may be lucky to escape with their lives, but not personal belongings.
SATP, it’d be nice if you got your facts right.
By the way…the argument at the moment isn’t even about how long they should be in detention camps. The government is trying to not even let them reach our shores, so we don’t even have to assess whether they are asylum seekers, as our international obligations would dictate.
Zoot, I’ll take that as conceding I am right. Let me guess, you didn’t exactly shine on the high school debating team?
The first obligation of the Australian Government is to the people of Australia. Any government that puts the Australian people second, and some obscure “international obligation” first, can expect a ballot box hiding. Rudd knows this, hence the “indonesian solution”.
Helen, the “lost their papers” argument is no more “tired” than is the “managed to hang onto their Fifteen Thousand greenbacks apiece” argument. Especially if the ones claiming “lost papers” have come part of the way by commerical air travel.
The Aussie public are more than prepared to give someone a fair go. Undertandably there is healthy cycnicism about 3rd country arrivals, who have “lost” their papers somewhere between KL airport and Ashmore Reef, then scuttle their boat when the RAN steams over the horizon.
Some tips for unannounced arrivals:
Make Australia your first port of call after escaping your country of origin.
Have some – any – documentation (this means you must actually be a refugee)
Do not pay USD $15,000 for a risky journey on a leaky scow, when Jetstar charges AUD $500.
Do not scuttle said leaky scow upon interception by the RAN.
When being transported by the RAN, do NOT become violent with RAN personnel.
When being transported by the RAN, do NOT vandalise RAN vessels.
Adherence to the above will ensure you of a warm welcome & a helping hand.
SATP, your arguments have been demolished so often and so comprehensively in so many forums and yet still you cling to them so desperately. Let me guess, your special school didn’t have a debating team?
Hint – trotting out the same old assertions without a skerrick of evidence is not debating.
Please to think about this. If you are fleeing Iraq to escape persecution because you are an Assyrian, a Kurd, or a Christian. To have t o get yourself to the Australian embassy to obtain the appropriate entry documents.
You will have to pas through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, to Malaya and KL where John Howard’s Australia would be only to pleased to process your papers, “Just take a seat and a ticket from the numbered ticket dispenser and we’ll be right with you”
Now That is what I call an orderly Queue.
Zoot, point to even ONE occasion of my “arguments” being demolished. Clue: Saying “you’re a dickhead” is not demolition of an argument.
John Ward #73. Please name those NT Land Grants purchased by Indonesians.
“…point to even ONE occasion of my “arguments” being demolished.
#92 and #95.
Don Wigan, #92 was not an argument (as such) #95 is a laugh, not a “demolishing”.
Refugee status granted by default is not the same as refugee status proved (the onus being on the assessor to disprove a case, quite difficult with undocumented & clued up “gamers” of the system)
Quick question: Why is the success rate (ie deemed refugee) circa 90% for those who “make it” into Australian waters, but for those assessed by the UNHCR the success rate is more like 60% ?
You are demolished!
Not quite, Stevo. As I understand it, the Nauru figure was 91% and that was by UNHCR. You’re taking a different line from Student T who felt UNHCR was too liberal compared with Australia.
OK, so now you’re claiming that 92# was not an argument. What was it then, just a snide remark? In any case the statement:
“Those rescued by the Tampa may (or may not) have been refugees, but they sure were most ungracious to their rescuers.”
was a bit misleading even if semantically correct. You know very well that the vast majority were accepted as refugees, and if it galled you too much to concede that it would have been best to avoid it altogether, rather than the wishy-washy “some may, some may not” that you used.
You have done nothing to contradict my claim that Howard-Reith used the defence forces to control information, and relying on them after what we know aboat Children Overboard is hazardous at best.
And on the topic of the alleged lack of nerve by the Tampa crew, this claim seems to run counter to the judges at the Nobel awards, where the captain got a gong for heroism.
Anything else?
Don Wigan, you are talking in circles. My point at #92 was that someone being granted refugee status by default is NOT the same as that someone actually being a refugee.
You are correct that I am not interested in your claim that Howard-Reith.. (blah blah blah) I hadn’t even noticed it. Deal with that.
Indisputably I ain’t “demolished” by a long shot, and you can take that to the bank.
Er… just which judges awarded a “Nobel Award” to Captain Arne Rinnan? He has received all sorts of fruit salad from various tossers, including an award from the UNHCR, and a “gong for the boys” from the King of Norway, but he ain’t recieved a “Nobel” anything.
Sometimes it is better to not dive into something you didn’t start, in water that is too deep for you.
You can work out for yourself just how demolished you are….