Refugees are dying while they wait in the queue

paul says:

07:24am | 28/10/09

Stuart there was some rare humanity in your writing, however you sidestepped the elephant in the room: The Libs are responsible for derailing sensible debate or solutions on this issue. In fact despite the misery involved, the Libs, like the people smugglers, were prepared to exploit refugees for your own selfish (political) profit, especially come election time. Australia as a humane society is seriously questioned internationally, but you have also damaged your own parties reputation.  Fairness? Many non-brown queue jumpers are *partying* hard in Aussie while people are dying in the queue (or while you Libs were putting kids in gulags.) You played a hand in licensing this pear shaped system

Lance says:

07:26am | 28/10/09

I’m sure those Sri Lankans waiting in limbo in and around Indonesia were only considering the economic benefits of coming to Australia. Surely it has nothing to do with the institutionalised persecution and third world conditions they would face if they had stayed in their home country?  How smug of you to preface your argument with a trip to Africa as if that justifies your dog whistle antics about ‘lines’ and ‘economic refugees’. There is no line, and you know that all asylum seekers have the right to seek refuge in countries like Australia. These people are desperate, and the current politicking on this issue to appeal to the (racist) right speaks volumes of how little this country has progressed since the dark days of the Pacific Solution,

DG says:

08:01am | 28/10/09

“To abandon your own child in a pit latrine because you can’t afford to care for them says much about the overwhelming circumstances of the parent as it does for the lot of the child.”

If there were any indicator that a group of people care little for consequences or the effects of their actions on others - it would be the choice to have children that they can not provide for. I think it says less about their circumstances and more about their willingness to create an abandon human life. Ironic that these same people are seeking help on humanitarian grounds - while they themselves demonstrate such disregard for human life.

But that aside, I tend to agree with your comments. For that reason (i.e they are gaining benefit by doing the wrong thing) and that reason alone, I advocate dumping these people on a plane and sending them back to their place of origin - Now THAT would destroy the people smuggling racket. If, instead of being accommodated on a tropical island while the paper does it’s job, people were simply sent home and given an application form to post in - the benefits of the illegal system would be gone in a heart beat. 

Of course we could always try the US approach to illegal immigration - pretend they aren’t here. Meaning they have no access to welfare but can do low paid, cash-in-hand jobs that our existing population just don’t want to do (waiting tables at café‘s, cleaning the streets, cleaning public amenities etc etc). For this to work all Australians would need some form of “papers” to prove that they are Australian, and to only allow payments to persons holding such papers to be tax deductible for employers. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether this suggestion is a serious proposal or a cheeky stab at the US system.

BT says:

08:05am | 28/10/09

I have to admit I am not all that educated on this subject, so I can only offer an opinion rather than any factual input - so take it for what it’s worth. From my perspective I think Australians are happy to take any refugees, however I think it’s the permanent residency part that they don’t approve of. We simply can’t take every refugee in the world on a permanent basis - our infrastructure, economy, housing are under pressure as it is. It’s sad but we just can’t help everyone.

DG says:

08:21am | 28/10/09

@Paul: I appreciate that there are other “queue jumpers”, but the reality is that they are not so readily caught. For US$20,000 these same boat people could fly in (safely and in relative comfort), apply for tourist visa’s and disappear into the country as well - there is no doubt about that. But if you turn up in a boat you get special attention and can ultimately claim to be in the country legally.

We are not condoning other forms of illegal immigration, but simply catching the ones that we can. It’s no different to the way that we can only punish speeding drivers that happen to be caught in the Act.

Tim says:

08:37am | 28/10/09

Thank you Stuart,
this sums the issue up nicely.

KW says:

09:05am | 28/10/09

Good God, DG - what an appallingly narrow view.

I refer to your statement:

“If there were any indicator that a group of people care little for consequences or the effects of their actions on others - it would be the choice to have children that they can not provide for.”

These people don’t have access to birth control, the women in these camps are often there sheltering from the conditions outside - note..
“They would starve to death or be raped and killed if they left the refugee camp”

Next time you are being raped by a man with a gun why don’t you try asking him to don a rubber.

These people are on the fringe of life and death on a daily basis. Save your moral judgement for those of who have the luxury of control over our own fates.

paul says:

09:28am | 28/10/09

@DG Nonsense. If you spent hundreds of millions, like they do on naval boats and detention centres, chasing plane based people in Australia, you would be just as ruthlessly ‘effective’ and kicking look-how-tough-we-are media goals. Again, why the hypocrisy & hysteria?

DG says:

10:17am | 28/10/09

KW - I appreciate that a proportion of those that have children do so as the result of rape, I also completely support the provision of the contraceptive pill as part of the humanitarian aid.

People always have a choice, it might not be a pleasant one but they have a choice. When a person holds a knife to my person and makes demands of me I have a choice, surrender or fight/flee. I have, and would again, chose to fight rather than give up what is mine to some nameless tyrant with a weapon. So don’t go all high and mighty, there is ALWAYS a choice - my decision could have result in my death. but I made the choice that I would rather die than surrender. I would, probably, make that same choice again.

Now before you assume that I am blaming the victim - I was a victim from the moment that individual threatened me with a knife, had I surrendered I would be no less of a victim nor would it prove weakness or any other matter (other than the fact I had chosen the consequences of surrender over the consequences of defending myself). 

That aside, you assume that most of the abandoned children are the result of rape - I assume that most are the result of consensual sex . We apparently agree that contraception is missing from the equation. Do you deny that persons inside the camps have children that they cannot support? And do you deny that their decision makes the situation worse? I am not condoning rape, I have never said anything to that effect - in fact I specifically stated that it was the CHOICE to have children that they could not support. I strongly suspect (with no better evidence that you have provided to rebut my claim) a number of these children could have been avoided.

Presumably, we both believe that the availability of the contraceptive pill would substantially improve matters in these environments. Not only in terms of reducing the number of babies dumped in latrines, but also in terms of reduced demand on the limited resources available in these environments.

Again I am not against aid, nor have I suggested that we should not accept refugees. I simply offered a rebuttal to Stuart’s assumption that dumping of babies reflects the economic hardship of the parents with an alternative interpretation of the dumping babies in latrines. In reality I expect the motivation is a combination of both.

After all if your issue was simply one of economic viability - why not abandon the baby in a sanitary place rather than abandoning it to starve to death or drown in human excrement?

Of course, if this is not a situation in which they “choose” to have children they are clearly not addressed by my original comment, are they? (re-read the earlier comment to note that I indicated that it was the CHOICE to have children that they could not provide for).

Matt says:

10:23am | 28/10/09

Stuart writes: “…refugees seeking actual freedom continue to wait, pushed further down the line because of those seeking economic freedom.”

It’s infuriating and embarrassing to read such uninformed and misleading writing from one of our elected representatives.

The single part-sentence above is a simple example of why we can’t get anywhere on the debate around asylum seekers and boatpeople—because the people making the arguments are distorting the truth.

Stuart, if you’re as well informed as you pretend to be about refugees, you would know that under the Australian system of immigration asylum seekers arriving here by boat don’t in any way push other refugees “further down the line”. It’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

It’s also disingenuous to suggest that asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat are “seeking economic freedom” rather than being “seeking actual freedom”. 95 per cent of boatpeople arriving in Australia are later judged to be true refugees, so how can you suggest they aren’t “seeking actual freedom”?

Stuart, obviously I disagree with your politics. If you want to make the case for “tougher” border protection policies, please start basing your argument on facts rather than loose wording and misleading information.

DG says:

10:31am | 28/10/09

Paul -

I agree. I personally think that it is a waste of money scouring thousands of miles of ocean to find people smugglers and bring them, and their cargo, to Australia for processing.  We might as well wait for them to arrive then pack them onto a ship and send them home. After all we aren’t going to sink the vessel, nor do we have any practical means of preventing them from entering Australian waters, so we might as well let them make the mainland - then detain, and deport the individuals involved. At least we will save money that way.

I also agree that further funding could assist in catching a number of people illegally here after overstaying visa’s. But the question is “how?”. How do you propose to catch people that are in the community, working, paying taxes, kids are at school etc etc. Are you going to make Australian nationals carry papers? Good luck with that.

I just can’t see it working in practice - it is much easier to catch a boat load of people drifting past Christmas Island than hunting down Joe Bloggs living in a Melbourne unit, doing cash-in-hand work for a bloke he met at the pub - pays his bills, uses public transport and generally keeps out of trouble. Short of a tip-off it’s damn near impossible.

fehowarth says:

10:40am | 28/10/09

Wonder how many of these people would get a tourist visa, coming from Indonesia.

Freddo says:

11:06am | 28/10/09

Matt,
I think that you are the one distorting the truth.
If Australia can only accept a certain number of Refugees per year, then how does accepting boat people not push other Refugees further down the line?
Just because 95% of asylum seekers who arrive by boat are found to be Refugees does not mean that they were in any danger of persecution in the many countries that they passed through on their way here. This is the issue that annoys most people.
You can apply for asylum in Australia in any country outside of Australia by going to our embassy. Why did these people not do this? Oh wait a minute, that would put them in the queue wouldn’t it?
These people come by boat to bypass that queue, plain and simple.

Matt says:

11:34am | 28/10/09

Freddo, this is what Australian Immigration Fact Sheet 60, available from http://www.immi.gov.au, says on the matter:

“The Humanitarian Program comprises an offshore component for the resettlement of people overseas, and an onshore component for those people already in Australia who seek Australia’s protection.”

So there are actually two separate components to our immigration system. People arriving by boat have no impact on the “queue”, as it is so commonly called.

If you want to argue that people should apply for asylum in whatever countries they pass through, that’s fine. But it’s not the argument Stuart was making. He specifically says boatpeople are pushing other refugees down the “queue”, which is incorrect.

He also says boatpeople are “seeking economic freedom” as opposed to “seeking actual freedom” without providing any evidence that this is the case.

My point is that if Stuart wants to base his arguments on those statements, then those statements need to be correct.

Freddo says:

11:59am | 28/10/09

Sorry Matt you are wrong,
From the immigration website:
http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/60refugee.htm

“The size and composition of the resettlement program are influenced by a number of factors. These include:

-an estimate of the number of people likely to be found in need of protection in Australia in accordance with international obligations under the Refugees Convention “

Therefore boat arrivals do affect the number of places available for offshore refugees.

Matt says:

12:07pm | 28/10/09

Hi Freddo, you’re right in that I was incorrect to state that “People arriving by boat have no impact on the ‘queue’, as it is so commonly called.”

However, my original point still stands, and Stuart was still being misleading. When a boatperson arrives in Australia, they don’t push other refugees down in the “queue”.

That remains a fact, even if some estimate of how many people might arrive in Australia by boat, plane or flying saucer is taken into account in choosing our immigration intake.

Patrick says:

12:51pm | 28/10/09

Something Stuart and the rest of the Coalition will never tell you is that the pacific solution and TPA’s did not stop boat arrivals, they merely bastardized the statistics. Boats continued to arrive under the pacific solution but instead of being processed on Australian territory and counting towards Australian statistics, they where processed out in Nauru and other places.

So when the Coalition talks about No boat arrivals under its watch, they are technically correct, no boats arrived in Australian territory, but boats kept comming with Australia as their destination, despite the Howard governments “tough” policies, putting asylum seeker lives at risk.. They where merely diverted to be processed elsewhere, making the numbers look good on paper and as a newspaper headline.

In any case, TPA’s where introduced in 1999, they didn’t seem to stop the massive influx of asylum seekers arriving by boat over the next few years which reached their peak in 2001 and remained very high after that untill the government implemented…..the pacific solution. Connecting the dots?

KW says:

01:16pm | 28/10/09

DG – I’m afraid I still feel that you are applying a blanket judgement completely out of context.

I did not suggest you are condoning rape (not sure where you got that one from) and I am not attacking your opinion on refugees or aid, it is only your reference to “Choosing to have children they cannot provide for” as it smacks of blanket judgement cast from the comfort of an armchair in a developed country.

I don’t argue that most children are conceived as a result of rape – the example I gave is one of many potential situations. Yes, many will be from consensual sex. But one cannot and should not make such a harsh sweeping moral judgement of people who face starvation and death every day of their lives. Especially when we live in a lucky country such as ours.

I don’t know much about these people’s lives either, but I can tell you a few things:

If I was struggling to reach a refugee camp with my children in tow, and was offered food for my starving children in exchange for sex, I would happily run the gauntlet of aids or pregnancy rather than watch my children starve before I could reach help. Nothing high and mighty there – far from it. Just the desperate choice of a mother trying to keep herself and her children alive.

If I gave birth to a child in a refugee camp and was so malnourished that I was unable to produce milk to feed it, I would try anything possible to get that child into the hands of an NGO who might be able to keep him/her alive. (Sure a latrine might not be the greatest option, but chances are it’s the only place in a camp where she would not be witnessed leaving the child)

My point is not that these people are blameless, many things are done in desperate situations that people are not proud of. It’s just that it breaks my heart to hear them judged on such simplistic terms.

Matt says:

01:38pm | 28/10/09

Patrick, that’s a great point. Where does one find statistics on the number of boats intercepted?

James says:

01:57pm | 28/10/09

@Freddo

First point - not every country has an Australian embassy, consulate or representative office (check the DFAT site).  Secondly, even if there is an embassy, application processing takes months, even longer.  People fleeing from conflict/persecution don’t have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for their application to be processed.

The other point is that those fleeing conflict/persecution often have little time to gather passports etc (even if they have one in the first place), leaving little option of boarding a plane to arrive, even if they have the funds to do so.

Those who make it to refugee camps in neighbouring countries are often faced with largely unsanitary and unsafe conditions, with poor hygiene, despite the best efforts of the UN and organisations like Medicine San Frontiers.  Conditions are over crowded, food is the absolute barest to sustain life, disease and infection spread like crazy, and as other posters have said, rape and violence are rife.  Between 100 - 200 000 people can be in the camps at any one time, people often having been there for years on end, unable to return home.

So, you’ve been in a cramped refugee camp for a year, no chance of returning home, no passport, no papers, no Australian embassy.  You may have a little money available, so you take your chances on a small, overcrowded leaky boat to sail the open seas to Australia.  That’s desparation, not queue jumping. 

If these people were really ‘economic refugees’ are some have put it, and have money to board a plane, don’t you think it would be much easier and safer to come here on a tourist visa, and disappear into the ether like so many backpackers do?  I think so, I know I wouldn’t put my life in the hands of people smugglers.

The situation with refugees isn’t like being at a medicare office, taking a ticket and waiting to be called.  Like I said before, it’s desparation.

N says:

02:26pm | 28/10/09

James: “That’s desperation, not queue jumping”. Actually its both. At the end of the day your promoting people smuggling and breaking the law weather you intend to or not. Your stance, at the core, is saying “to bad those who can’t put together the cash to make it to Australia, you wait here while I slip to the front”.James: “That’s desperation, not queue jumping”. Actually its both. At the end of the day your promoting people smuggling and breaking the law whether you intend to or not. Your stance, at the core, is saying “to bad those who can’t put together the cash to make it to Australia, you wait in line here while I slip to the front”.
Anyway you look at it, that’s not the Australian spirit of a fair go.

Patrick says:

02:29pm | 28/10/09

Can’t find a relevant government website at the moment Matt, but there is an excellent analysis about it done by “Possum Comitatus” on his Polytics blog you can have ar ead of, which links to a UNHCR statistic.  http://www.blogotariat.com/node/181321

But of course we all know the UNHCR can’t be trusted, it is corrupt and takes bribes, Sharman Stone said so. She didn’t offer any evidence for this of course…..

Nads says:

02:38pm | 28/10/09

Stuart Robert totally misunderstands the concept of being a refugee, further he seems to infer/imply that Africa is a country rather than a continent.

his article, altho thoughtful, is totally misconceived and wrong, not to mention completely unhelpul in the current circumstances.

Comments like “The problem, as many Australians know, is that before they arrived on our shores, these people were already free. When they left their homes and travelled through multiple countries like Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia they were free in each country. The persecution from which they fled had ceased when they crossed the border out of their country. The problem was that freedom of itself was not enough. They want economic freedom of the kind offered by Australia. Yet in Africa, there are thousands of people that can’t flee to different countries to secure freedom, that can’t afford upward to US$20,000 to board a boat. “

These comments not only incorrect but potentially dangerous, and serious distort the debate. I have worked as an immigration lawyer both here and in Africa.

The definition of a refugee according to the Convention and UNHCR is as follows:

A refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…”

Article 1, The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees

The most important parts of the refugee definition are:

Refugees have to be outside their country of origin;
The reason for their flight has to be a fear of persecution;
The fear of persecution has to be well-founded
The persecution has to result from one or more of the 5 grounds listed in the definition, that is race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion;
They have to be unwilling or unable to seek the protection of their country.

ergo, by definition, refugees are outside of their home counrty, rendering most of this article inaccuarate. Were i more cynical i would suspect that he is deliberately trying to distort and skew the debate.

Likewise comments like “When they left their homes and travelled through multiple countries like Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia they were free in each country” are equally inaccurate and divisive. A number of these countries or similar are not signatories to the Conventions re Refugees and even if they are, they afford refugees/asylum seekers no more rights that those they were deprived of in their countries of origin.

Pakistan, has, i think, more asylum seekers, than any other country in the world, yet these refugees (most of who will meet the UN definition of refugee) have no rights and live in camps in the most appalling conditions and are considered “illegal”. They have no work, health or education rights.
Yes, countries like AUstralia has embassies/high commissions in Pakistan, but the barriers to “joining the queue” and applying for refugee status are almost insurmountable. Not to mention the fact that due to the political problems in Pakistan at the moment (refer recent bombings and terrorist attacks in Islamabad etc), most Embassies are only running skeleton staff and processing has ground to a standstill.

I am all for discussions on refugees and asylum seekers, but am totally over misinformed and inaccurate articles and debates based on scaremongering rather than informed debate.

It is not that hard Stuart Robert to actually read the convention and the definitions prior to penning inaccurate and divisive articles. Here’s a tip, google “defintion regugee unhcr” it gets you there in a millisecond.

Let’s get some facts and informed debate happening

James says:

02:48pm | 28/10/09

@ N

I agree with you N that unfortunately people arriving by boat does promote people smuggling.  I don’t deny that, it’s the unfortunate reality of the situation.  But for the reasons I outlined, people seeking asylum put themselves in these situations out of desparation.

I don’t quite follow your interpretation of what I was saying.  All people seeking asylum, whether by boat or plane, need to actually get to Australia to be accepted, so a person with money arriving by boat isn’t disadvantaging a person in a refugee camp without money waiting for their application to be processed - it’s two separate issues.

The reality is even if an asylum seeker’s application for refuge is accepted, they still need to get here, the government doesn’t fly them out here, although I think there has been a couple of specific cases where the government has taken in Kosova and Iraqi refugees with its own money.  I could be wrong about this though.

Patrick says:

02:52pm | 28/10/09

Reasoned and informed comments like Nad’s are a refreshing change from the usual ignorance posted in the blogosphere. You just made my afternoon a little brighter, cheers.

SinByte says:

03:18pm | 28/10/09

Mid way through the Coalition’s term when all this started to become mainstream politics, I wondered ‘what is the big deal with refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants etc etc. Why are we as a country going on and on ad nauseum about it all the time… ??’

It didn’t take long to work out: XENOPHOBIA - ie, fear and dislike of unknown Others. It is so blatantly simple. Otherwise, who cares about a few thousand people in a land of 22 million?? And yes, it is ‘the principle of it all’ - a xenophobic principle.  There are lots of words spilled trying to justify the xenophobia, but it’s always there. See for example DG says.

Tim says:

03:22pm | 28/10/09

But Nads,
we can’t help everyone as we only have a certain amount of places.
Thus anyone that supports people coming by boat, is supporting people jumping the queue. You say that the barriers in joining the queue are almost insurmountable, well then allowing boat people in makes the barriers for people already in the queue even higher.
What you should be arguing for is a lifting of the number of places in Australia’s humanitarian program, not open slather for boat people.

marley says:

03:26pm | 28/10/09

Nads - you are wrong in saying that asylum seekers in Pakistan live in camps in appalling conditions, and have neither education nor health nor work rights.  It is quite true that Pakistan is not a signatory to the UN Convention, and generally does not grant permanent residence to Afghans.  Nonetheless, a great many Afghans do have residence in Pakistan, work, own businesses and send their kids to school.  No one in Pakistan has much in the way of health rights, so that’s neither here nor there.  As to the camps, at least until the latest Taliban insurgency, the camps were spartan but hardly appalling, the UN ensured that people had access to food, medicine and even in-camp employment   As for education, it has been my personal experience that Afghan kids in the camp have access to a higher standard of education than Pakistani kids in the surrounding towns.

Yes, it’s hard for people in the camps to get into the queue - because the UNHCR won’t refer people whom it believes are more suitable for eventual repatriation, or for local resettlement, or who are not in fact refugees within the meaning of the Convention.  It also will not refer people if there are no places available for them - and Australia’s intake of refugees overseas is most definitely affected by the size of its onshore intake.  The more boat people Australia takes, the fewer opportunities are left for those in the camps.

Oh, and N - the government most definitely does/does fly offshore refugees processed in the camps to Australia.  Offshore cases have always been processed as permanent residents and given assisted passage to Australia.

Nads says:

03:52pm | 28/10/09

Marley, i take your point on a number of issues. I have also dealt with literally hundreds of people who have come through the camps in Pakistan or have family members remaining there. The conditions are pretty bad, granted, not as bad as say for asylum seekers in Iran or some other places, but also far from desirable, especially for female headed households. Yes there a number of enterprising folk who have managed to work and set up business, but they are not working lawfully by and large.

The focus on “boat” arrivals tho is just hysterical. As has been previously pointed out, boat arrivals make up a mere fraction of onshore asylum applicants. I will hunt down the figures, but the quota has been rejigged in those years where there have been a large no of onshore arrivals. The quota is not itself set in stone and the no. of refugees that Australia takes is negotiated yr by yr with UNHCR, so the impact on refugee intake or the queue is actually reasonably negligible. (i have worked for the Immi department offshore as well so have done both sides of the fence so to speak)

Where the onshore arrivals (plane/boat) will impact to some small degree is vis a vis the family reunification programme, that is those people who don’t have refugee claims in their own right but who seek to be reunited with those members of their family who have come to australia (whether by boat, plane or UNHCR referral). A significant increase in the onshore arrivals has occasionally resulted in a slightly longer delay in these people obtaining visas, altho this is more likely to impact on the non immediate rather than immediate family members of Australian permanent resident former refugees.

And just as a general comment, having worked with dozens of former boat arrivals, most had no clue where they were going and had never heard of Australia and certainly did not pay anything close to $20,000 for their pasage. An overwhelming majority thought they may have been going to Europe, they were illiterate and innumerate.

Their time spent in transit countries (ie indonesia etc) was characterised by them being locked in airless rooms with little food and water and often not toilets and told not to leave, and that if they did and they were caught they were told they would be killed, beaten and sent home.

Overwhelmingly, they had no papers, no idea where they were, no language skills and were terrified. They were totally reliant on the people smugglers. they did as they were told by the people smugglers before being loaded on unseaworthy vessels and fortunately for most arriving in Australia

nads says:

03:56pm | 28/10/09

@Tim, i am all for a sizeable increase in the quota!!

I am just saying that the debate is nowhere as simplistic as it is being portrayed and i am not sure that we can judge or differentiate desperate persecuted people who flee their homes and make decisions under appalling circumstances and who are genuine refugees no matter their method of arrival and to whom we have obligations to under international law.

cats says:

03:58pm | 28/10/09

“If there were any indicator that a group of people care little for consequences or the effects of their actions on others - it would be the choice to have children that they can not provide for. ” - DG

The reason they keep having children is that they are not supplied with contraceptives. Thats what we need to be sending them, not food. And you cannot expect people to simply stop having sex, because who is really going to do that?!

E says:

04:11pm | 28/10/09

great article!

But how come we never hear about the plane people?

marley says:

04:22pm | 28/10/09

Nad - first, thanks for the courtesy of your response.  And you make some good points.  Personally, I would like to see the offshore quota doubled or trebled - make the offshore program more accessible, and, since it is inherently less risky (you won’t need to get on a leaky boat)  - the attractiveness of the boat route diminishes. 

And I totally agree that the whole issue is far more complex than the majority of people realize, regardless of which side of the fence they sit on in regards to boat people or inland claimants.  What I definitely don’t want to see is Australia compromise its overseas program in order to handle an major influx of boat and/or air arrivals.

DG says:

04:34pm | 28/10/09

SinByte :

Where is my fear of unknown others? Did you miss my support for humanitarian aid? Did you miss my statement that I was not against the intake of refugees? The only problem I have is with people benefiting from doing the wrong thing. Is that xenophobic? Where did I say that I had a problem with a few thousand refugees? Simply put - your allegation is completely unfounded.

It appears that you assume I am xenophobic because I come to a different decision to you. If it makes you feel any better I feel the same way about people that arrive on a plane and over stay their visa and Australian’s who illegally enter other countries. Still xenophobic? By the way, I hold myself and my friends to this same standard. No person should benefit from doing the wrong thing whether that be speeding, tax evasion or people smuggling.

I appreciate the KW’s observation that my points seem harsh and, in KW’s opinion, overly simplify a complex situation. I can understand that observation and respect that opinion. I personally see it as a simple situation, others do not. That’s fair enough, there is plenty of grey area. I believe “no person should obtain any benefit from doing the wrong thing”. I tend to believe that just because things aren’t good in your world does not give you the right to do the wrong thing to get ahead, especially if that wrong thing has consequences for others. I understand that a person may flee one place - but they should be treated no differently to if they had made their application from a refugee camp in Georgia, or from the Australian Embassy in London.

Now if the Government decided we are going to double the intake of immigrants - go for it. If we are going to triple our intake of refugees, fine. I don’t think that we have the infrastructure for it (Sydney trains are already crowded as are our roads, hospitals are struggling etc etc), but that’s a separate issue. However, I’d still want to ship home the boat people that attempt to ‘queue jump’.

And yes it is queue jumping - If we have a quota of 15,000 refugees - and 14,000 people arrive on boats then those persons that applied from other countries (that did the right thing) would miss this years intake in favour of those that demand that their application be expedited due to the fact that they are already here and are being detained.

Is this still xenophobic or an opinion based on a world view that rewards people for doing the right thing?

DG says:

04:42pm | 28/10/09

cats (04:58pm | 28/10/09) “And you cannot expect people to simply stop having sex, because who is really going to do that?! “- A person that recognises that the risk of creating a baby that they can not feed out weighs the benefit of having sex? A person that does not want to bring a baby into a world of disease and starvation? A person that considers the consequences of their actions? A person that realises that a few minutes of enjoyment now will cause a lifetime of misery for the offspring?

But as I said, I am all for providing contraceptives as part of humanitarian aid.

Glen says:

05:28pm | 28/10/09

I agree.  I believe that no compassion should be shown to the queue jumping boat and plane economic improven driven people.  The compassion should be shown to the poor wretches in camps.  Immediately send back the queue jumpers and sort out the true refugees.

paul says:

06:45pm | 28/10/09

@DG You seem to have a simplistic view of ‘good’ and ‘consequences’ ,especially for people living day to day, in sometimes chaotic and violent circumstances. This isn’t some neat moralistic bureaucratic system of queues and worthiness competition at some Christian youth-group . It’s messy and made messier by hysteria and rednecks in the Liberal party who somehow believe that the Libs set the benchmark for boat focussed ‘border protection’. We funded a war and the subsequent mass movements of people, and the destabilisation of much of this region without regard for consequence and without reason.

marley says:

07:34pm | 28/10/09

Ummm, Paul - I’m not sure what war we funded in Sri Lanka or how we contributed to destabilisation there. As for the Afghans, they were fleeing in droves in the 90’s - from the Taliban, not from the West.  There are in fact fewer Afghan refugees now than at the height of the Taliban’s power.  So yes, you’re quite right that people have a simplistic view of good and consequences - but don’t exclude yourself from that assessment.

The fact is that there are many very nasty wars and insurgencies going on in many places, that refugees are being generated in all sorts of situations, and that 25 million people or so are now displaced worldwide.  Australia’s responsibility for creating these situations is very limited - Iraq, I’ll grant you, but what else in the world is Australia really responsible for?  Congo? Sudan?  That does not lessen Australia’s responsiblity for dealing humanely with those who reach (or nearly reach) our shores but it does not make us responsible for correcting the evils of the entire world. 

Whether you want to admit it or not, it is a fact that Australia is one of a very few countries which actually does go into overseas refugee camps and offer resettlement opportunities;  you might see Americans and Canadians there, and occasionally Scandinavians, but you don’t see too many other countries.

paul says:

06:28am | 29/10/09

@marley no mate, you are simplistic and naive. Do you know where the massive amounts of money came from to support an extended Tamil campaign came from?  Australia is on the list -google it. Just as Aussies and Americans funded the IRA back in the day -google it too.  And while we are goose chasing around Afganistan and Iraq that’s money and resources that can be used for stability and country building,  in our own region.  Perhaps it was in our geopolitical/humanitarian interest to (not let it destabilise by looking the other way) facilitate peace in Sri Lanka just as we have done with Pacific neighbours.

paul says:

06:28am | 29/10/09

@marley no mate, you are simplistic and naive. Do you know where the massive amounts of money came from to support an extended Tamil campaign came from?  Australia is on the list -google it. Just as Aussies and Americans funded the IRA back in the day -google it too.  And while we are goose chasing around Afganistan and Iraq that’s money and resources that can be used for stability and country building,  in our own region.  Perhaps it was in our geopolitical/humanitarian interest to (not let it destabilise by looking the other way) facilitate peace in Sri Lanka just as we have done with Pacific neighbours.

KW says:

02:12pm | 29/10/09

Thanks DG,

Appreciate that you took the time to read & respond. Even if we don’t quite see eye to eye!