So, the Gillard government continues its bizarre negotiations with the Coalition over some legislative way to effectively overturn the High Court’s decision on asylum seekers, and revive offshore processing.
A dire warning was provided to the Coalition by the Secretary of the Immigration Department and senior officials:
MORE than 600 people could arrive by boat every month, leading to the collapse of Australia’s detention system and European-style unrest in its cities, if there is a return to onshore processing of all asylum seekers, according to a bleak assessment from senior Canberra officials.
Isn’t this just indicative of the extreme degree to which this issue has been framed in terms that are sheer fantasy?
There is actually no good reason why 600 arrivals a month could not be processed onshore in an orderly way. If capacity is lacking to perform the required checks, surely some of the immense sums spent on offshoring could be rediverted.
I am puzzled as to how such capacity could magically appear on Manus Island or Nauru, or if one were to take the Gillard position rather than Tony Abbott’s, how we would be justified in effectively dispensing ourselves of any responsibility for the processing of asylum seekers in Malaysia or elsewhere, and still remain committed to the Refugee Convention.
But rationality seems to have fled.
The dark fantasies of “European-style social unrest” among policy makers are even more disturbing.
I am not aware that such “social unrest” (what unrest? London? Paris?) has any particular or compelling connection with refugees.
What are they imagining here?
On another note, Abbott’s goal appears to be to humiliate the Labor Party and force acceptance that they were wrong to oppose Nauru in the Howard era, and that the increasingly ubiquitous former Prime Minister was right.
If, and I don’t know that it’s very likely, because it continues to seem to me that the Coalition’s incentives are for the issue to continue to hurt the Gillard government, there is some sort of “bipartisan” legislation, how would this sit with many Labor MPs? If anything might precipitate a serious threat to Julia Gillard’s leadership, presenting that sort of bill to Parliament would do it, I suspect.
“European-style unrest in [Australian] cities, if there is a return to onshore processing of all asylum seekers.”
Immigration officers aren’t suggesting that our asylum seeker “problem” has anything like the scale, historical continuity, and proximity that Europe experiences, or are they?
The public policy debate on asylum-seekers can best be described as symptomatic of hysteria exacerbated by an underlying xenophobia. The Immigration Department’s officials obviously suffer the same condition.
600 a month, out of a net permanent immigration rate of what – 15,000-odd a month?
This is very strange. Is that a direct quote from Andrew Metcalf or another senior bureaucrat, or Tony Abbott’s interpretation?
Typical of sloppy journalism, the article from The Age doesn’t really make it clear.
If this is the kind of thinking going on in the senior levels of DIAC, it is certainly a problem.
It certainly is bizarre. 7200 refugees per year and there’ll be rioting in the streets? It’s also the first time I’ve read a claim that refugees caused the London riots.
Labor now seems to be trying to wedge the Libs by saying that only the “Malaysian solution” can “stop the boats” and have supplied Abbott with a briefing to back that claim. Abbott, of course, rejects that, because e actually isn’t interested in “stopping the boats”. He just wants to wedge Labor back. Stalemate.
Meanwhile, sensible debate has all but disappeared. What’s going on?
You’ve all missed the point by a mile.
Not London. Not Paris.
Norway.
At least in Australia our crazed right-wingers don’t have easy access to automatic weapons and explosives.
A related phenomenon is the call for Australia to withdraw from the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, with Paul Sheehan insinuating that the Convention is some kind of Voldheim-era artifact.
In fact, the Convention was the outcome of the UN Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons held in 1951. Twenty-six countries – mostly Western liberal democracies including Australia, governed at that time by the Menzies Coalition government – were represented at the conference and approved the Convention. The Convention came into force in 1954 following ratification by Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, West Germany and Australia under Menzies.
In 1967 the UN. General Assembly, with the support of Australia under the Holt Coalition government, adopted the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees which effectively removed the temporal and geographical restrictions on refugee status. Australia under the Whitlam Labor government acceded to the Protocol in 1973.
That commentators can seriously call for Australia to withdraw from a Convention which, contrary to Sheehan’s claims, is primarily the creation of Western liberal democracies and embodies universal principles of human rights, speaks volumes about the depths to which debate on refugees issues has sunk in Australia.
Kim,
I think that your idea of “processing” needs a litle bit of qualification. Immigration needs to assess new arrivals to Australia in a consistent way in accordance with the Immigration act. People ca be “processed quickly if their details are entirely transparent and their documentation is complete. From that point every step backwards requires progressively more time. Once a person has been processed and failed in their application then the court process may be accessed with ever longer time delays, right up to the Privey Council in the UK. If the original rejection of the application was due to concerns about criminal behaviour then these are people that we would not want to have roaming our communities.
The problem with this whole rotten issue is that there are those who are suggesting that all boat arrivals are genuine refugees, when the fact is that there is a full mix. It is interesting that no-one is suggesting that immigration proceedures at our airports, where as many as a thousand people a year per airport are rejected and immediately returned, should change.
The best way to expedite processing of refugees is
a for assylum seekers to retain their documentation
b for there to be a special court to process legal claims made by those assylum seekers who are rejected and then choose to challenge the decision of the immigration department
c for fully failed applicants to be deported immediately to the country of departure or origin, exactly as is performed daily at our airports without complaint from the Greens, the Coalition, or refugee advocates.
adrian @ 3 – well the ALP is pushing this as well (eg the Coalition must take the advice from the department and work with us) so I’d guess from the department. This together with the legal advice that the government claims to have over the legality of the Malaysian solution and subsequent implication on Nauru really makes me wonder if the public service these days is just giving advice the government the advice they want to hear. Its all been rather too politically convenient.
Yet for some reason the middle class left are so anti skilled migration. Now, I wonder why that is?
If refugee intake begins a rapid rise, expect the Greens soon out of the box, telling us other categories of migration need cutting. That’s why it’s a mistake for business and others to side with the left on this particular issue.
Kim: what negotiations?
If DIAC wants to invade the policy debate with the sort of provocative, hysterical and unsubstantiated rubbish as has been published today then they ought to get up on their hind legs and put a few names to the advice. No more hiding behind the desk. If this sort of nonsense is the advice that Gillard is acting on then no wonder their policies are all over the place. Multicultural Australia is a reality and always was. If DIAC apparatchiks want to reshape Australia then they ought to seek election and run on a One Nation platform instead of insinuating themselves up the skirts of Gillard all the while sucking on the public teat. DIAC’s public statement is an outrage and a total breach of appropriate process. Heads need to roll over this but at least, now they have flushed themselves from cover, we now know where the enemy is and where to purge. So much for an impartial public service.
If those who don’t want this country to abide by the Conventions we have signed up to, then perhaps the sole solution to the “illegal invasion from the north” is to cede Christmas Island to Malaysia…..
It’s bizarre and depressing that this is the advice being dispensed by senior public servants. Another six hundred people a month would not be noticed on top current migration levels, yet somehow this is going to lead to social collapse? The disconnect from reality is nearly complete.
Less than a month ago, the same Andrew Metcalfe who is now saying that offshore processing in Malaysia is the only solution, told a parliamentary inquiry that questions needed to be asked about basing the asylum seeker regime on detention facilities. At the time that seemed like maybe he was hinting at onshore processing, possibly even living in the community instead of in detention centres. Now, who knows what he was thinking. Towing the boats to Malaysia? Erecting a force field along our maritime borders? Something even less sane and more inhumane?
Well said, Paul. Sheehan is a flea, and it also speaks volumes about the depths to which he will sink.
Kim: What’s going on?
Maybe a clear and unambiguous symbol of how far to the right the entire nation has shifted since the 1980s. Australia has changed, and continues to change. Simple humanitarian ideas, accepted as mainstream in the past are now regarded as a kind of reds under the bed style socialism, the chipping away of our great “Australian way of life” while we build the mcmansions and choose the right bathroom tile.
I find it hard to view this stuff with anything other than an exasperated depression; that a country with so much to offer to its citizens and the world has crawled down into the gutter of hatred and fear. As climate change hits some estimate vast numbers of stateless refugees, we could help, but perhaps in the policy of hate and fear is a long term positioning exercise to withdraw Australia from playing its part in the decades ahead? I don’t know, and with only the Greens in the Senate to hold some kind of humanitarian line, quite frankly, I despair.
Mercurius:
The ABC’s report specifically mentions London and Paris:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-07/details-of-immigration-briefing/2875040
Sorry, OT, but this is an indication of Paul Sheehan’s view of the world, from a article on Ankor Wat from SMH travel section:
The editors at the SMH obviously think nothing of this, so maybe that’s an indication that I’m over-sensitive, or that they’re not sensitive enough.
“I am not aware that such “social unrest” (what unrest? London? Paris?) has any particular or compelling connection with refugees.”
Kim,
Are you ignoring the fact that hundreds of cars are burnt every years in the immigrant/ethnic enclaves of France?
Are you ignoring the rise of the radical right across Europe in response to the clear failure of immigration policy?
Why is the Netherlands making such wholesale changes to it’s immigration policies? Because of the success of them?
For someone who admires Occam, OBR, you’re quite the one for the fallacies.
There’s both confirmation bias and an unwarranted assumption of monocausality in your explanation of “European unrest”.
And you assert rather than argue the inference that even if what you said is true, it would also happen in the same way in a different place with a different culture.
@7 – I don’t minimise the process involved in assessing asylum seekers, or seek to slide over the fact that security and identity checks proceed assessment of claim.
But:
(a) You can check the facts on how many asylum seekers arriving by boat are found to be refugees here (p.38) http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/asylum/_files/asylum-stats-2010-11-section2.pdf
(b) Onshore processing should be far less expensive than offshore processing.
Obviously I am completely wrong – there is no way that refugees as part of the European immigration intake has led to any of the ethnic/racial social unrest problems in Europe and even if they did it is never going to happen here because our Refugees are completely different in all rspects from Europes.
Did I mis anything?
Yes, you missed the point. It may be that refugees, etc, blah, blah “has led to any” of the social unrest (note that you’ve just gone and characterised *all* of it as “ethnic/racial”). Any is not all. Or not much. You provide no evidence.
Your sophistry is well honed, but your ability to reason and make an argument is not.
“Your sophistry is well honed, but your ability to reason and make an argument is not.”
Yes indeed, and doesn’t it get tiresome.
Kim – you said I was making the unwarranted assumption of monocasuality.
I have no idea how you were able to read my mind. You aren’t my wife are you?
So, given that you so effectively pointed out that I had argued that refugees were the singular, sole and only cause of racial/ethnic unrest which is obviously completely wrong and that there was no way that refugees in Europe contributed to any of the ethnic/racial tensions and issues in Europe I withdraw.
For anyone to even think that their could be any problems related to large intakes of refugees from different cultures is quite obviously racist. I am suprised that anyone propagating such views isn’t already in custody on charges for racial vilification.
You still haven’t come up with any evidence for your claim, Occy. Do you have any?
Its very depressing to hear that DIAC advise is that permitting processed refugees to live in the community will cause race rioting, like London and Paris. I thought the London rioters were black and born in the UK.
It takes 18 hours for DIAC to process a refugee. There are complaints that ASIO does not have the right resources to conduct security assessments, using persecutors to assess victims
Some refugees who protested on Xmas Is in March had been locked up for 20 months after they were assessed as refugees in need of protection
Me thinks DIAC should stop using SERCO to write their advice
Fine – do you really believe that refugees, as a part of the immigration intake in Europe, have absolutely nothing to do with any of the social/political tensions with respect to racial/ethnic issues we are seeing in Europe? No influence, nil, nada, nix???
I have a 6 year old who still believes in the Tooth Fairy etc. It must be really nice to have that amount of faith.
And, someone explain to me again how it is so very very very humane to encourage people to get into leaky boats to attempt the dangerous voyage to Australia?
I still haven’t quite worked out the link between “here risk your life on a voyage proven to possibly kill you – oh, and send unaccompanied children, it’s ok” and “this is a humane policy approach”.
Bored now
Sinclair Davidson, for once, has said something sensible.
Sinkers is just channeling P.J. O’Rourke.
It is a view point that has some intellectual merit.
Razor, you know that in Europe they have different ideas of ‘multicuralism’ to ours. We have been more successful – I don’t recall any riots of Vietnamese migrants, for example.
And I’m not sure about this ‘encouraging them to come by boat’ argument. There’s a women’s refuge not far from me and I can imagine some poor woman desperately putting the kids in the car and heading there for safety. If it happened that they were hit by some other driver on the way, and killed, would you blame the people who provide the refuge?
Gillard moving Labor to the right makes all this hysteria possible. What was once abhorrent or lunatic is now within fence.
This country has lost it.
Only a total fuckwit could draw a link between the London riots arriving on boats and asylum seekers stealing flat screen tvs or whatever the hell it was.
Its times like these I get why Maynard Keenan wrote aenima.
Bob Brown on the attack:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-08/brown-calls-for-immigration-sackings/2876942
Kim @19,
If most people who come by boat are assessed to be refugees then they have nothing to gain by disposing of their documents except an extended serve of free accommodation.
But now that onshore processing appears to be the final outcome it is important for the protagonists of this outcome to justify now the consequences of establishing a system in which criminals determine who will be presented to Australia as refugees on the basis of how much money those people trafficers can make from their victims. Furthermore they have to justify this new situation to the many other equally needy and possibly far more desperate people who are blocked from access to Australia simply because they do not have money to pay to trafficers. Somalis who will otherwise die in their parched land for instance.
That is most likely of no concern to the bleeding hearts who think that people who will burn buildings and clog our court system to force their will on the Australian government, must all be desperate refugees.
You know you’ve got issues, Razor, when a right-wing extremist like Sinclair Davidson is more moderate than you.
Anyway, that’s the last time I’m feeding this troll.
Well said Bob Brown.
And one thing that you can guarantee along with taxes and death, is that anyone who uses the phrase ‘bleeding hearts’ is a moron.
Razor, you made a claim that they have been a cause of the London riots. The onus is on you to provide evidence, not on me to prove the negative.
I agree with fine@4, this looks like the government trying on the wedge.
The briefing would have been done on the orders of the government, and does not indicate bureaucrats ‘out of control’ as I saw Bob Brown arguing this morning. Metcalfe, McCarthy, Larsen and the SG rep would have been working under tight government instructions for this briefing, the stakes are too high.
And I suspect that 600 figure was tossed in like a bone for the dog, to give Abbott (and News Ltd) something predictable to run with. Perhaps they think Abbott will go so far out on the right that he leaves the majority of voters behind (who appear to be warming to mainland processing). Definitely a possibility.
I might be wrong, but my recollection is that the last time an ALP govt tried on a wedge like this, with the CPRS, the Libs imploded and elected a new leader. Perhaps they are hoping that this will be Abbott’s waterloo in turn.
The idea of cooperating with Gillard to allow the malaysian solution amendments to go through parliament would be beyond contemplation for Brandis and his macho cheersquad at News Ltd, so Abbott is banking on Nauru, a losing proposition. The ground is shifting under the rightards and they don’t know it. Such good sport..
@38 – I didn’t mentioned London Riots once.
@38 – no Fine, this is ‘fantasy politics’, remember? Like the senior officials at DIAC, Razor can assert whatever bizarre sophistry he likes, and that becomes the new reality.
Just for laffs, he can probably even do it while professing to hate ‘postmodern relativism’!
jules @ 33“Only a total fuckwit could draw a link between the London riots arriving on boats and asylum seekers stealing flat screen tvs or whatever the hell it was.”
Absolutely. I’d like to think that the country has not completely lost it yet, but our politicians and senior public servants do appear to have done so.
brett @ 34:
OK, with the exception of Bob Brown! He is right. We deserve a lot better than for our delegated decision-makers to be advised by hysterical, delusional ignorami. There are millions of citizens better able to do the job of thse DIAC idiots than the current incumbents, so can we have them replaced?
If that’s true grace, it’s yet another example of Labor being too clever by half, once again obsessing about tactics at the expense of strategy and policy..
Bilb, you know that practically all of them are refugees, I think it’s something like 95%. If you were a refugee, had the money and were stuck in Malaysia looking at you and your kids future, wouldn’t you try and get to Australia? And if you did get here to find your kids going crazy, locked up for ages in some detention camp, wouldn’t you protest? That doesn’t make them evil.
BTW are you sure they can appeal to the Privy Council? I wouldn’t have thought so.
Grace – if the ALP really thought that this type of thing would be Abbott’s downfall because of the CPRS experience then the ALP really doesn’t deserve to be in power. Mal got rolled because of the white hot anger of Coalition Voters at him trying to play footsies with Kevvie instead of reflecting what the majority of supporters wanted. He would probably still be Leader if he had listened to others instead of his admittedly highly intelligent but out of touch self. I spoke to him face to face about it when he was in Perth while still leader and realised he didn’t want to hear what Coalition supporters were saying. Abbott on the other hand actually represents what Coalition supporters want. Can’t see him getting rolled in the current circumstances even if you can’t personally like him.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-08/brown-calls-for-immigration-sackings/2876942
“ABC News Online understands the warnings about social problems resulting from onshore processing were not raised.
But speaking to reporters today, Mr Abbott said warnings of social tension “is the advice the department [of immigration] has been giving the Government”.”
So which is it ABC? And where did the “social unrest” bs you published yesterday actually come from I wonder?….
The people being branded “racists” and “bogens” are basically blue collar and low income workers. The exact class of person the ALP was founded by and representing of. Every ALP legend and myth directly relates to this section of society. This single issue is proof of how much trouble the future ALP faces.
It frankly defies belief that the ALP isn’t frantically working out what fears these people feel. I suggest only a small part is racism, and many concerns may well be very legitimate. The ALP has for too long taken the easy option, and I think time is just about to run out.
If the blue collar and low income workers desert the ALP, the ALP will lose its reason for being. That’s how serious things are. Any defection of this magnitude to the Liberal Party makes it all but mathematically impossible for future Labor. No wonder like Howard, Abbott is chasing this electorial gold for everything he is worth.
The great escape that the workchoices policy allowed Labor is once in a lifetime stuff. There’s zero chance Abbott or anyone else in the Liberal Party will ever give a sucker an even break like that again. If that’s the only hope Labor has, it’s already over.
@44 & @7
Appeals to the Privy Council have, for all intents and purposes, been abolished since March 1986.
d
adrian@43, you are quite possibly right, but like climate change, the politics of asylum seekers is a diabolical legacy for the govt, thanks to a decade of going backwards into the dark ages under Howard…
“European-style social unrest”
Saw this as I glanced at the Australian whilst in the coffee shop. Very disturbing. I have a sense of foreboding about what’s going on. That, as Yeats said, “the centre cannot hold”. Sorry to get all apocalyptic but large scale economic uncertainty coupled with institutionalised race based paranoia are often the precursor to major conflict. And there’s no indication that things will improve. The next 5 years will tell the story.
@6
I’d seen Sheehan column before to saw the Oz story. That’s when the thinking about linkages and tipping points began.
This “race riot” angle seems to have been distilled from some fairly bland DFAT and other departmental reportage.
Murdoch flavoured “beat up”, in other words.
Did I miss the announcement that Bob Brown had become a Cabinet member?
Darryl @48, quite right. I remember Joh Bjelke-Petersen hyperventilating about it at the time.
To oppose the boats is not to oppose refugees. This is where the middle class left just do not get it. They refuse to see that it is not refugees that many have an issue with. Many people can see the economics of the system and that the system is used by some. Coming by boat, like it or not, does mean that you push into the line.
Firstly, it is very easy as your typical white middle class leftist to say how compassionate we should be and accept all the boats. This means that many more boats will come and as we have seen through boat sinkings and the tragedy last year, this will mean more sinkings. This is not compassion. The boats are not fleeing immediate persecution. They are not being persecuted in Indonesia. The refugees are self selecting Australia as a second refuge when they have already left their own country.
Secondly, my understanding of the situation is that is it generally better off Afghans, Iraqis and Sri Lankans (though this has slowed) who come out here by boat. I don’t recall seeing boats of Somalis, or Karen or Chin from Burma. Why? They are dirt poor. So there is an economic bias in Australia’s refugee intake when the system means that those who can afford a boat get here get accepted and those that can’t don’t. Chin and Karen from Burma as well as Hmong from Laos have lived decades in camps, register with the UN and wait and wait and wait.
Before I am called a racist as I already have been, I actually support increasing the refugee quota but that it should be refugees from camps, whose lives are an utter misery, who should be accepted. And I also work in resetting refugees so the racist call won’t work. There should be deterents to getting leaky boats, many linked to corrupt Indonesian military officers and bribery. The reality is that the open borders left are neither compassionate nor logical.
PatrickB, that’s what I was getting at back @ 3. Sounds like the usual media bullshit to me. Unless it’s a direct quotations, don’t believe it, and even if it is, question it. These bastards are not to be trusted.
Terry @ 53 – no, but you probably missed the announcement that we live in a state where any member of parliament is entitled to express a point of view, and not just members of cabinet.
Sure, but its Cabinet which has responsibility for decisions about who heads government departments.
Again, its a bad look for Julia, who looks beholden to the demands of all of these people, who then behave in a feral and undisciplined way towards her and her government.
Yeah, I know Terry, it’s all a ‘bad look for Julia’, just like our great economic performance, the fact that Craig Thompson isn’t going to be charged, the fires in Texas, the fact that George Brandis is a tool, Obama’s poor ratings, the danger of recession in Europe, Andrew Robb’s depression etc, etc.
It would save a lot of time if we all agreed that everything that happens in the world, be it positive or negative is a bad look for ‘Julia’.
Did Brown actually sack anyone, Terry? If not, what are you talking about?
Do you seriously think that Keating would have put up with this crap from Brown and Wilkie? He would have said “back to the polls, mate”.
Bob Brown isn’t in the Cabinet – he’s only President.
dear Occam’s Blunt Razor & anyone else
since when do you have to be in cabinet to speak out about public policy?
senator brown leads the party with balance of power in the senate. he “represents” me & as far as i’m concerned he got a “mandate” to say anything he damn well wants, whenever he wants, cabinet or not.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
What would Keating do? Bob Brown is the president? Talk about fantasy politics.
Russel @44,
You measuring other people’s imagined circumstances against your own.
“If you were a refugee, had the money and were stuck in Malaysia looking at you and your kids future, wouldn’t you try and get to Australia? ”
A person with means in a stable country is not “stuck” and their place of refuge is where they are. I might consider myself stuck not being a billionaire in Australia, does that mean I can move to Silicon Valley and claim refuge?
Now if you are talking about Burmese escaping forced labour then you are talking refugees, or if you are talking Somalis escaping perpetual famine then you are definitiely talking refugees, but if you are talking Afghanis leaving their relatively stable country, a country that Australia invests very heavily in then, no you are talking about people wanting an easier life. If Afghanis are the measure of what makes a refugee then we should really consider the homeless of America more urgently as their life totally sucks. Everyone needs to but out of this argument and let the government get on with the job according to the criteria that are decided upon by those trained and employed to fully study the issues.
This is a very divisive issue. And shight stirrers like Toxic Tony Abbott who have only their personal political interests in mind do this country and refugees no service at all.
Been to Afghanistan lately, BilB?
Right. Because the Hazaras are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The Christians are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The women are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all.
From Crikey earlier this year:
Do you know something the government doesn’t about why none of these Afghanis were really refugees after all?
“the new agreement will not deter people fleeing from Afghanistan”
Exactly right, but it will help them decide to settle in any one of the culturally compatible countries through which they travel. The people of Afghanistan are the only people who can put their country and their culture right. We hear of people comking here and becoming millionaires, well thewse people of high initiative are the very people that Afghanistan needs to rebuild itself into a modern and stable society. If people apply through our embassy to come to Australia to learn the2 skills of rebuilding their country then this should be what we do enthusiastically. But then these people must return to their country of origin to put those skills to work. That is real global community.
“Right. Because the Hazaras are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The Christians are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The women are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all.”
So what are you saying, TigTog, moving to Australia is the solution to all of these people’s problems? Are there other people in the world suffering political and religious persecution who should be moving to Australia also? How many people are we talking about here?
I find it terribly difficult to believe that the conditions in detention centres are, in any way, worse than the situation they fled from.
Remembering that the only ones spending “long term detention”, have been denied asylum for a reason(legitimate according to the processors ) and are appealing(up to three times) that.
No need to riot/self harm/sow lips.
If they are fleeing; poverty – fixed ( three squares a day), lives threatened – fixed, political persecution- fixed, racial/ethnic – fixed ,religious persecution-fixed.
(Hint to asylum seekers with 20 grand :- keep your identification and buy a plane ticket )
No Adrian,
But I have lived with nothing. I have empathy for people in this situation, and my experiences tell me that a peoples best solutions come from their own communities.
I have live in New Guinea where people with nothing relative to our situations live full and happy lives.
Living with ‘nothing’, and living in ‘reasonable fear of persecution’ are two entirely different things.
And if their communities are, for whatever reason, dysfunctional or worse, how on earth can the solution come from within?
Many examples spring to mind, but I don’t think there’s much point going there.
I’ve just watched Toxic Abbott pushing the Nauru destination, and the way he is doing this leaves me seriously wondering if he is up for a personal financial kickback from bringing this destination back into operation. It is not at all realistic for a politician to be so fixated about one finite solution to a problem, particularly when there is such a broad field of equally weighted solutions.
From what I’ve seen of Afghanistan, Adrian, I don’t think that I am seeing dysfunctional communities, certainly nothing to the degree that we are seeing in Africa right now. But if we are talking about religion creating unworkable communities we only have to look to how the Catholic religion destroys whole countries.
“”"”"Right. Because the Hazaras are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The Christians are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all. The women are not facing any persecution from the Taliban at all.”"”"
Right. The only position I would consider is to join with the allies and kick the talibans arse. Take ownership of MY shit. Australia doesn’t need any more cowards.
@BilB, what I was saying in my previous comment is that your characterisation of Afghanistan as a relatively stable country that nobody needs to flee for safety reasons is horseshit.
What I’m saying in this comment is that you are seriously moving the goalposts around with the silly questions in your final paragraph above.
We’ve also had the “culturally compatible” argument before. The Hazaras are Persian-dialect-speaking Shi’ites being persecuted by Pashtun Sunni extremists. How many of their neighbouring countries (and the countries between Afghanistan and Australia) are Shi’ite or Hazara majority? That aren’t warzones themselves? Would you trust another Sunni or Pashtun dominated country to be a safe haven if you were them? There simply aren’t any stable, safe, culturally compatible countries for them to move to.
And just how many of those culturally compatible countries allow refugees access to basic things like education, medical care and the right to work? Its certainly not Malaysia! These people might be carrying their families’ life savings with them, but without the right to work their stuffed in the medium term. No surprise they try to get somewhere else before they have no resources at all.
chris@75
I don’t think economic disadvantage is grounds for asylum.
If that were the case, the boats would be American.
TigTog,
You have not got a reasonable case. You are talking about 2.6 million people in a population of 29 million. If these people face persecution then their remedy is not relocation. If they face starvation then yes, relocation is their only option.
As for travel options then London is nearer to Kabul 5200 klms versus 8000 klms to darwin. We are talking here about economic refugees not in principle political refugees. South African Whites face a far higher level of persecution, but they come here via the diplomatic route, not in boats. For the record that distance is about the same as from Kabul.
Sure once people are here then they deserve the protections accorded under the international conventions. The entire point of this is do governments hand the role of immigration control to criminals or not . What is your opinion on that?
Chris @ 75,
You are just waggling your quill for the sake of it. Go and think about the issues a little more deeply.
What alternative remedy do you suggest?
@64
” leaving their relatively stable country”
(choke) Relative to what? You must be one of them postmodernists. Pathetic.
“South African Whites face a far higher level of persecution”
This is just moronic. By any object objective measure white South Africans are far better off than the average Afghan. They are orders of magnitude ahead of the persecuted minorities in that country that you are trying valiantly to smear. Its a fairly tawdry look, all this goal post shifting and these wild assertions. Why don’t you come back when you actually have a coherent argument, albeit your position indefensible.
Spana said:
As regrettable as this is, drownings are not our fault, except to the extent one can argue that we shouldn’t have helped author problems in the home country that precipitated their flight or should have made a better fist of resettling those who had genuine claims for humanitarian resettlement. They knew, or ought to have known the risks. A boat that is unseaworthy can sink outside our rescue zone, or in it but too quickly for us to effect a rescue.
As it occurs, the relationship between deaths at sea and those surviving is still very good (AIUI about 1%), so the calculus, talking into account the impositions on your life chances and those and your children of growing up in squalour with near zero rights in practice still look pretty good. Australian governments have tried to add to the costs of that calculus by brutalising people here, and with the Malaysia solution, suggesting the risk might be undertaken for nought, but even if that were successful, all that could mean would be that they would have to endure conditions that made a 1% risk of death acceptable for longer. That’s not showing compassion. It’s covering the desire to pander to bigots with faux concern about poor risk trading by others in their own safety.
I am not going to comment on what underlies your motivation in this Spana, but the reality is that this policy is being driven by one thing — the desire to pander to bigots and people harbouring existential fears. Being a refugee, fleeing persecution or intolerable conditions is a boolean. There are not more or less deserving refugees. Refugees are deserving ipso facto.
It’s an interesting side note though that had the Malaysia deal worked as Gillard had wanted, Australia’s intake would have included more Burmese and Chin rather than Afghans, which I daresay, would have played better out there in Lindsay …
IMO, if we are to be serious, we need to expedite processing in the major source countries in our region and coextensively get going on a genuine worldwide effort to place those in need. We can take a lot more than 13,500 each year — I can’t see why in practice we couldn’t take 200,000 each year, if it came to that — and I don’t for a moment imagine that it would.
TigTog,
This is THE big question. The world’s bourgeoning human population now means that the time for nomadic Nations is passed. The land that each nation commands is the land that have to attempt to base their future existence upon. Ethnicity in the future starting now is a luxury. Yes we are all different in some way, but we are all people, and we have to live as one. This is the reality for the Hazara people, as it is for the many hundredes of others. No doubt thbat sounds a little lofty, bu it is the reality, and you know it.
The Earth’s Biosphere however is shifting under its human load and what we consider to be stable today will in as little as a decade start to change with the Earth no longer able to support hundreds of millions of people. The Horn of Africa is the first telltale famine which could in 20 years be fully permanent. This will be the true test of our humanity. The structures that we put in place now, or fail to put in place, will be the tools with which we use to handle the 10′s of millions yet to come. Now I don’t know what the future will hold as far as that is concerned, but I’m sure that leaving this to people smugglers is not the solution.
note: extra ke2y strokes are because I am using a very small keypad.
@81 – yes, indeed!
There’s no requirement that people face *extra* or *higher* or *really bad* persecution.
Under the UN Convention, it needs to be demonstrated that people face a well grounded fear of persecution on religious or political grounds.
They could have lots of $ and still be *genuine* refugees. Or be white, or yellow, or brown, or whatevs.
Of course, in the real world, they won’t be wealthy White South Africans.
But that is irrelevant.
Humanity, folks! End of bloody story.
White South Africans (of which there are plenty here) have some stereotypical group traits.
They are guilty of many things (eg lack of humour, etc) including knowing how to work. Shirking just isn’t in their DNA. Neither do they whinge, or hold their hand out. We need more of ‘em.
Besides, their way of BBQing is the same way as the Australian traditional style! (NOT the american style that seems to have taken over in urban areas in the past 15 years or so).
Not Iran?
It is neighbouring, Shi’ite, Persian speaking and isn’t currently a warzone. It is, for better or worse, stable, safe and culturally compatible. And has most Hazara refugees.
Or India?
Which is between Afghanistan and Australia and is stable, safe, not a warzone, and is in every measure just as culturally compatible for Hazaras as Australia is.
Or Indonesia?
Which is stable, safe and, while it has a Sunni muslim majority, is a religiously tolerant country with significant areas of non-Sunni majorities in, among other places, northern Sumatra, northern Sulawesi and Nusa Tenggara and which is in every measure just as culturally compatible for Hazaras as Australia is.
Or Thailand?
Or Cambodia?
I support our country living up to its obligations under the Refugee Convention, and its Protocol, because it has signed up to them and, having done so, should honour them, or have the courage to repudiate them, and because I have no fear that those who come to us as refugees will not become, overall, good citizens of our country just as those who came to Australia from Vietnam and Cambodia and, before them, the Baltic States have done.
But I don’t think that one can sensibly argue that there simply weren’t any other stable, safe, culturally compatible countries for them to move to any more than there are for the Hazaras.
“As for travel options then London is nearer to Kabul 5200 klms versus 8000 klms to darwin.”
Bilb, Hazaras seek asylum in Europe as well. Why do Australians think it is all about us? We are the nation of whiners.
Good to see Bob Brown come out today with some fire back in his belly.
Iran, GregM?
“Hundreds of Afghans have demonstrated against alleged ill-treatment and executions of a number Afghan refugees by the Iranian authorities.”
Indonesia – they are not allowed to settle in Indonesia.
Thailand? They just deport refugees back to where they came from. You don’t seem to understand that there are very few countries in the world which offer asylum protection. Australia used to be one of those rare and great countries.
etc – this issue! – more tedious to talk to ppl about than CO2.
Who are the Hazaras-101? (semester 3)
NYT
They aren’t making this shit up.
Should be a law against commenting thrice in a row.
wbb,
You should go back and follow the whole discussion. The Turkish/Mongolian origin Hazaras, on their 8000klm journey to Darwin bypass many Australian Embassies. They have many opportunities to apply for entry into Australia properly. Conversely should such people apply Australia has those opportunities to assess these people and thereby prevent boatloads of these same people taking the 30 hour trip from Indonesia to Persian speaking Suni Muslam Christmas Island.
wbb,
Hazaran Afghans seeking refuge in Australia makes as much sense as blue collar lifetime union members, facing persecution from an Abbott led Liberal Government, seeking refuge in Japan, instead of their more natural UK of Italy of Greece or Lebanon or Arnham Land.
Going for the trifecta next.
Spana @55
WE are at war in one of the countries that you identified, helped blow the living crap out of the other and Sri Lanka and you can get in a boat and go straight from Australia to Sri Lanka or back. Although as you say those numbers of refugees are dropping cos the immediate threat to Sri lankans is passing. Tho Sri Lanka is hardly a safe place – its the sort of place where a journalist can (and did) write their own obituary and have it published in the days before they are killed by govt forces.
Because we enabled blowing the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan tho we weren’t actually at war with the actual populations of those countries we have an obligation to those millions of Iraqi refugees we helped displace. Same in Afghanistan where we are still at war – especially cos instead of concentrating on doing the job properly there we went to Iraq and as I mentioned, helped displace several million people.
We can increase our intake of refugees independently of asylum seeker applications, its not that difficult, and this bullshit about a queue is just that – bullshit to enable an irrational fear of people on boats. Although maybe its understandable given what happened with the 1788 invasion.
Also the consequences of our “stop the boats” policy means that any boat that comes to Australia is forfeit isn’t it. Why would you use a boat you could use again if it was just going to be destroyed when it got to Australia? What happens when people get on boats is outside our jurisdiction, but the risks to those people are increased by the decisions we make here.
…and in Sri Lanka you can get in a boat and go straight to Australia …
Bilb: “to apply for entry into Australia properly”…sigh. Bilb takes an interesting position, calling Abbott “toxic” while spouting the usual Abbott style ignorant paranoid rhetoric. I would suggest Bilb goes for a detox retreat somewhere.
President Bob is talking tough on blocking the MRRT.
Does it get any better than this?
Almost as good as watching Gulf War I in the 1990′s!
“Good to see Bob Brown come out today with some fire back in his belly.”
Yes, I wish some on the Labor side would catch it.
According to the ABC, Brown’s ‘outburst’ was ‘extraordinary’.
Of course Abbott’s continually measured and considered utterances are entirely ordinary.
President Bob obviously is not a fan of Public Servants providing frank and fearless advice.
Frank and Fearless never go out without the company of Intellectually Rigorous and Comprehensive for fear of being mistaken for Vacuous and FUDDY …
I hope that helps …
Indeed Eric. If it’s not painful enough to have to listen to Abbott’s lackeys doing Juliar and other equally puerile slogans, to have to be reading repeatedly “Toxic Tony” from someone implying more wit than TA has is paradoxical and insulting. Bilb needs to take this nonsense someplace it will impress people.
Interesting. Bernard Keane at Crikey confirms my misgivings about the way this whole matter has been reported, way back @ 3:
adrian @ 99 yes, I suspected as much. Right down there in the gutter.
Nevertheless, even assuming Bernard Keane’s account is essentially correct … consider …
Bundling: at the height of 2010, up to 600 asylum seekers were arriving by boat a month with the specific concern of some asylum seekers who are found not to have legitimate claims to an humanitarian visa, but whose source countries will not accept them back and unreturnable applicants creates tensions within the relevant community within Australia, due to the perception that they are taking the places of genuine asylum seekers and their families was a misleading mixwas radically and perniciously misleading.
600 arrivals per month is not the number of failed but unreturnables, nor is it driven by this, so the figure was completely wrong and likely to lead to just the sort of nonsense we heard later about causality and queue-jumping. Metcalf propbably didn’t intend it, but it amounted to a troll. “European-style social unrest” was then framed in just these terms.
As I’ve noted more than once in this place, meaning lies not merely or even principally in the minds of the authors of texts, but of their audiences and their readings at the moment in time. One when utters, one must take into account the likely readings by likely audiences in the prevailing context. We have seen that matter played out disastrously over the so-called “carbon tax” and here again, the secretary of the department would appear, on this account, to be at best a total naif if not someone looking to push a particular policy agenda.
Bob Brown’s description of him as a “turkey” seems warranted. Unless he can show either that he was wrongly attributed, and never made the remarks, or made them with qualification and context that does not appear here, or he has some accurate, salient data and robust modelling on which to base his reported claims of “European-style social unrest”, then some sort of disciplinary response seems fair enough. Sacking may be too much, but surely a very public rap over the knuckles and a very close look at the culture of his department would be in order. Apparently, he worked under Vanstone (please no bad taste jokes) so that raises a question about his agenda and outlook right there.
Fran 98,
For as long as Abbott is poisoning our political process he remains Toxic Tony. Get used to it, as I don’t see him changing his tactics any time soon.
OBR @ 94 – gloating over the deaths of civilians in a war. Classy.
@103 – where did I mention civilians? Watching Suddam Hussein and his Republican Guard get blown to smithereens was very enjoyable.
@ 102…..but you see BilB you agree with him, your views on these matters are the same. Bilious BilB and Toxic Tony, right in step….
And you saw this where OBR?
eric sykes,
how do you deduce yhay I agree on anything with Toxic Tony Abbott?
@108 I don’t need any particular powers of deduction; on the matter of refugees your statements here are clear enough BilB…disgusting right wing misinformation spiced up with faux concern about mythological demon criminals forcing “their will on the Australian government”. Suggest you actually look deeper into the facts if you actually have sincere interest in them, which I doubt.
Nothing specific there, EricSykes, I suggest that you go back and re-read the message. You have only absorbed what you wanted to hear.
The dark fantasies of “European-style social unrest” among policy makers are even more disturbing.
Are they fantasies? This seems one of those issues where the left/right dichotomy inhibits objectivity. There is unrest in Australia, from my observation this seems to be sexual, racial, religious and sub-cultural. More West Side Story than Reichstag Fire yeah. There’s disgruntlement with immigration and the Howard government used refugees as a distraction. Neither side of the house is serious about halting immigration. Too many dollars at stake.
But refugees yeah..
A related phenomenon is the call for Australia to withdraw from the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, with Paul Sheehan insinuating that the Convention is some kind of Voldheim-era artifact.
I expect this to become serious at some stage. Across the developed world.
The UN Convention on refugees has not been updated adequately since inception. It was not written in a world were intercontinental air travel is relatively affordable and the masses have access to instantaneous electronic communications. It needs to be either significantly updated to reflect current circumstances or Australia should withdraw until an appropriate document is produced.
Perhaps, OBR, you could explain the pertinence of these developments to the operation of the convention.
“Stop The Planes!”
Yeah, I thought the boat arrivals were the problem?! That sound you hear is goalposts shifting.
Hi Ambigulous! I thought of that one months ago! Well, something like it.
@113 to 115 – Boat arrivals don’t “boat” all the way to Indonesia. They fly and they communicate about it by electronic means. Compare this to when the Convention was formed – long distance flights to potential refuge, passing over and through countries just didn’t happen.
So, now we have the situation where people who clearly wouldn’t be issued a visa for travel by air direct to an Australia Airport and therefore risk being virtually immediately turned around in the airport are prepared to fly to Indonesia and then roll the dice on the boat journey knowing that once picked up they have an extremely high chance of being granted Refugee status (complete with Australian Taxpayer Funded legal support).
Do you really think that if we didn’t have today’s air travel we would be seeing the same numbers of boat arrivals from the Middle East and Central Asia as we do today?
Oh noes! Thanks to air travel, people can now get THE FUCK as far away as possible from their persecutors.
Who will save us from this terrible threat of people fleeing danger?!
Man the panic stations!
*furrows brow*
Look on the bright side Mercurius, so many people now feel, oh so, persecuted in aus and they have the means to flee.
OBR – Are you seriously suggesting that technological advances in transport influence the expression of morality and what influence which moralities are possible? Did i miss your conversion to po mo high priest? Are you about to change your monika to Occam’s Relatavistic Razor?
You’re probably right, Razor. If it weren’t for air travel, all those brown people would be getting butchered in the privacy of their own homes, and we wouldn’t need to hear (or think) about it.
“Are you about to change your monika to Occam’s Relatavistic Razor?”
or Mocca Runt’s Blazor.
OBR the Refugee Convention was crafted in 1951 with arrivals by refugees by boat very much in mind.
No-one wanted the shame of being associated with what happened to the passengers on the St Louis in 1939 as they sought refuge first in Cuba and then in the United States.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-louis.htm
While you can all mount up on the moral high horse, the majority of Australians have a significant issue with the fact that asylum seekers can pass through multiple countries which are significantly safer than their point of departure and basically country shop. This is why TPVs are popular. While Australia should and does run a resettlement program for refugees, that programme should not be able to be gamed or overwhelmed because of the deeply flawed nature of both the UN and the Refugee Convention.
OBR said:
This is only a pretence, offered by the LNP. Those who are bothered by “boats” are bothered by “foreigners comeing into this country and changing our way of life”. A failed “asylum seeker policy” is synonymous with a “failed immigration policy”. For them, a successful immigration policy is one that keeps out foreigners, especially non-western foreigners.
These folk are under the impression that if we could somehow “stop the boats” we could also “stop the Muslims” and “stop the Africans” and perhaps even “stop the 21st century” and return to the 1950s when everyone looked white.
That of course sounds b|goted so most objectors are shy about saying that outside of their circle of qualified xenophobes. Instead, they pretend it’s all about “people smugglers” and “people drowning” and “queue jumpers” and “people who can’t even speak English getting benefits from the taxpayer” and the entry “of people who aren’t real refugees but just want a better life”.
You, OBR, are now saying that what is right is not a matter of principle but of cultural convenience.
Hypocrisy truly is the homage that vice pays to virtue.
Fran,
If you take that position then qualify it by saying how many people a year do you think Australia should accept under any circumstance
10,000
100,000
500,000
1,000,000
5,000,000
10,000,000
15,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
What do you think is a practical number of people for Australia to settle each year? Should these people be able to speak our language? Should these people if adults have an education to our employment standard? What problems do you anticipate with your selection?
BilB
I’m in favour of
a) Australia playing a leading role in getting an effective human resettlement scheme in which all countries party to the Refugee Convention accept responsibility for a proportion (uncapped) of those displaced by civil conflict, human rights abuses etc. They get to discharge this by contribution of funds or places or some combination. Allowance is made for per-capita GDP, available land and so forth. Leading economies would obviously have to accept more than developing economies
b) Australia accepting as many people for processing as arrive here. Once their status is determined Australia seeks to situate them within one or other of the programs we would have here, or attempts to place them within a suitable program in a place that is party to the program in a) or has places for skilled migration, business etc …
As a matter of practice, I see no reason why Australia could not easily manage 200,000 such people each year, even allowing that most ended up settling here. This could easily be justified on just the same grounds that aid to developing countries is justified. As it goes, Australia is not meeting its aid commitments, so perhaps this would be a step in the right direction.
And yes, we should provide suitable training in English where needed, and a trade or other vocattional skill or academic support, assistance with qualifications where pertinent.
Bilb – that is an excellent point – exactly what number of refugees should we accept every year?
An unlimited number?
How does that number sit with the environmental concerns of the refugee advocates?
Most refugees advocates who are basically advocates of an unlimited intake/open border policy do not live in suburbs where the cultural enclaves of immigrants develop. They do however enjoy the interesting new cuisine and opportunities to feel good about their social consciences.
BilB @ 125 – how many refugees around the world do you believe have the capacity to make the journey to Australia? Given that until the Malaysian solution was proposed most everyone who made it here and was found to be a refugee (even if they were processed overseas and it took a while) was allowed to reside in Australia why don’t we have a lot more refugees arriving?
Perhaps there isn’t this great flood of people capable of making to Australia?
Chris,
You are being a little bit naive there. I can imagine Somali pirates loading up some of those captured ships with up to 30,000 refugees. If I was running a people smuggling business I would use a high speed cat From Indonesia and drop the people off at Dolly beach (there is fresh water there) on Christmas Island in the early hours of the morning. If I was being very cheaky I would drop them off at West White Beach right near the detention centre. The New Guinea Native kids make boats out of roofing iron with the ends folded up, nailed to a vertical piece of wood and sealed with tar from the roads. They venture out into very deep water with these. Bouyancy can be added to make them unsinkable. A drop off service can bring these boats near to shore for deployment to carry people to shore, or to be deployed as a getaway strategy for the carrier cat.
If you announce an open border policy you will very quickly discover just how creative people really are. I’m pretty sure that I could move about 40,000 people per year across that narrow straight between Indonesia and Christmas island. And then there is the New Guinea route. A few more dangers that way but when the profits are so high and losses are not a consideration then that would quickly become a freeway.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-out-of-step-with-most-voters-20110911-1k479.html
OBR:
Well, at least OBR has finally dropped the pretense that they give a shit about people drowning in leaky boats, unaccompanied minors, refoulement, the ‘evil’ of people-smuggling or any of the other crocodile-tear issues they usually raise. The real issues for the “majority” that Razor refers to (actually a small and noisy minority, as Herald/Nielsen poll shows), are Anywhere But Here, Not In My Backyard and Get Off My Lawn.
Fran@126,
What then will be your strategy when 2 million people arrive in any one year?
It is not difficult to prove that there are 100 times that many people who would take up the opportunity if it was offered to them.
How would you have Australia meet that challenge? How the people get here is not the issue as with an open border policy the means of travel becomes much broader and with experience can be continually improved upon. Australia has publically stated that its population will rise to 30 million so that can be seen as being a need for a country with an open border policy.
How should Australia react to a 2 million people arrival year with the prospect of a greater number in the following year?
BillB, you’re conflating two quite separate issues: population policy and refugee policy.
Seeing as we already have a lot of people settling in Australia under the skilled migration programme (I’m too lazy to look up the number, but I know it’s large), we could easily stop doing that (and perhaps train the people who already live here instead), and accept only reffos. We’d still be slowing our (unsustainable, in my view) population growth.
If you don’t like brown people in desperate circumstances, please just be honest enough to say so.
Not remotely agreeing with BilB’s bizarre rantings, but to suggest that our refugee intake can act as a substitute for the skilled migration program is in itself a little fanciful.
Unfortunately a lot of employers need skilled workers, and they need them yesterday. Because we don’t have a decent training system in this country compared to say Germany, we are always playing catch-up, and part of the way of filling the gap is skilled immigrants. That gap cannot be filled by a couple of months training of refugees, much as I wish that it could.
In any case, I think it’s a mistake to confuse the two. We should be taking more refugees for humanitarian reasons, not because they might benefit us economically. No doubt most of them will end up contributing, but if we go down this path the danger is that we start discriminating among refugees according to the economic contribution they may be able to make.
I’d like to see some continuation of the skilled migration program or even the extension of the idea of skills to refugees. I want Australia to offer precedence to artists, dancers, musicians and poets. That would herald a new day.
Adrian,
I don’t think that you are in tune with the forces at play with migration. One of the industries desperate for low paid labour is the mining industry. This is an industry that has zero interest in building a strong community as they are entirely apart from that. Their customers are outside Australia and their profits leave Australia. An Industry facing the need to pay low skilled people wages over $100,000, as reported, has a huge interest in imigration and could very well be facilitating the boat people through their extensive international connections. Another industry keen to promote low wages is the shipping and stevedoring industries. The shipping industry also has the knowledge and connections to promote a rapid ramping of undocumented arrivals to feed an open door immigration policy.
Boat people are profitable for “agents”. 2,000,000 new arrivals at $2,000 a head is very good business for trafficing “agents” as well as being a huge saving for the “refugees”. That would then be a 4 billion dollar industry.
Not plausible you say. Just think how Australian “entrepreneurs” took to filling the demand for insulation funded by stimulous money.
Second that akn.
On the contrary BilB, I think that I have a far greater understanding than yourself. One of the industries that relies on migrant labour is indeed the mining industry, but there are many others, hospitality, manufacturing IT to name a few, and they are not seeking low skilled migrants. Most of these employers are genuinely having difficulty filling these skilled positions from the local labour market and wouldn’t be going through the time, trouble and expense of the migration program if they could.
The rest of your comment is just idle speculation, and when you use the word ‘agents’ in quotation marks I have no idea what you’re talking about.
So Gillard’s policy is not the party platform, it is not the policy the public want according to this latest poll, she has to do a deal with the devil to make her policy work, she is not wanted as PM by the Australian public, or her party under her leadership, the left faction is dead against it…..so what will she do?
Could there possibly be more of disconnect between one person and their role and responsibility than that between Gillard, the public and common morality? If she continues to persue this course it is because (as with her real her anti-carbon tax position) she holds a personal strong anti-boat people position. Or she believes this is a political fix that will pay off for her later.
One thing that can be ruled out now is that she has much concern for the plight of AS.
I think it really has come to the time where a forensic analysis of Gillard needs to be undertaken. She certainly has not turned out the way people assumed policy and personal beliefs wise. It isn’t surprising the public are abondoning her and seemingly taking a personal dislike as well.
The Piping Shrike is one of the few blogs that trys to look at reaons behind Labor and Gillard’s demise. Other politcal sites such as seem to contain ‘Left’ wingers enthralled to the cult of Gillard to an emabarassing degree. You only need to look at the insipid whimperings today as they endeavour to rationalise away the facts of the polls and the abandoment of Labor’s platform.
The party supporters ability to abandon their apparent beliefs in order to stay faithful to a cult figure is born out over the past few years on some sites and could make useful material for later analysis.
As for today. If the left of Labor were to have an opportune time to assert their position on AS then it couldn’t have a position for themselves more stronger than today. If they let today pass without asserting their position you would have to say Gillard actuall may set new record low personal and party figures.
BilB @ 130 – I never suggested an open border policy. Just a transfer to onshore processing like we used to have. Moving back to community housing rather than mandatory detention would save a lot of money. We can continue to discourage people smugglers by prosecuting the smugglers, working with the source countries and seizing the boats. We could also help fund refugee camps in source countries to make their life more comfortable to decrease the likelyhood of them wanting to take a boat journey.
Under those conditions we won’t see the millions of refugees arriving like you suggest.
BilB asked:
My ‘strategy’ will be to cross that bridge if and when it arises, though for the record I regard that as utterly improbable. There is simply no way that the only or even the principal thing between what we have and that figure is s198A of the Migration Act. One might well ask — what will the policy of those who want to brutalise asylum seekers be if 10% of the population of Bangladesh decides to move to Australia? Oddly, despite the fact that many would have an economic incentive to do so, they don’t, and I doubt the ugly visages of Gillard and Howard have turned them off.
If 2 million turned up in any one year, our processing systems would be utterly overwhelmed and our off-shoring policy rendered moot. We would need about 500 Malaysia or Nauru solutions and seeing we probably can’t contrive even one the proposition is just silly. It merely underlines that FUD attacks are not the exclusive province of climate delusionals.
Adrian
I agree that it can’t substitute for a skilled migration program, but in the longer run, training and integration systems permitting, it might foreclose the need for it down the track, or at least see it radically clipped. We are, for example, going to face a shortage in coming years of people to care for the aged and infirm and the training lead times for that are certainly feasible.
I take your point about the potential for misdirection in bundling skilled and humanitarian entry, but I’m also someone who isn’t all that pre-possessed by the idea that Australia is near its carrying capacity. We have ample scope to enlarge existing human settlements with minimal change to the human footprint we are now making. I’m relaxed at the idea of Australia having 60 million people in 2050, providing that the bulk of that increase was through migration, principally from the developing world. I’d be pretty chuffed to think Australia was making such a substantial contribution to the realisation of increased well-being of disadvantaged people. I believe all the developed countries should be willing to make contributions on this scale.
That said, I also see a role for the developed world in creating conditions in which people can live in dignity in or near the places they were born. In the final analysis, the task of lifting people out of poverty and politcal marginalisation is something the whole of humanity has to conceive of as a project. Only when we are all on the same page on that one can we begin to address consistently the challenges of human displacement in ways that reflect equity rather than beggar my neighbour and existential angst.
And while we are on this, can those of us who support social justice cease using the term “people smugglers” unproblematically in this context? This issue has no more to do with people smuggling than travel agents are an issue in airline safety.
IMO, we should refer to those who facilitate the flight of vulnerable people from unsafe circumstances simply as “(ad hoc) travel agents” or “sailors” or “irregular shipping operators” or some similarly non-loaded term. Of course, if we are to play the game of the xenophobic reactionaries — choosing to use terms to frame the debate in favour of our own policy, perhaps we should start calling them “hope facilitators” or “dignity agents”.
Fran,
“This issue has no more to do with people smuggling ”
That is not right. The people smuggling issue very significant. Apart from being a criminal threat to our borders it is the inland criminal activity that goes with it as well. As reported these nondocument arrivals pay half before their trip, and then the other half once they have obtained work. This leads to all of the criminal activity that protection rackets entail.
Your “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” approach on escallation is not acceptable for government policy. Government must clearly define on an ongoing basis their policy commitments, if only for budgetry reasons.
You have said that the Hazara people face persecution in their country. You reject the view that a people need to solve their problems locally, therfore as people are already fleeing the persecution then it reasonable to say that upon reports of successful relocation all 2.6 million Hazaras will in due course flee. And that is just one of many such situations. So the potential for escallation is very real and therefore you must chose where the limit should be. You say 200,000 which I imagine to be realistic. Now you have to sell that 10 fold increase to the Australian public. Having done that if you are successful then the flow of boats could well be brought to a trickle simply by putting a refugee collection point in Jakarta, or Kuala Lumpur, and flying these people direct to Australia.
The number of asylum seekers is so small compared to the total immigration intake (as Rob pointed out above) that the two issues are essentially unlinked. It would be possible to accept every single boat arrival and still essentially stop immigration; conversely if we rejected every single boat arrival it would make essentially no difference per se to our immigration intake.
Linking the two issues is either confused or disingenuous.
Razor,
You have cried crocodile tears for the safety issues of refugee arrivals by boat but then say its unfair for refugees to arrive by air.
You say the Refugee Convention is outdated but then say refugees are only valid if they use outdated technology, claiming it is unfair for refugees to use technology developed post-1950 such as mobile phones and modern air travel.
Mate, its unfair to be persecuted on the grounds of race, religion, gender, but you expend precious little attention on that.
Only in your last para. do you come clean
Numbers.
You are afraid of being swamped by foreigners.
That makes you a xenophobe.
BilB said:
They need only budget for the foreseeable, defined narrowly. Thus, no provision was made in the budget for Queensland’s coal ouput to be disrupted by massive floods and storms, even though this was, unlike your flood of 2 million refugees, entirely foreseeable.
Similarly, the Japanese government was unprepared for a tsunami of the scale that hit earlier this year, even though they are regular victims of such things (though not usually of this size). Again though, to budget for very remote possibilities would distort planning. 2 million refugees in a year for Australia would be far less likely than Japan having a 14 metre tsunami. We have never had a flow like that — even when, as was the case during the Fraser years and later after June 4 1989 in China, you’d think were very strong push factors.
Thomas Paine@139 asks, What will she do?
She seems to be planning to continue with the Malaysian arrangement and progress towards a regional understanding on both asylum seekers and control of unauthorised vessels which was well advanced before the High Court ruling and had been carefully negotiated in consultation with the UNHCR who felt that the deal was workable from their perspective, according to Erika Feller, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner,
speaking to Julia Baird on ABC radio yesterday. If you read the transcript to that interview you’ll find somewhere that she is very clear that UNHCR are not against off shore processing in principle. Here it is
….we have never condemned the concept of offshore processing in its entirety, but we have said that it has to be fully embedded in a regional cooperation framework…….
Sorry, stuffed up my italics!
Thomas Paine@139 asks, What will she do?
She seems to be planning to continue with the Malaysian arrangement and progress towards a regional understanding on both asylum seekers and control of unauthorised vessels. This was well advanced before the High Court ruling and had been carefully negotiated in consultation with the UNHCR who felt that the deal was workable from their perspective, according to Erika Feller, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner, speaking to Julia Baird on ABC radio yesterday. If you read the transcript to that interview you’ll find that she is very clear that UNHCR are not against off-shore processing. Here it is
No,No,No Fran, What we are talking about is taking the humanitarian approach and saying that “we want to help come to our embassy and we will take you in, if you are suffering or being pursecuted”. That is the real humanitarian approach. What we have now is an “oh,…. you made it then you may as well stay” from the Greens and the Lefties, and an “we told you not to come so now you have to go over there while we think about it” approach from the others. Neither is a true humanitarian approach to helping the troubled people of the world.
The fact is that we do not have the resources to —-be—- (see, I am trying your emphasis technique which I thought was pretty cool) truly humanitarian so no matter what we do here we will fail one way or the other. The only real solution that I can see is to properly resource the United Nations with something like a global transactions tax so that they do not have to beg for funding for every issue, and let them work towards resolving all of these conflicts in place. Then when relocations are required they can be fairly apportioned without opportunism.
Failing that I prefer the Malaysian Solution as long as it is fairly applied. it is an overall better solution for refugees as a group as Australia ultimately assists 5 times as many people. In real humanitarian terms of the options that is better as long as Australia maintains the higher intake permanently, not just until the political crisis is over.