Australian government sinks to new low.

Warrigal

Warrigal

SF VIP
Location
Sydney, Australia
The way this government, and to a lesser extent previous governments, treats asylum seekers who attempt to make it to Australia by boat, has been morally reprehensible but now it seems they are approaching the criminal.

This current government made stopping the boats an election promise but they did not say how it would be done. Some voters wouldn't have actually cared but others are appalled by the extreme measures that have been put into place since the election - intercepting boats, towing them back into Indonesian waters with just enough food, water and fuel to make land, sending others to hellish camps on Nauru and Manus Island to deny any right to claim asylum from Australia and ignoring instances of murder, sexual assault of women and children and the medical needs of pregnant women and their babies. Everything is kept hushed up because they "don't comment on operational matters".

I thought we had reached the bottom of the barrel when it came out that an 11 year old boy who had suffered a broken arm on Nauru was still in pain 4 weeks after it was badly set by the local medico. Instead of bringing him to Darwin for proper treatment, he is to be sent to India because our government has vowed that no-one from Manus or Nauru will ever be allowed to set foot on Australian soil. It doesn't matter that this boy and his mother are genuine refugees.

I was wrong. Now it appears that we are paying cash to the people smugglers to take the asylum seekers somewhere else.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-...cused-of-people-smuggling-lawyer-says/6543446

This story is all over the BBC and other international news outlets. I am so ashamed.

Our PM has not denied this claim. Senior ministers are saying that the claimed have not been verified. This is a bit rich from the same people who are persecuting a senior Commissioner for Human Rights for publishing a report on children in detention that has verified a good deal of problems with our policy of mandatory detention of children.


This is what our poor excuse for a leader actually said when questioned about this allegation:

https://audioboom.com/boos/3273593-full-interview-pm-tony-abbott-with-neil-mitchell

"By hook or by crook" ??? Apparently we are bribing people smugglers.
 

Dame W, I am ignorant of any of this and pretty much about Australia in general, my bad. I read your post and was shocked, especially in part:

".... he is to be sent to India because our government has vowed that no-one from Manus or Nauru will ever be allowed to set foot on Australian soil."

I'll try to discover why they are not allowed to set foot online, but if you have a short answer, I'd like to hear it. Thanks.
 
Can't right now as I'm about to leave the house but I will get back to this later. It's not an edifying story.
 

Governments!!! Is there no decency left among any of them? Seems like each one is so incredibly flawed and too often just plain unkind (or at least the people in them are unkind).

I don't know what the answer is because it takes a certain kind of personality to even want to be in government and they range from not too bad to heinous and very few are in the Not Too Bad Club. While the good and gentle folk who care about others and the world have no desire, spirit, temperament or whatever you want to call it, to become involved in the rat race that is government (with the emphasis being on 'rat' and (electoral) race, if you know what I mean).

Sometimes I feel like we're all doomed as the incremental improvements in us spiritually seem so small as to be almost non-existent......(heaves big sigh here, than shakes head in resignation:().

Well like they say (whomever 'they' is), be the change you'd like to see and become a small undercurrent for good to a few I guess. They don't use children with ropes tied around their waists to clean chimney's anymore and Kings aren't allowed to ride out from the castle to 'bed' the new bride before her husband can so I guess we're doing a little better right!

Well DW, I'm equally disgusted with some of the behaviours of my current government too, so I guess we're in the same club.
 
Debby, they are pawns to big business and the mega rich, once they accept money from those seeking favour they have to comply with their demands they are bought lock stock and barrel. But and there is always a but, the people have the ultimate power and we see that being exercised all over the world in this day and age, we have two organisations that take the peoples voice to politicians, “getup” and “sumofus” and they with sufficient backing get big business and Governments to change direction some of the time.

Next, depending on which party you vote for is what you will get, the liberals in Australia like your Republicans are for the mega rich and the big end of town (business) Labor and the democrats for social for the people. So come the next federal election we will have the chance to throw this bunch out.

Spiritually speaking its all about Karma and the wheel of life, when people fully understand its implications we will have a very different world because what we think creates and that again could be good or bad argh.
 
Expect Labor will rise again, Muck. Thing is can you hold out till you can throw him out.
 
Sorry to go against the trend, but I don't see why the Australian tax payer should be responsible for these citizens of other countries, any more than the Italians and Greeks have responsibility for the tens of thousands now crossing the Mediterranean, or the US for those crossing its southern border.

While there may be a few genuine life or death asylum seekers, particularly from Myanmar, by far the majority are simply economic migrants, seeking the better standards of living which previous generations in the target countries have worked hard for, and which they, the migrants, wish to reap the benefits of without the effort.
 
Laurie said:
Sorry to go against the trend, but I don't see why the Australian tax payer should be responsible for these citizens of other countries, any more than the Italians and Greeks have responsibility for the tens of thousands now crossing the Mediterranean, or the US for those crossing its southern border.

While there may be a few genuine life or death asylum seekers, particularly from Myanmar, by far the majority are simply economic migrants, seeking the better standards of living which previous generations in the target countries have worked hard for, and which they, the migrants, wish to reap the benefits of without the effort.
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Laurie it pains me to say this but some Australians are extremely racist. The very first piece of legislation passed by our parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act.....commonly known as the White Australia Policy.
I think that if the refugees were white Christians Australia would be welcoming them with open arms.
 
I'll try to give some background to this situation. First the history

The term ‘boat people’ entered the Australian vernacular in the 1970s with the arrival of the first wave of boats carrying people seeking asylum from the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Over half the Vietnamese population was displaced in these years and, while most fled to neighbouring Asian countries, some embarked on the voyage by boat to Australia.

The first boat arrived in Darwin in April 1976 carrying five Indochinese men. Over the next five years there were 2059 Vietnamese boat arrivals with the last arriving in August 1981. The arrival of 27 Indochinese asylum seekers in November 1989 heralded the beginning of the second wave. Over the following nine years, boats arrived at the rate of about 300 people per annum—mostly from Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China.

In 1999, a third wave of asylum seekers, predominantly from the Middle East, began to arrive—often in larger numbers than previous arrivals and usually with the assistance of ‘people smugglers’.

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliam...iamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/BoatArrivals
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The Vietnamese people entered Australia two ways. Some made it to UN refugee camps in places like Malaysia and were offered asylum in a number of countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany and (I presume) the USA. Others made the dangerous journey by sea, often attacked by pirates, and if they made it all the way to Australia they were taken in, assessed and if found to be refugees, allowed to stay. None of them were locked up in gaol like institutions. They were housed in hostels until they could be found housing and employment.

These people faced a certain amount of hostility because Australians have always feared invasion by the "yellow hordes" to the north of us. First the Chinese, then the Japanese and this fear was generalised into a xenophobic reaction to all Asians.

The second wave of asylum seekers, 300 per year, barely raised a ripple. It basically passed unnoticed.

In 1989 Bob Hawke cried over the Tiananmen Square massacre and allowed 42,000 Chinese students to stay in Australia. This happened overnight. We absorbed 42,000 young Chinese without as much as a murmur but they were already here. We didn't see them arriving by boat of by plane.

A wave of Lebanese immigrants came next after the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon in 1975.Over 10,000 arrived over a short period. Some were Maronite Christians and other were muslims of various denominations. Xenophobia greeted this wave. Australians have always been suspicious of Arabs, going back as far as WW I.

By the time the third wave of boat people began to arrive in 1999 governments began to politicise asylum seekers. Labor had already legislated mandatory detention for the purpose of health and identity checks. John Howard ramped up the rhetoric before an election and after a situation that was reported in the press as boat people throwing their children into the sea to ensure rescue by the navy. This was untrue but the truth was not revealed until after the election. Howard went to the election proclaiming that "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come". He won the election and from that time on, asylum seeker policy has become a political football.

One of the things Howard did was to excise off shore Australian territories from the migration zone. By redefining the area of Australian territory that could be landed upon and then legitimately used for claims of asylum (the migration zone), and by removing any intercepted people to third countries for processing, the aim was to deter future asylum seekers from making the dangerous journey by boat, once they knew that their trip would probably not end with a legitimate claim for asylum in Australia.Detention centres, that had previously only existed in remote parts of the mainland, were now set up on Christmas Island, Nauru and Manus Island.This was Pacific Solution Mark I, designed to move people offshore so that they could not have access to Australian law or legal advice. Civil rights lawyers protested at length to no effect. A number of boats heading for Australia were turned back to Indonesia under Operation Resolute.

During this time, most of the asylum seekers came from Afghanistan (largely of the Hazara ethnic group), Iraq, Iran, China, and Vietnam. The last asylum seekers to be detained on Nauru before the end of the policy had come from Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The number of boat arrivals dropped away dramatically. The removal of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan was likely a factor in this decrease,[SUP][9][/SUP] as nearly six million Afghans had returned to Afghanistan since 2002, almost a quarter of the country's population at the time. Howard claimed that the Pacific solution was a success in stopping the boats.

In 2007 there was a change of government and the Labor government ended the Pacific Solution. Numbers of boat arrivals immediately began to climb. 385 in 2008, 3,230 in 2009, 3,905 in 2010, 4,052 in 2011, 7,218 in 2012 and 8,332 in 2013. The Labor government suspended the Pacific solution and centres on Manus and Nauru were closed. There was an attempt by the Gillard government to form a regional solution as occurred after the Vietnam war. It was effectively blocked in the Senate and Nauru and Manus Island were reopened. Christmas Island detention centre was expanded. There were a lot of children in detention but they were not there for prolonged periods, unlike the situation today where they may spends years of the childhood in horrendous conditions.

In 2013, the government changed again, with Tony Abbott promising to once again stop the boats. Before the election Labor PM Kevin Rudd attempted to match his counterpart in tough talking

On 19 July 2013 in a joint press conference with PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd detailed the Regional Resettlement Arrangement between Australia and Papua New Guinea:[SUP][44][/SUP]
From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be sent to Manus and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea for assessment of their refugee status. If they are found to be genuine refugees they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea... If they are found not to be genuine refugees they may be repatriated to their country of origin or be sent to a safe third country other than Australia. These arrangements are contained within the Regional Resettlement Arrangement signed by myself and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea just now.[SUP][45][/SUP]
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Since that time "Stop the Boats" has become a mantra that wins votes. Only the Greens and some independents speak up for the asylum seekers.

In less that two years we have reopened detention centres on Manus, Nauru and sent 4 refugees for resettlement in Cambodia at great expense. We have intercepted asylum seeker boats at sea and attempted to tow them back to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. One boat was held at sea for 4 weeks before allowing the people to disembark at one of the detention centres. We have bought brand new and very expensive orange lifeboats so that people on leaky boats can be safely towed back into Indonesian waters. They make great salvage for some lucky fisherman.

Great secrecy envelops the whole issue and ministers do not speak about "operational matters". Australians are treated like mushrooms. We find out what is going on from the foreign press and this new claim that our government is actually paying people smugglers to take their cargo anywhere else but Australia is extremely disturbing.

Laurie, the Australian tax payer is responsible for the people we intercept at sea and we are paying through the nose to keep them in detention. It would be much cheaper to allow them in and house them in hostels as we did in the past.
 
Laurie said:
Sorry to go against the trend, but I don't see why the Australian tax payer should be responsible for these citizens of other countries, any more than the Italians and Greeks have responsibility for the tens of thousands now crossing the Mediterranean, or the US for those crossing its southern border.

While there may be a few genuine life or death asylum seekers, particularly from Myanmar, by far the majority are simply economic migrants, seeking the better standards of living which previous generations in the target countries have worked hard for, and which they, the migrants, wish to reap the benefits of without the effort.
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I once read that any one of us is one shower away from unemployment and subsequently (if it were to continue) homelessness. Tragedy's of this nature can happen through no fault of our own so I always make an effort to imagine myself in the place of those who are 'lost' and struggling. That was how I began to understand the frustrations and anger of our First Nations people in Canada, thinking what it would be like to send my children off to school when those schools are substandard and their education unproductive......I'd hope that there would be someone who would help me should I find myself in a desperate situation.
 
"It would be much cheaper to allow them in and house them in hostels as we did in the past."

There are other, longer term, costs than simple financial ones.

I should point out, my son is in Australia, been there twenty tears, aged 52, and fighting for a job.
 
Laurie, one in four Australians is born overseas and 43.1 per cent of people have at least one overseas-born parent.** Migration, including refugees, has made this country prosperous. Sometimes a peak in migration happens at the same time as an economic downturn, but it doesn't cause the downturn. In the longer term Australia still needs more migrants to prosper.

** http://abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/CO-59
 
You know your own business best, but my post is not about place of birth or legal migration, from which stock the vast majority of Australians, including my son, come, but the tens of thousands of illegals who believe the rules do not apply to them.
 
Where we differ, Laurie, is over the term "illegals". Under international law, it is not illegal to seek asylum in a country when you are fleeing from danger in your own. It doesn't matter how you get there. You can stow away on a ship or use a forged passport or pay a people smuggler to get you there. If your need is great, these things are forgivable.

The country where you are seeking asylum is obliged to take the request seriously. It is also against international law to dismiss the claim lightly or to send them back into danger. Our government is guilty of both and the word "illegal" would be better applied to the government. If the claimant is found not to be a true refugee then deportation is legal but you must not make a mistake here because lives depend on getting it right.

What I despise about this government and earlier governments is their willingness to use these unfortunate people as pawns in a political contest. This should be an issue best approached on a bipartisan basis, as was done in past times. Today it is all very ugly.
 
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