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The asylum seeker issue still drags on a Parliament enters a six week break; sadly, “…because Abbott has shafted Julia Gillard for making an effort to sort out the mess, there is likely be more deaths,” writes senior correspondent Barry Everingham.
by Barry Everingham
In the House of Representatives, there was hush when a West Australian Liberal, Michael Keenan, graphically described the anguish of seeing a small child unable to be rescued from the maelstrom which killed so many people whose boat was sunk during a storm off Christmas Island. In the House and the galleries, many people were similarly affected.
A few places away from him in the Opposition, front bencher Sophie Mirabella was texting away while he spoke; she looked up, rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. Need I say more?
Earlier in the week one of the most distinguished Members of Parliament, Mark Dreyfus, QC, said what many believe, including this writer — that Tony Abbott really welcomes these unspeakable tragedies and merely feign outrage, fooling nobody.
Now, Mark Dreyfus is one of three Jewish MP’s in Parliament, along with Michael Danby from the ALP, and one of the Liberal’s rising stars, Josh Frydenberg, who spoke eloquently in the debate but, strangely, spouted the Howard line.
Now, I don’t know if any of the three men had family members who tried to flee Hitler’s insanity in the lead up to and during WWII, but I’d bet my bottom dollar they did; at least two of them are not bound by the insane ideologies of Tony Abbott and the likes of Cory Bernardi but, to his undying shame, Frydenberg is.
Don’t the Liberals realise that in this next six weeks of the Parliamentary break, there will be more ships?
Can’t this collection of troglodytes get it into their cruel heads that, because Abbott has shafted Julia Gillard for making an effort to sort out the mess, there is likely be more deaths.
A measure of Abbott’s sheer inhumanity is his determination to “turn back the boats” — sending them back to Indonesia even if the boats safely land; what awaits the asylum seekers in that country can only be imagined.
Tony Abbott and his followers have behaved disgracefully over their attitude towards asylum seekers, as well as their outright lies about the Carbon Tax.
As the days roll on they are adopting more and more the persona of their American heroes — the Tea Party.
And as though all that isn’t enough, they see nothing wrong with Gina Rinehart’s bid to gain the hearts and minds of readers of the brilliant newspapers in the Fairfax media stable.
Now of Gina gets her way, it won’t be hard to imagine how will treat the staff of those publications; her hard and uncaring treatment of her children is testament enough that she has a heart harder than the iron ore she mines and which brings her the unbelievable wealth she enjoys.
Or does she?
Just how much does she dole out to charity?
She might just like to consider taking a leaf out of the book of some great Australian women, who don’t jump onto the back of trucks to bleat about tax hikes. Would the likes of Jeanne Pratt or Dame Elisabeth Murdoch strip themselves of their dignity in such a way?
Gina might well take note of their contributions to society.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
11 Comments
Abbott's refusal to negotiate over #asylum seekers has put lives at risk, says Barry E. #AusPol http://t.co/61CAXPs7
Hi Barry,
Do you have a web/internet address for a video clip of the eye-rolling and shoulder-shrugging during Michael Keenan’s description of the child who could not be rescued?
That sort of indifference and cynicism is worth publicising — it sounds absolutely damning, and, putting it bluntly, genuinely evil.
If you have a link to that video, it would be a superb addition to your article.
Hi Barry,
Good Article. Don’t take any notice of colin. He is in denial like Abbott, Pyne, Mirabella, Hockey and the rest of them.
Lets get back to the facts again rather than the tears and the spin.
The Asylum seeker crsis in Australia was caused by John Howard, George Bush and Tony Blair going to a was which was not sanctioned by the UN in iraq. the country was totally trashed and the reasons they went in for were not found. They were called Weapons of Mass destruction.
Remember the now member for Dennison, Andrew Wilkie outing the lies at the time and the storm of the liberal party descending on him.
That is the reason we have the Iraqui refugees. Then there are the Afghans as well, not illegal but persecuted. All of them genuine I would imagine.
The debate is really about racism. That is Abbotts aim. Its all about attacking a group of people who can’t fight back and who want a lifestyle that many in Australia have but don’t want them to have.
So his policy is to Use nauru, have TPV’s and turn the boats back.
Julia Gillard came to the party by agreeing to have Nauru in her policy and to do an independent review of TPV’s. She did not agree to turning the Boats back.
Abbott will not agree to the Malaysia solution and has demonised it calling it a people swap. His main reason is that it does not have the protection of the UNHCR.
One wonders at his reasoning. Nauru under Howard didn’t have the UNHCR protections either, and turning the boats around once they are outside Indonesian territorial waters and back to Indonesia. which ALSO IS NOT A SIGNATORY TO THE UNHCR Is just plain illogical.
All it shows me is that this issue is one where Abbott and Morrison claim the moral high ground but they are standing on a bucket of hypocricy. Filled with you know what.
I just hope that Malaysia signs the UNHCR and then Abbott will have egg all over his face. He has backed himself into a corner which he cannot get out of if that happens.
The man is getting closer to the edge of making a huge mistake which the MSM just can’t ignore.
@TerraAustralis and Colin,
Here is the video of Michael Keegan, so make your judgment.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-27/keenan-makes-emotional-address-to-parliament/4096176
I notice the msm have gone quiet now on Asylum seekers, no doubt because they’re too busy following the Rabbit on his doom and gloom road trip. Meanwhile I’m sure there are many poor souls preparing to make the dangerous boat journey to our shores, tragically some of them will probably drown. The greatest tragedy is that it could have been avoided. It is just so despairingly sad that the real reason and the ONLY reason that Tony Abbot won’t support the Malaysia deal is because IT WOULD WORK!
And another who seems to think that those ALP members were trying to come up with something good or that they care about people drowning.
They don’t care – in one case the AFP took hours to ask for a search and rescue from Indonesia because they wanted to protect a spy, the one last week the people drowned because our authorities did nothing for 39 hours.
It is depraved to believe that letting refugees get all the way here then sending them to Malaysia will save them when it is our own inaction that is causing the deaths in the first place.
There is something so delusional and depraved about this absurdity.
They were not debating how to save lives last week, they were only debating how to break the law and get around the high court ruling stating that the conventions are legally binding.
And it is Gillard who brought that on and the lazy media too frigging ignorant to see what it was really about.
This is what it was really about – Barry, you need to dry your own crocodile tears and weep real ones for the depths to which they would stoop.
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=32044
Independent Rob Oakeshott has introduced to the House of Representatives his own Migration Legislation Amendment (The Bali Process) Bill 2012. If passed, this bill would amend the Migration Act removing the peg on which the High Court was able to hang the Malaysia solution out to dry. Under the unamended law, the Minister for Immigration is required to declare in writing that any country to be used for offshore processing provides access to effective procedures for asylum claims, provides protection for asylum seekers while their claims are processed, and meets relevant human rights standards in providing that protection. In August last year, the High Court of Australia ruled that the Minister could not make a valid declaration in relation to Malaysia as it was not a signatory to the Refugees Convention, and the Arrangement between the two governments was not legally binding.
Oakeshott is proposing that a new peg replace the old one, and that the new one be designed such that Malaysia could pass muster without High Court interference. His bill would permit the Minister to designate Malaysia as an offshore assessment country because it is a party to the Bali Process which at its last meeting a year ago included 32 countries working on a Regional Cooperation Framework. If Oakeshott intended meaningful public decision making by the Executive government and appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, he has failed. Participation in the Bali process could not be reckoned a sufficient precondition for a country to pass muster with human rights protection and appropriate asylum procedures. For example, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran are all participants in the Bali process.
The only other precondition in the Oakeshott bill is that “the Minister thinks it is in the national interest” to designate a country as an offshore assessment country. Anxious to avoid any further High Court scrutiny, his drafters have stipulated that the international obligations and domestic laws of a country are irrelevant to the process of designation. In considering whether designation of another country would be in Australia’s national interest, the Minister is required to have regard to the assurances offered by that country’s government about the assessment of asylum claims and the non-refoulement of asylum seekers whose claims have not yet been decided. These assurances need not be legally binding. The Minister is required to place a statement of reasons before Parliament within 2 sitting days of making a designation. He is also required within 14 days to make a request of UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) seeking a formal statement of their views about the arrangements proposed in the designated country. It would make more sense if the minister were required to make the requests and receive the statements before making his decision to designate a country, and before tabling the decision in Parliament. That way the UNHCR and IOM positions could help to inform both the Minster’s decision and Parliament’s assessment of the decision. The bill provides that “the sole purpose of laying the documents before the Parliament is to inform the Parliament of the matters referred to in the documents and nothing in the documents affects the validity of the designation”. Parliament has no power to disallow the designation and a failure to table the documents would not affect the validity of the designation. So the Oakeshott peg is designed to ensure that neither Parliament nor the High Court could hang a designated country out to dry, ever again. The bill is simply a convoluted means for allowing the Executive government to declare an offshore processing country without any meaningful scrutiny by Parliament or the High Court. It does nothing to advance the cause of public scrutiny of government decisions to provide offshore processing of asylum claims.
A completely toothless tiger, the bill still provides the opportunity for Parliament to agitate again the debate about Nauru, Malaysia and onshore processing.
Or Peter Van Onselen who actually bothered to analyse what they are on about.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/australian-politicians-are-adrift-on-a-sea-of-hypocrisy-writes-peter-van-onselen/story-e6frezz0-1226413146824
How utterly pathetic that the only political solution our two major parties have come up with is to hide from the laws of the country they represent. Surely they either must change these laws if they don’t like them (even if doing so requires a referendum), or they must accept the consequences?
Our political leaders respecting the law of the land they serve should be the only principle not open to compromise in this debate.
Thanks @higgs boson,
I thought he spoke very well, and very sincerely — he is talking about stuff that has a lot of personal meaning for me — I am a refugee who has had government thugs sent to shoot my family,so I know, very personally, how desperate people can be to escape corrupt governments and their death squads, and I am also an ex Beach Inspector / professional lifesaver (Bondi) who has been in a lot of “touch & go” situations during rescues – similar to what Michael K is describing.
Have watched the video twice, but so far, I haven’t managed to spot blatant shoulder shrugging and eye rolling during the speech — I might need a better camera angle, or a slow motion close-up.
My gut reaction as both a refugee and ex SLSA / Beach Inspector, is that if any MP showed that sort of disdain for during that speech, the MP ought to be out of office at the next election, and the party that endorsed her, ought to be out of office for a generation – or more.
Michael Keenan spends his entire life whining about the safe arrival of refugees though, he is nothing but another lying snivelling hypocrite.
Do people seriously believe no more people would ever die just because we break our own laws?
Do any of you white old men think?
What if the Bali Nations all decide to reciprocate and send us there refugee”?
Yeah, those Bali countries – shows how ignorant and lazy our media are.
The Bali countries are -
Afghanistan – currently 5 million Afghan refugees
Myanmar- tens of thousands leaving
Australia – currently signatory to the convention with just a few thousand refugees.
Nauru- the only refugees ever there were trafficked by us.
Bangladesh- currently hosting 229,000 and sending thousands of Rohingays out to sea
Nepal
Bhutan
New Zealand
Brunei Darussalam
Pakistan- people of concern 4 million
Cambodia – 15,000 fled last year
Palau
China, including Hong Kong SAR* and
Macau SAR* – 301,000 refugees, 290,000 left to seek asylum.
Papua New Guinea- still hosting 10,000 West Papuans
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Philippines 240,000 people of concern
Fiji
Republic of Korea
France (New Caledonia) Samoa
India- Hosting 189,000 refugees
Singapore
Indonesia – 4,200 in country, 16,000 sought asylum
Solomon Islands
Iran- hosting 887,000, 89,000 sought asylum
Sri Lanka- 487,000 people of concern, last year 140,000 sought asylum
Iraq – 1.7 million internal, 3 million sought asylum
Syria – 988,000 refugees, currently thousands being slaughtered and fleeing.
Japan
Thailand- 608,000 refugees
Jordan – 455,000 refugees
Timor-Leste
Kiribati
Tonga
Laos – 8,000 claimed asylum last year
PDR Turkey – 146,000 refugees
Malaysia – 217,000 refugees
Vanuatu
Maldives
Viet Nam
- 339,000 refugees.
Only Australia and New Zealand have actual protection obligations under the convention.
So these are the countries Oakeshott thought were great.
And the lazy ignorant media still think that is rational to pass
@Marilyn S
Based on my experience as a refugee, I believe any attempt to process refugees off-shore, places the refugees in potential danger — placing them out of sight, out of mind, and at the mercy of politicians and officials who are even more bent than ours are.
As to Michael Keenan being a hypocrite, that is something I cannot judge — I had never heard of him until I read Barry’s article – my daughter and I had been thrown out of Australia before he was elected. I studied History at Murdoch in the same period he did, but I don’t recall meeting him, or knowing of him.
But, going by the video, he seemed to care about the fate of refugees – either that or he is a very good actor.
I am 5th or 6th generation Australian, making my daughter 6th or 7th generation. She was 6 years old when we were kicked out of our own country, and she has never seen Australia again, except on television and video. Our story was reasonably well known in Canberra, Perth and Brisbane, but no politician from any party ever took up our case.
So for us, any Australian politician who cares about the plight of a refugee child, is an improvement on the track record over the previous 14 years.
He has done nothing but whine about the arrival of refugees.
You people who support the refugees can’t even agree amongst yourselves on a solution. So what hope is there for the future? The only one who impressed me in the Parliamentary debate was Doug Cameron who has had to modify his views in the hope stopping the boats. His remarks about the crocodile tears of the Coalition, who stood by when children sewed their lips together and people went on hunger strikes said it all. And remember the Tampa?? Nauru produced a crop of mentally ill people, even if it did eventually allowed them to settle Australia. What sort of solution is that? We will never stop refugees getting on leaky boats, but if they manage to survive the journey let’s be thankful they made it and make them welcome.
What solution Caz, the only solution to refugees is to wipe out the entire human race and Australia whinging about a few thousand of the 43 million won’t make a jot of difference to anyone much.
If people want to get on a boat to Australia that is their choice and their right.
How does us lecturing them about that help?
It’s all colonial overlord crap.