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Despite another asylum seeker boat tragedy off Christmas Island today, Tony Abbott continues to offer Nauru as the solution and reject other options. John Menadue from the Centre for Policy Development, however, says re-opening Nauru is not the solution — and gives facts, rather than rhetoric, to explain why.
One-liners derived from focus groups and dog-whistling don’t add up to an acceptable refugee policy. But that is what the Coalition offers:
‘Stop the boats … turn them back to Indonesia … take the boat people to Nauru’.
It is important to examine carefully the so-called Pacific solution that Tony Abbott gives us as one-liners. The cost of Nauru in the 2000s was extremely high, both for the people imprisoned and the taxpayer, with minimal benefits to Australia. It cannot be part of a regional arrangement. In any event, Nauru and the Pacific Solution cannot be repeated. That is the clear view of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) and all agencies advising the government in this area.
Consider the following:
- The total number of asylum seekers declined after the peak in 2001. This occurred not just for Australia but for all major refugee receiving countries. As the Secretary of DIAC told the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee of the Senate of 17 October 2001, page 29, ‘Given the events of September 11 [2001] and its aftermath, there was a significant return of over two million refugees to Afghanistan’. This process of refugees returning to Afghanistan was assisted by peacekeepers in Afghanistan in 2002. Not surprisingly the refugee flows to Australia fell considerably after 2001.
- If we compare the flow of asylum seekers to OECD countries and Australia in the years 2000 to 2009, it is quite clear that, with a few leads and lags, the flows of asylum seekers to Australia followed very closely those to other OECD countries.
Australian versus OECD asylum flows
Flow of Afghani, Iraqi and Sri Lankan asylum seekers: 2001 – 2010
Sources: UNHCR Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries (2005-2010), UNHCR Statistical Online Database (Asylum seekers originating from, 2001-2004), UNHCR Statistical Yearbook (2004).
[Read the full story on the Centre for Policy Development website.]
41 Comments
The Coalition's Pacific Solution is no solution at all. http://t.co/ygEYHKIn
This is Tony Abbott’s answer for the boats carrying asylum seekers, that was reported by Paul Kelly in The Australian on January of this year:
“In recent talks with his colleagues on this issue, Mr Abbott has said: “This is a test of wills and Australia has lost. What counts is what the Australian government does, not what it says. It is time for Australia to adopt turning the boats as its core policy…….The new policy of “turning the boats” has been agreed between Mr Abbott and opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison. The purpose is to signal to the people-smugglers that a Coalition government will use naval force to stop boats reaching Australia and to smash their industry.”
For some inexplicable reason Tony Abbott reminds of the following line from the book Choke by Chuck Palahniuk:
“I am a rock. A jerk. I’m an uncaring asshole and proud of it.”
WEll Oakeshott’s mass murder bill has passed the lower house.
I hope they all signed their rotten names to the worst bill ever written or passed by any parliament in the world.
Apparently there are there are huge numbers already dying as a result of the de facto on shore processing that is currently in place.
According to the experts on shore processing will not stop the boats and as a result not stop the deaths. Considering that most asylum seekers come by plane, and the same experts say that the best option to stop people dying at the hands of people smugglers at the current time is the Malaysian solution, we should at least give it a try.
Joe Hockey’s crocodile tears over an unaccompanied child being sent to a non signatory country, when children are already dying and when their own so called policies include turning boats around, is the height of hypocrisy.
Let us at least try something, as doing nothing will just result in more deaths!
i can’t help thinking that we’re about as to blame for these deaths at sea as we are for the deaths by starvation in places like africa. afterall, we *could* have sent more aid to africa to prevent those deaths, just as we could’ve been harsher to deter boaties. the ironic thing is, sending more aid anywhere would probably be cheaper than guarding a 4000km coastline and putting offenders up in a 3rd country, not to mention the welfare needed because the people are so shattered they can’t function in our society after being treated as criminals indefinately.
CLIVE PALMER, MINING ENTREPRENEUR: It’s disappointing because it’s the obfuscation of the Australian Government and the Opposition from the international legal obligations to process refugees here. Why can’t Australians do it effectively? Why do people have to die to get a reason to be heard? We’re capable of processing people quickly.
Marilyn, I haven’t agreed with many of the opinions of Clive Palmer but I agree with him on this one. The Greens are on the same wavelength as Palmer and that’s why the Senate will not pass the bill, but Labor and the Coalition have shilly-shallied with unscrupulous politics for years on this question of asylum seekers as both have catered to many xenophobic Australians who can be unsympathetically malicious in the voting booth.
Rather than uphold and defend moral principles by showing compassion for impoverished people both major parties have revealed that their inhumane politics takes precedent.
Most people who follow politics were not deceived by last night’s charade of concern for asylum seekers for the Senate will reject the bill and Labor and the Coalition will regress and their failure to agree on a solution will start anew. And on and on it goes.
As I understand it, many of the countries that have not signed the UN Refugee Convention are part of the refugee transit corridor down through South East Asia, through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, funnelling towards Australia.
It should not be surprising that these SE Asian corridor countries have not signed the UN refugee convention, given the major costs to these relatively poor countries that would be required to give proper care to the millions of refugees that cross their borders.
These corridor countries are not wealthy nations, they are overpopulated and underfed already, and they have been dealing with surging floods of refugees for decades. They know the costs to their own survival, both social and economic, of becoming a defacto settlement destination for millions of refugees from Central Asia.
And it should not be surprising that Nauru has now signed the Refugee Convention (after the Howard Government used it as part of the Pacific Solution, when it was NOT a signatory). After all, Nauru is way off the beaten track, in the middle of the ocean. Hardly a destination for refugees on the run.
The reason Nauru signed was to profit from refugee transfers from a future Coalition Government in Australia. And eventually, these refugees will be transferred back to Australia, just as they were during the Howard years, after a few years of mental and physical punishment on an isolated prison. Disgusting.
The next move for the Gillard Government, after the Senate fails to pass the Oakshott legislation, is to invest heavily in diplomacy in our region. DFAT and Immigration should drive forward a Regional Framework for Refugee Settlement (no more “final solutions” please).
As Professor William Maley from the ANU recently suggested, we could start by opening refugee re-settlement stations in the source countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in the refugee transit countries. That way we process refugees “in-country” before they get on the boats.
We could take 20,000 a year apparently. That should make a respectable dent in the transit camps in the corridor countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. It would also give Australia some quid pro quos to pocket, and cash in later if necessary. That’s how diplomacy works.
Finally, as noted by Maley, it is worth recalling that Julian Assange’s Wikileaks exposed a senior Liberal Party strategist telling the US Embassy that the flow of boats to Australia was “fantastic” for the Opposition, and the more boats that came the better. The floods of tears and the renting of garments in the House of Representatives yesterday, from the likes of Joe Hockey and the Coalition backbenchers, was sickening.
At last the media are starting to call out Phoney Tony for the lies, spin and cynical one-liners. Thanks Independent Australia. More please.
Have just been listening to the Senate debate on the Oakshot bill. I originally thought that it was reasonable but, after listening senators Hanson-Young and Milne’s speeches I have come to realize that the bill is flawed and it is really only a knee-jerk reaction to the serious problem of people trying to seek Asylum in Australia.
I would implore both sides of Parliament to listen to the amendments that is being put forward by the Greens and act with haste to implement them. As Senator Milne has said, the Labor leader could start today to implement them without delay or the need to get this bill passed. Then, sit down with a committee of people who would be willing to find a better, more humane way of managing this heart-wrenching problem of people who are trying to seek refuge but feel that to wait for interminably long periods to be assessed in places like Malaysia and Indonesia.
This seems to me to be a much better long term solution to a problem that will never go away.
The purpose of the policy is not to stop asylum seekers but to stop them arriving by boat. Mr Menadue cleverly avoids the statistics of how many arrivals by boats occurred during the “pacific solution” days. Australia – accept asylum seekers, just not by boat – save lives
Todders, who are you to declare that not coming on boats will save lives? Do you have a single piece of evidence to back that spurious claim when the records show that all those who drowned were allowed to drown by us?
http://www.sievx.com has the papers that prove it without a shadow of a doubt.
What they are claiming in Malaysia is also spurious as Malaysia deports refugees without a hearing, 1300 died in camps in 5 years and so on.
And 1 million Iraqis have been killed, hundreds of thousands of Afghans and so on.
The arrogant notion that we can dictate to the region what they do and then do nothing ourselves is evidence of our white supremist past and present.
What if the transit nations all decide to reciprocate and designate Australia for 8 million refugees in our region?
What will the cretins think then?
The issue start with the USA and its need to make war….. We had boat people from Vietnam during that time when America was making war and slaughtering millions there. The Good Old USA is now in the Middle East slaughtering Millions of people there.
people will not leave their country if there are not threatened with imminent death or unless they see no possible future.
One only needs to think of a situation where you or I might want to pack up a family and grab a boat for a perilous journey……
The Yanks are THE MAD DOGS OF THE WORLD, even at home they resort to guns to sort out their problems.
The solution is to stop driving people out of their countries, but for now we MUST support people who we are partly responsible for with our illegal War Effort.
The other very necessary thing is for Australia to stop supporting the Military Madness of the out of control USA
The stupidity of the greens is that by rejecting the legislation, as bad as they perceive it to be, people will continue to die in boats until the next election, when through lies and deceit, Abbot may well win government with hockey, Pyne and co, at which time they will, and have already declared that they will, look for and find a trigger for a double dissolution.
Then they may well discover that the decision that they made today, sends them on the same path to destruction that the Democrats took after siding with Howard on the GST.
And it will all be for nothing anyway, as the LNP will then implement their old and de-funked policies like TPV’s which will see even more people die in boats, predominantly women and children, according to the experts and others in the know, as they do not allow for family sponsorships, forcing aforementioned women and children to sign up for this perilous and often deadly boat trip.
The same experts, including the UNHCR say that the Malaysian solution is the best option available at this time, for setting up a regional framework, and anything is better than nothing (or Abbot and co).
The problem with on shore processing is that to get “on shore” in Australia, people have to either come by plane or boat, so there is virtually no option for those poor unfortunate souls that , for whatever reason, do not have papers, and there is no prospect of a better life, if you drown at sea!
We need to do something.
Steve, they die all over the world.
Does that change the point that I made or justify not doing anything?
Surely even saving 1 life is better than sitting on our hands and waiting for more to die?
Which they will!
If Mr Menadue expects to be taken seriously he should not be deceptive in presenting the facts & figures. Ending the graph at 2009 is simply deceptive. There is no doubt that there has been a huge surge in boat arrivals, & that this surge has been due to pull factors, not push factors.
Steve is also right. The Green’s refusal to compromise & consider anything other than their own gullible misguided agenda, are foolishly going to cause the Liberal Party to be elected by a landslide, & the Greens may well go the way of the Democrats. Instead of negotiating now, when they can have some real input, they are blinded by emotion, ignoring the outrage many Australians are feeling at this situation. The revelations made on two Four Corners investigations, showed how our compassion as a country is being abused by this hugely profitable racket, whereby a wealthy people smuggler can so easily lie about his situation & identity, & receive refugee status, & separate new public houses for himself & family, within months of hopping on a boat; from which he can then run his smuggling business at Australian taxpayer’s expense. This is occurring whilst many poor Australians are languishing for years, waiting to get public housing, which is usually some shabby unit somewhere. That’s if they’re lucky; many others are homeless, sleeping out in the cold; being turned away from the measly shelters because they simply can’t cope with the numbers. There’s something really wrong here, & Sarah Hanson-Young’s juvenile weeping & teeth gnashing, & Joe Hockey’s sickeningly hypocritical & opportunistic crocodile-tears, can’t hide the stink of this godawful mess, & are unlikely to change the disgust that most of the Australian public feels about it all.
Marilyn, I respect our good intentions but I must disagree with you and The Greens. All their proposals are fine but they do nothing to address the issue of dangerous sea voyages to Australia. That is what this present debate is about, people dying at sea. To say they die elsewhere (“all over the world” to use your words) is not relevant, the one place we have the power to stop these deaths is here, off our coast, under our watch.
Given that there are 43 million refugees world wide, how many do you and The Greens think Australia can accept? 10,000, 100,000, 500,000? And what is the magic number that will stop people risking the sea voyage? Certainly not the extra few thousand Abbott has offered.
And isn’t this the same Green party that feels we have already achieved maximum population in Australia?
What is the Greens proposal, that all other immigration is ceased to accommodate the huge number of refugees that we will take from SE Asia? Again I ask, how many? Do we turn back anyone? Do we close down our normal refugee processing and give absolute priority to those already waiting, with at least 90,000 in Malaysia alone?
If you ever get the chance, it is worth speaking to the Customs and Navy crews directly involved in these rescues (by a fluke of my employment, I do get to speak to these people), my experience has been that they all support the ‘Malaysian Solution’. They and the people of Christmas Island have been greatly traumatised by these deaths and injuries. They are compassionate people but they know that there will be no end to these sea voyages and the associated deaths without off-shore processing.
The Greens have lost my respect over this issue (and over their rejection of the ETS a few years back), I have toyed with voting for them in the past but never again. I suspect a lot of people will think the same.
ucdailoi My thoughts exactly, it’s the price Australia must pay for joining the ‘coalition of the dummies’ to wage war on the 3rd world countries or the sole purpose to aid the US and its appropriation of their resources. The unfortunate people who stay in the war zones, become cannon fodder and those who take to the seas become fish food.
If the ‘coalition of the dummies’ hadn’t made life hell for these people back in their own countries, few would be so desperate as to leave their homes to face the perilous journey by sea.
I must admit that I can’t see why these desperate people who risk lives and limbs to get here should be treated any less hospitable than the British £10 POMs that also, in the past, flooded into Australia by the boatloads.
I joined the Greens because of Tampa, and I will be resigning over their refusal to put human life first. Processing on-shore is fine in principle until you consider that many will die trying to get here to be processed on-shore. And regardless of how many we take, there will still be an almighty queue from which some will risk their lives to get here. The Malaysia option is distasteful, but it would probably stop the drownings.
BTW – has anyone seen Joe Hockey shed tears over the Palestinian children held in appalling conditions in Israeli jails? It’s just too hypocritical to invoke his father leaving Palestine in 1948 but (as far as I know) remain silent all these years about those who did not or could not leave Palestine.
@seajay23
Before you ask how many refugees who arrive by boat can Australia accept, it is more pertinent to ask how many do we accept compared to other countries? In other words: how magnificent is our compassion?
The following figures may give you an idea, which for me is embarrassing especially as Spain had to deal with 32,000 in the year 2006 when Australia has dealt with 27,069 in 22 years, ie., 1989 to 1996.
This is from the Refugee Council of Australia:
http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum/boats.php
No. of irregular arrivals by sea, by country 2006-09
COUNTRY 2006 2007 2008 2009
Australia 60 148 161 2,726
Greece 9,050 19,900 15 300 10,165
Italy 22,000 19,900 36 000 8,700
Malta 1,800 1,800 2 700 1,470
Spain 32,000 18,000 13 400 7,285
Yemen 29,000 29,500 50 000 77,310
Asylum seekers arriving by boat, by calendar year, 1 January 1976 to 31 December 2010
Year No. of boats No. of people Year No. of boats No. of people
1976 111 1997 11 339
1977 868 1998 17 200
1978 746 1999 86 3721
1979 304 2000 51 2939
1980 0 2001 43 5516
1981 30 2002 1 1
1982-88 0 2003 1 53
1989 1 26 2004 1 15
1990 2 198 2005 4 11
1991 6 214 2006 6 60
1992 6 216 2007 5 148
1993 3 81 2008 7 161
1994 18 953 2009 60 2726
1995 7 237 2010 134 6535
1996 19 660 Total 489 27,069
This bill would of worked it would of stopped many boats who in their right mind would of payed thousands to smugglers only to end up at the back of the cue.
And then we could have taken genuine poor refugees in need of help.
The Greens failed they broke their agreement with the Govt Bob Brown said he would not block Govt legislation but amend it accordingly.
But Milne has destroyed that agreement i voted for these bastards in the Senate and donated to their cause.
But now that has stopped and i never again will vote Green and neither will my friends and family.
Greens your a disgrace to say the least.
Australia’s restrictive immigration policy might have less to do with whether the refugees came by boats and more to do with the fact that they might be perceived as a threat to Australia’s ‘white exclusively’.
Joe Hildebrand, ‘Dumb Drunk and Racist’ interview with the riff raff brought the offensive, racist vitriol that Shilpa Shetty had been subjected to, all flooding back.
Considering it was “not until 1973 that the ‘racial criterion in immigration policy’ was abolished and replaced with a skills-based selection criterion” it is small wonder that if you. scratch the surface, it seems Australians revert to its WASP past and the White Australia Policy of old.
The few good and true stands out from the crowd as is usual.
@ higgs boson.(great name by the way)
Those figures are for ‘boat arrivals’ only.
Here are humanitarian program figures (Australian govt site)
Humanitarian Program grants by category
06-07 07-08 08-9 9-10 10-11
Refugee 6003 6004 4992 6003 5998
Special Humanitarian (offshore)5183 4795 4511 3233 2973
Onshore 1793 2131 2492 4534 4828
Temporary Humanitarian Concern 38 84 5 - -
Total 13 017 13 014 13 507 13 770 13 799
The total numbers remain about the same, by increasing onshore visas from 1793 to 4828 we have decreased special humanitarian offshore visas from over 5000 to less than 3000.
The European figures you quote were for ‘irreguar arrivals by sea’, not refugees in total. Nothing to do with compassion, more to do with geography.
Currently 4% mortality is cited as the risk with taking a boat to Christmas island. That figure is higher than the mortality rates for US or Australian troops in the Vietnam war.
I have no objection to taking more humanitarian refugees into Australia, I wish we would. I object to people dying in the process, I object to people making fortunes out of those deaths, I object to politicians ignoring those deaths for the sake of political expediency or perceived ideological purity.
@macster
In the Australian Greens Policy issued in May 2009 it clearly states that the Greens believe in no mandatory detention, end of offshore processing and that Australia must assess in good faith all asylum seekers who arrive on our mainland or any of our islands, without discrimination based on the method of arrival.
http://greens.org.au/policies/care-for-people/immigration-and-refugees
Milne has not destroyed any agreement with the government since the government continues to move the goal posts, as they say.
The Greens have not wavered from their policy since 2009. Milne repeated its policy of 2009 two days ago including yesterday.
The Coalition and Labor are also aware of this policy and played dumb and dumber politics with the Oakeshott Bill to wash their hands of the affair and blame each other, or The Greens, as if we are so unintelligent not to see through this braindead strategy.
By the way, I am not a member of The Greens, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party or the National Party. I am politically neutral.
@macster
I only gave figures for boat arrivals since this is the hot topic of the moment and has been for years. And if you sincerely “object to politicians ignoring those deaths for the sake of political expediency or perceived ideological purity” then we agree that political point scoring by our politicians is only leading to more deaths.
They rushed out of Canberra in hyperdrive so as not to miss one second of their six-week sojourn. Sitting in the house of reps for a few days must have worn out the toddlers. I wonder if the flight attendants change their nappies on board.
Sorry, macmaster, the above comment is addressed to seajay23
The only time people have drowned is when we let them.
You morons do not know what you are talking about and drive me to tearing my hair and screaming at the monitor.
There is a picture of Afghan twins on the front of the Australian today.
Under Oakeshott’s bill this is what would happen to them for not drowning.
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
And heres the graph of boat arrivals for anyone interested in the truth… numbers on the graph are provided thanks to the Labor Federal Government:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/BoatArrivals.gif
@ higgs boson (and I don’t want to get into a tit for tat argument because I respect your viewpoint and I am sure we seek the same basic outcome).
I gave our total refugee intake because you remarked ‘how magnificent is our compassion’ and I don’t think compassion can be really judged solely on on-shore processing numbers. Compassion includes preventing deaths.
Could you kindly explain what aspect of The Greens policy will end or reduce arrivals by boat so as to stop deaths at sea?
If it is by increasing refugee intake then what is the likely number required before people stop coming here by boat, can you give me even a rough estimate?
I, like many others, seek a solution based on compassion. I just can’t see any way of deterring boat arrivals (excluding the Coalitions ‘turn back the boats’ madness)other than off-shore processing. I have worked with refugees both here and overseas so I do have some experience, I am hopefully compassionate and my motivation is certainly not racist or xenophobic.
@seajay23, if you scroll to the very top of comments you will find the answer, where the lack of compassion is directed to Tony Abbott and his sidekick, Scott Morrison, who have agreed that the Coalition solution to “stop deaths as sea”, as you put it, is “turning the boats” by using “naval force to stop boats reaching Australia and to smash their industry”.
I don’t know what is the answer.
Jessica Irvine in today’s SMH gives her answer to the problem.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/hard-figures-back-case-to-open-gates-20120628-2156z.html
and their is a report on the opinion given by Julian Burnside on the events of the past few days where he claims both politicians “just don’t want boat people getting here at all, dead or alive,”
“I suspect that their real concern is to stop people getting here full stop,” he said.
“They say the problem is that people die at sea trying to get to safety in Australia.”
“If that’s really the problem then I would’ve thought the obvious solution to it is to stop getting people on boats and the only way to do that … is for Australia to set up a fair dinkum, fair processing system in Indonesia with the co-operation of the Indonesian government.”
Also, seajay23, this is a world-wide tragedy. The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on August 2, 2011, the following:
“A boat carrying 330 migrants from Libya arrived late Tuesday on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a day after officials found 25 people choked to death in the engine room of another Libyan refugee boat.”
And on the Aljazeera website:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/03/201231183925246482.html
there is the following:
“The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that roughly 50,000 people attempted to cross the Mediterranean by boat in 2011 and close to 2,000 drowned.”
As asylum seekers travelling on boats towards Australia encounter tragedy, so it is happening in greater numbers in other parts of the globe.
Again, I repeat, I do no have a solution.
The fucking solution is to have no-one being persecuted anywhere in the world and the chances of that are zero.
Australia’s racist little assumption that they can move humans around the globe like it is our chess board shows how cretinous we are.
There is a lot of goodness in this world, Marilyn, but as you seem to know and I know that everyday you can also see man’s indifference to man and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Accept that it is the nature of many humans to have a heartless nature, otherwise you will go insane.
@Marilyn@ Since no one asked the Aboriginals if they wanted to share their land with a bunch of £10 POM or ask the Palestinians if they wanted to share their land with a bunch of est Euro belligerent squatters, the white supremacists who when the tide changed would leave the Arabs languishing in refugee camps for decades or turf out the Africans refugees or let the destitute Afghans drown while they stand idly by.
As the ‘coalition of the dummies’ head out to recolonize the 3rd World the ‘success’ they crave is denied them because they are so reviled.
higgs boson
Thanks for the link; seemingly both Irvine and Burnside propose orderly processing of refugees in Indonesia and Malaysia prior to settlement in Australia. That is a great proposal but does not that require off-shore processing in countries not signatories to the International Refugee Convention? Isn’t that impossible under present legislation and the High Court ruling?
50,000 was the number mentioned, what if that is not enough? What if the boats keep coming and people keep drowning.
At some point we will run into the logistical problems of housing and caring for a large number of people arriving without resources in a very short time. And what effect would such a huge plan have on community support? We have seen what happens in Europe, tolerance wears thin. Marilyn rightly and powerfully points out the racism and xenophobia in this country, are people suddenly going to be better?
Like you I don’t know the answer, I don’t know that there is one. In 2000 I worked briefly in a detention centre and I was appalled. I wrote then that I didn’t know the right answer, but I did know that what we were doing was the wrong one and that it was damaging the soul of this nation.
Sadly little has changed.
Lydia, I am white and I hate us.
MarilynS, I am white and I acknowledge that there are things that have been done by the white races that are utterly abhorrent.It is clear that some of the problems in the world today have been caused by European colonisation. The white race in no way holds a monopoly on these things and the white race is not the only one that today practices persecution, oppression and greed. In fact, many of those seeking refuge in the world today are fleeing from people that are much more like them ethnically, religiously and culturally.
There is much good also in peoples from all races and cultures. All have positive values and achievements that have or have the potential to benefit the world.
Hatred, I am afraid, can only generate hatred, never good. As acknowledged by some others on this thread, we are faced with a complex issue. It is one that cannot be discussed in isolation of other matters. One of those may be an element of racism in the Australian community. There is always a fear of change and the unknown and refugees do bring a sense of the unknown to many. Others argue that Australia is already overpopulated while Australians who are struggling financially will ask ‘What about me’.
Frankly, I believe we could be doing more than we are at the moment. And I would much rather see Abbott, Gillard and our other politicial leaders be doing more to help allay the fears of the Australian people regarding this issue, stop the blatant politicing and genuninely commit to finding a solution.
I am also certain of one other thing, and that is that pejorative
comments do nothing to win friends and influence people. In fact the opposite can only be true. You alienate people from your cause.
No Marilyn, the shame must never be yours. My countrymen might embarrass me and disgust me but I will not wallow with them in their inhumanity to man or allow myself to be tarred with the same brush, even if the Bible says “The Sins of the Father shall be visited onto the Son, onto the 3rd and 4th generation”.
It cuts closer to the bone, it’s sheer delusion for us to believe that ‘what happens in Australia stays in Australia’ for it doesn’t. I travel a fair bit and have noticed over the years how once a UK/US passport use to cut so much sway.
Today however it can get you singled out, harried if not harmed or killed. Australian papers too, was once treated with respect, today it is held in such contempt.
Australia I feel should strive to maintain the high ground for if we continue with these policies that pi** off the neighbors especially the Indonesians with some 240mil of them breathing down our necks, there will be hell to pay.
JH was the man. It worked. Bring on the next election and this rabble can be kicked out. Please Marilyn, you do your cause no good.
Lucky, you are a fool. Howard was a monster and Gillard and Abbott are his love children.
As for my cause? I am not an Afghan refugee so I have no cause.
What I do have is a revulsion for cowards like you.
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