Gillard government – Not a time for political point-scoring but the sinking is all that mongrel Abbott’s fault for refusing to vote for our Malaysia Solution amendments.
Coalition – Scott Morrison says “the tragedy confirmed the Coalition’s worst fears” but restrains himself from expressly blaming Labor until tomorrow, when he’ll assert for the umpteenth that it would never have happened but for Labor’s abandonment of Saint John Howard’s Nauru and temporary protection visa policy. Morrison will embrace the safe bet that a supine media will fail to point out that consistent strong DIAC advice is that the Nauru Solution simply won’t work nor notice that the tiny island nation has had three different prime ministers in the last three weeks, the first of whom resigned after corruption allegations which are unsurprising to anyone who remembers that Nauru survived for some years after the guano ran out by turning itself into a tax haven and laundering billions plundered by the Russian Mafia.
Convulsive conspiracy theorist Tony Kevin instantly and despite a complete lack of evidence claims conspiracy and “cover-up” by ASIO and Kopassus to sink the boat deliberately to frighten and deter asylum seekers (viz re-run of his SIEV X conspiracy theories for which there was also no evidence). David Marr can be expected to launch into a prissily sanctimonious version of the same refrain in the next couple of days.
Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition and Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens claim it’s both major parties’ fault for “demonising” people smugglers and failing to realise that the best policy would be to make it easier for them to use safe vessels. If only those heartless government bastards didn’t confiscate the smugglers’ boats and burn them, they’d be able to charter really big and seaworthy vessels (like old cruise liners for instance) and make even bigger profits transporting the yearning masses to Australia in thousands at a time.
Peter van Onselen makes the most sense on Twitter:
“Bottom line is the arguments of the simplistic left & right on this issue don’t provide answers & moralizing about deaths at sea won’t help.”
I still argue that some version of the Malaysia Solution with adequate assured human rights safeguards + an expanded Australian humanitarian migration target of 20,000 per year (now official Labor policy) would be the least bad ex tempore solution, but the chances of Malaysia agreeing to adequate safeguards (because it fears making itself a magnet for asylum seekers in the guise of waiting room for Oz migration) or Abbott voting to enable such an approach (despite urgings from even the Murdoch press) are remote. Merry Christmas?
That’s funny, because I seem to remember John Howards’s pacific solution providing a pretty effective answer, until the left dismantled it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BoatArrivals.gif
“I seem to remember John Howards’s pacific solution providing a pretty effective answer”
And so it was for a while, just as Keating’s implementation of mandatory detention etc slowed down boat arrivals for a while. But neither asylum seekers nor people smugglers are utterly stupid. They finally figured out that Howard had no choice but to eventually give protection visas to most of those Nauru detainees, because no-one else would take them. That’s why the Nauru Solution is no longer a deterrent, as DIAC has repeatedly explained to Abbott. I’m sure he knows they’re right too, and will adopt the Malaysia Solution as soon as he gets into government. In the meantime he can rely on credulous supporters like you to loyally ignore the facts.
What do you mean for a while, Ken?
The pacific solution was in place from 2001-2007, and during that period boat arrivals were basically zero. As soon as Rudd won and discontinued the policy, boat arrivals immediately jumped back to over 2500 per year.
There’s nothing at all to back up your claim that asylum seekers and people smugglers started to ignore it, except the hunch of a few public servants. The actual historical figures are a stark illustration of how effective the pacific solution was.
You are the one ignoring the facts here, Ken. I posted the graph of numbers of arrivals. You apparently think that the hunch of an advisor at DIAC (which you have not referenced or linked to, BTW) refutes those numbers.
On my side – evidence. On your side – hearsay.
Broadly agree with Ken, no one anywhere in this fine country of ours, or other prosperous country, has much to be proud of over the reality disconnect involving the conditions of the masses and we comfortable few.
The idea Ken talks of could have been kick started with a dropping of the idea of “swapping” asylum seekers to Malaysia, in return for the ones we took from that poor country. Helping a few thousand extra desperate people would have done us no harm and eased a bit of pressure on Malaysia and Indonesia, and tens of thousand of people just like our mums, dads or kids left rotting after fleeing wars of the West’s making.
I know that the west has ‘won’ so to speak, but it seems a bit much to call Koreans and Pakis and Sri Lankans and Sudanese (where do most refugees come from these days?) western.
Ken, I’m broadly sympathetic to your position but it is far from clear that Yobbo is wrong on this. It is quite possible that people-smugglers and refugees are as clever and rational as you say (indeed I am sure of it) but still couldn’t ‘see through’ St John’s rhetoric.
After all, the whole whining left, disproportionately represented in the media, were full time salesmen for it. They were even dedicated enough to procure the occasional condemnation by obscure UN agencies.
So I’m not as sure that the people-smuggling industry would have wised up as fast as you suggest.
Paul, the issue has never been the total number of humanitarian refugees we take. That is always up for debate, and like Ken I think it could be increased.
The issue here is that
1. Boat arrivals take allocated places from other asylum applicants who did it by the book and applied for asylum while in their home country or in a UN camp.
2. The people smuggling trade kills hundreds of people every year, and the goal of Australia’s policy should be to stop people wanting to cross from Indonesia to Australia by boat.
The pacific solution was excellent at deterring #2. Labor’s policies in this area have resulted in hundreds of deaths.
John Howard did not provide a “solution” he provided an “illusion” one that Morrison and Abbott continue to flog to this day.
Yobbo is incorrect as usual.
Very few people do it by the book.
you either bribe a person in a detention camp in say Pakistan or pay money to a people smuggler.
The major difference is that people smugglers do not go back on their word.
If people are fair dinkum then actually speak to some people who have come here in boats and ask them about why.
There is no ‘book’ or queue. you have to spend money to get out.
Ken is perfectly correct. The story given to refugees in the final years was that if you were prepared to spend a bit of time at Nauru you would come to Australia.
The Bureaucrats knew this and that is why they have changed.
If Australia wants to get rid of boats and actually have a proper ‘queue’ it would need to ensure the offshore processing centre was squeaky clean and orderly.
Whether the host country would allow this is a moot point.
you would need almost no employment from locals who are very susceptible to attaining bribes. This is highly unlikely.
The Gillard proposal went someway along this line but only some way.
the Abbott proposal has no legs
That’s just not true though Homer. Only around 40% of the people detained in Naaru made it to Australia. 30% were sent home, and 30% to other countries.
“but still couldn’t ‘see through’ St John’s rhetoric”
No doubt they didn’t see through Howard’s rhetoric for quite some time. It was only in the last year or two of the Howard government that it emerged publicly that most of the Nauru detainees had eventually been given visas. Until then they were “garaged” on Nauru despite being found to be refugees, until numbers reached a point where there was no viable alternative but to issue visas. Howard even explored the possibility of swapping refugees from Nauru with US-detained refugees from Guantanamo Bay in order to maintain the illusion that embarking on a boat wouldn’t get you an Australian visa. No such deal was completed before Howard lost office, but it seems unlikely that the knowledge that you would end up with a US residency visa instead of an Australian one would have proved an effective deterrent.
Abbott gets away with maintaining his bullshit line because, as Yobbo’s graph shows, arrival numbers had only begun to rise slowly in the couple of years before Howard lost government in 2007. DIAC advice even then, however, was that the trend would accelerate as word got around that jumping on a boat still gained you a visa eventually (though I doubt that arrivals would have risen anywhere near as fast as actually occurred when Labor unwisely – I agree – simply junked the entire system and didn’t replace it with anything effective).
There might still be a point even now in Labor eating temporary humble pie and agreeing to Abbott amendments to reinstate the Nauru or PNG Solution + temporary protection visas, simply in order to demonstrate that (as DIAC advises) it won’t work because asylum seekers are now awake to the ruse. There’s still plenty of time for that situation to play out before the next election is due.
There are no easy choices here. In one sense I think the current situation (onshore processing and community accommodation after security and health clearances) is a less bad compromise than reverting to Nauru or adopting the Malaysia Solution. However it will only keep arrival numbers within manageable limits if the pressure is kept on people smugglers in Indonesia and Malaysia and if boats are forfeited and destroyed when they arrive. Otherwise, my suggestion in the primary post (that they’ll be chartering cruise liners or other large, seaworthy vessels carrying thousands at a time) is very likely to occur IMO.
However, continuing to forfeit and destroy boats inevitably means (as the Greens etc correctly argue) that those boats will continue to be small, unseaworthy and overloaded. Consequently we will continue to witness regular tragedies with large death tolls. It’s plausibly estimated that there have been over a thousand asylum seeker deaths at sea over the last few years. You can’t morally be unmindful of that fact, any more than you can be unmindful of the high probability that the only alternative other than throwing Australia’s doors open (as the Greens appear to propose, although you can guarantee that they’ll be the first to whinge and cast blame when the inevitable drastic adverse social and environmental consequences of an open door policy start to become apparent) is the Malaysia Solution as far as I can see.
I don’t think you’ve ever spoken to one Homer, and like all your other posts ever, you’ve just pulled all your “facts” out of your arse.
Ken you are still missing an important point which is that the Naaru solution allowed Australia to send refugees elsewhere even after they had been granted asylum. Even if it was just to New Zealand, that was a big part of the deterrent.
Ken, how is the “Malaysia solution” any different to throwing the doors open? If we are going to swap 1 for 5 we might as well just not bother and give a visa to anyone who can make it here alive.
Ken, if you had spent any time in South East Asia then you would know that’s the way the boats are going to be no matter what Australia’s policy is. They just do not give a fuck. FFS more people die on commuter ferries in the Philippines and Indonesia than die trying to find asylum in Australia.
Yobbo
Your 40/30/30 figure is misleading. The 30% sent home were those found NOT to be genuine refugees. They are sent home under the current system and the one that applied before the Pacific Solution so they’re not relevant to the argument. The real picture is that around 60% of Nauru detainees found to be refugees were given Australian visas while the rest went elsewhere (mostly NZ). As with the inchoate US refugee swap proposal, it seems unlikely that the perception you’d end up with a NZ visa instead of an Australian one would have acted as a deterrent once the actual reality became apparent. Moreover, the picture is even starker than these figures suggest. Just about all the Nauru refugees given NZ visas received them quite early in the piece. The Kiwis’ charity eventually ran out and so Howard was facing the prospect of being forced to grant visas to 100% of remaining detainees and future arrivals found to be refugees. That would certainly have blown out of the water any vestige of plausibility surrounding his masterfully misleading “we will decide who comes here …” rhetoric. As it turned out he lost office before the full extent of the pea and thimble trick became self-evident, and Labor then allowed him and Abbott a “get out of gaol” card by junking the whole system and thereby making itself an easy scapegoat for a temporary expedient in the Pacific Solution that was always going to fail eventually.
helps to talk to the refugees Yobbo.
yes I have talked to some one was even on the infamous kiddies overboard craft, .
mind you it appears I have spoken to a lot more than you as is usual on any topic.
I would agree you use your bottom a lot though
What’s misleading about that? Is anyone here under the impression that everyone who arrives on a boat is a genuine refugee?
Nobody believes anything you say Homer, I’m not sure why you bother anymore.
What an appalling homophobic comment.
The figures of people being sent home is highly misleading.
Refugees in Nauru had limited access to legal services.
A very common problem in people being sent home is problems in translation.
The wrong question is asked and therefore answered.
Appealing this requires precise information which can only be handled, usually by a person skilled in legal services. This is one of the reasons Nauru was used by the Government in the first place.
so yes the 40/30/330 figures are very misleading
That Yobbo didn’t know this shows his bottom is used regularly as he might say.
Of course access to refugees would bring this problem to the fore very early.
This practice has been somewhat quashed under the present legislation and so it should have been.
Hammygar, wtf? Would you really be happier if he substituted ‘inane and’ or ‘moronically’? Because they are the words which would have sprung to my mind.
The reason I put forward is why most refugees now get visas. It is now well over 80% the last time I met refugee support people in Sydney associated with the Anglican denomination.
I might add I see no reason to allow Tamils from Sri Lanka here. Afterall they have an Indian State they can go to who have doors open.
There are no cultural or language barriers there either.
#19 Patrick. The word used is just a dog-whistle term to denigrate gays.
A fairly comprehensive thread derail on pretty specious evidence, hammygar.
Why dont you want to talk about a thousand people dying, or is it a relatively trivial issue, for you?
I’m sorry, hammygar, you are completely off the rails there. If more evidence of this is required you have united pw and myself. I think it safe to say that ordinarily anything beyond our collective pale’s is extreme indeed.
Happy Christmas, Patrick. Ahh, but the issue is vexed tho, vexed in a vexed world already full of vexed issues.
Here we are again. Like a bad re-run of last christmas another boat load has gone down – only this time it is not scores but hundreds lost, and many women and children are among them. How can those who are responsible, (Brown, Rudd and Gillard) sleep at night? If they had a shred of concience or humanity, all would resign immidiately and let someone who has the right humanitarian policies take charge.
Because the individuals who “made it here alive” are not the ones who get invited in. It’s kind of a Tragedy of the Commons situation where decision making at an individual level gets a different answer to decision making at a collective level. If all refugees were part of a telepathic collective organism they could easily get around the trick, but they they probably would also take over the world by other means.
The well known solution to a Tragedy of the Commons is ownership rights and trade thereof so if there was a marketplace where refugees could sell positions to each other in exchange for taking risks on boats then they could get around it that way too… but such a market would be illegal and no one would do that.
All an academic argument now that it’s been ruled out by the courts.
I really don’t get that. If Malaysia can provide sufficient guarantees to convince the Australian courts that it is workable, then why exactly is Abbott required for any of this?
“that mongrel Abbott”
Tel, the intent of the primary post was to paraphrase the attitudes and statements of the various protagonists i.e. I was suggesting that Labor’s stance was that Abbott was a mongrel (and a cynical, hypocritical one) for not supporting their Malaysia Solution. And if you’ve read the ongoing argy bargy today you’ll have seen that it was a pretty accurate summary of Labor’s tone and approach.
As to the substantive question of why Labor needs Abbott, I suspect that the present reality is that Malaysia is unlikely to agree to sufficient legally binding undertakings as to its treatment of returnee asylum seekers to satisfy the High Court’s conception of protection. That is because, as I said (albeit in shorthand form) in the primary post, Malaysia doesn’t want to make itself a magnet for asylum seekers wanting to get to a first world country (viz Australia) by making things too ritzy for them. Thus, Labor’s approach to date seems to have been to push the Coalition to support legislative amendments that would overcome the effect of the High Court decision without any need for stronger guarantees from Malaysia which they know it isn’t prepared to give.
However, I wonder whether it might not be possible to broker a stronger deal with Malaysia, and hopefully Indonesia as well, by offering to take significantly more (pre-approved) refugees from both countries than we do now in exchange for their agreeing to accept return of all “irregular” arrivals on an ongoing basis. If we expand our overall humanitarian program to (say) 20,000 per year and take 10,000 from each of Malaysia and Indonesia, but no-one from anywhere else, the waiting time for asylum seekers in both those countries would be much shorter. We would have created a system whereby there really is a queue and where it makes rational sense for asylum seekers to wait in that queue rather than jump on a boat. Malaysia and Indonesia would have a vested interest in agreeing to such a scheme because they would be getting relieved of large numbers of waiting asylum seekers each year, especially if Australia significantly boosted its financial contribution to those countries to pay for accommodating the asylum seekers and providing them with basic health care, education etc. In those circumstances they might conceivably find it a reasonable deal to provide legally binding guarantees of non-refoulement, non-discrimination etc. The combination of legally binding agreements between Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia with Australia actively (and also in a legally binding manner) underwriting and ensuring basic humane conditions would IMO satisfy the High Court’s guidelines laid down in the M64 case (to the extent that it’s possible to be confident what they are).
Moreover, the above framework would NOT involve Australia accepting any more than 20,000 refugees per year (about 10% of our total annual migration intake and quite a lot less if you count 457 work visas), and probably wouldn’t cost us any more in total. We would no longer need to maintain a large and growing network of expensive detention centres etc etc.
This sort of framework probably WOULDN’T need Abbott’s consent/parlt votes, but it would no doubt take quite a while to re-negotiate with Malaysia and Indonesia. In the meantime it would be nice if the major parties could find a way to reach an interim compromise deal. As I commented earlier, I reckon it would be worthwhile Gillard/Bowen agreeing to Nauru + temporary protection visas in return for Abbott agreeing to countenance the Malaysia/Indon Return Solution if Gillard can do the sort of deal sketched out above. It would be a real and durable regional solution which would ultimately benefit Abbott given that it’s difficult at the moment to see anything other than a Coalition election win in 2013.
There is only one solution to the impasse on this vexed issue.
The Governor General must arrest the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition immediately, lock them away together in a room and tell them they will only be let out when they can wholeheartedly agree to a solution.
Anyone who mentions Asylum Seekers, Refugees or People Smugglers while those two ‘kids’ are locked away will be put before a firing squad.
As those two childish so called leaders are unlikely to ever agree we could have a very lomg period of peace and quiet so we can get on with some semblance of a real life.
I don’t see why it’s childish that Tony Abbott doesn’t agree with most of Gillard’s largely awful policies.
Ken @ 27
there seems to me to be a major flaw with what you have proposed such that neither side would ever accept it
It has too much common sense in it.
Ahh, I get it now. They want Abbott (in opposition) to support the overturning of the High Court which the Greens (in government) have openly stated as unconscionable.
Hmmm, I suggest that Abbott should spit on his hand and say, “It’s a deal! I will agree to do the unconscionable one day after you guys deliver a balanced budget.”
Playing the joker sometimes pays off (just ask Chavez).
Reading Ken’s next serious posting here was a timely palliative, in the wake of Robert Holmes curious statement. D Mike Weir emphasises the point. How is there such a gap between moderates and more partisan types, there seems to be something crucial missing in some of the readings, a reality deficit.
On another note, it’s true that SBS has a series of “Go Back to Where You Came From” upcoming; perhaps a second viewing for those who missed the point the first time.
There is a reality which those on the left conveniently forget, and that is that there was no issue with boat arrivals until 2007/8 when Rudd and the labor party changed a refugee policy which was detering the sort of risky behavior which results in the sort of loss off life we have seen in the last few days.
Bob Brown and his greens are nothing but a pack of extreemist fools who, when you boil it all down do not care about people a all. Their refugee policy (and their global warming policy) prove this. Even now, when his actions, (and those of the greens) have cost many people their lives; they still do not see the light. All these deaths (and possibly more to come) would have been avoided if the greens had voted with the more sensible approach of the labor party.
Even the labor party policy (Malaysia), though, was almost as cruel; but at least the labor party has partly seen the light on its errors in this field. However, I agree with Tony Abbott in not supporting the Malaysia policy, since he would’ve partly copped the blame when is fails (as it probably would).
Its now long past time for that liar Gillard to stop blaming Abbott, the people smugglers or anyone else when everyone can see that the problem is – HERSELF.