Border Protection

Mark Latham is notoriously harsh and personal in his choice of language. It was one of the things which made him unelectable as prime minister and which saw him shred every friendship he ever had upon making his furious exit from parliamentary life.

At the same time Latham can also make sense. His analysis may often be brutal and poorly-timed but it is often also right. He was 100 per cent right when he said on Sunday that the people who advocate the onshore processing of asylum seekers, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, are creating a situation where desperate people will risk their lives at the hands of people smugglers in the dangerous hope of making it to the Australian mainland.

Of course Latham could have easily avoided insinuating that the likes of Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young and the Labor Party’s Left Faction had effectively killed the 200-odd men, women and children whose bodies were still being picked out of the sea off the coast of Java.

Continue reading "Killed with kindness: onshore processing is a deadly policy" »

By her own definition, Julia Gillard is the leader of a government which has lost its way. This was the rationale she famously used to justify the removal of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister last year. Sixteen months on and Julia Gillard yesterday found herself in the invidious position of having to convene a meeting of the Federal Cabinet where she looked each of her ministers in the eye and declared she would not tolerate any more leaks from within their ranks.

There can be no greater demonstration of government dysfunction than a breach of Cabinet solidarity as seen last week over border protection. The ability to debate policy vigorously in secret is central to the effective running of government. Julia Gillard has lost this privilege. It is something which never happened to her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, albeit possibly because he was such a control freak that he never told his colleagues what he was up to anyway.

Gillard is also in more strife than Rudd ever was on border protection. Rudd might have flip-flopped on asylum seekers but Gillard has performed a 12-month tumbling routine with the result being that hardly anybody supports or, worse, understands her policy.

Continue reading "Government that lost its way, Opposition that cannot lose" »

I love living in the Territory. I enjoy our laid-back way of life, our sense of community and relaxed attitude toward blinkers and pyrotechnics. I’ve even grown quite fond of the crocs.

But some of the comments I’ve heard recently regarding asylum seekers are a whole other type of croc. A crock of shit.

Seeking asylum is not illegal. There is no queue. And yes, your taxpayer money is being wasted - by offshore processing and mandatory detention.

Continue reading "“Stop the boats” is a pathetic bogan slogan" »

There is a certain evil logic behind Tony Abbott’s offer to work side-by-side with Julia Gillard to fix the asylum seeker issue. Due to the vagaries of minority government plenty of other members of this shambolic parliament have had a go at playing prime minister, so it’s only fair that Abbott joins the Windsors and the Bandts, the Oakeshotts and the Wilkies, in determining government policy.

Abbott’s offer to work with Gillard is excellent politics in its cheapest form. By extending an invitation to Gillard to support the amendment of the Migration Act to allow offshore processing, Abbott looks like the very model of civilised bipartisanship. In reality it’s a political ploy aimed at drawing even greater attention to the fact that the Gillard Government has failed, again, on border protection.

None of the options Julia Gillard has at her disposal to resolve the asylum seeker problem are politically palatable. Nor are they politically sellable, not in a climate where, according to Newspoll, just 12 per cent of Australians say that Labor is doing a good job on border protection, and are twice as likely to support the Coalition as the party which could best deal with the issue.

Continue reading "If Julia buys bipartisan Tony she’ll buy anything" »

Hot on the heels of its successful documentary about asylum seekers, Go Back to Where You Came From, SBS will soon be broadcasting the sequel.

Entitled Go Back to Suburbia You Stinking Racist Bogan, this innovative program will shatter the myths surrounding low-income Australians in marginal seats and their attitudes towards asylum seekers.

In a ground-breaking journalistic exercise five university-educated reporters who live in the inner city will be given a packed lunch and a GPS and deployed to suburbs such as Penrith, Frankston, Logan, Rockingham and Salisbury, where they will meet “real people” and get “the real stories” behind the brick veneers.

Continue reading "Next up: Go back to suburbia you stinking racist bogan" »

In case you missed the news, there was a mass breakout at the Inverbrackie detention centre yesterday.

The controversial site, home to asylum seeker families, has been the source of local fears. Many are concerned about espionage, terrorism, and plummeting property prices.

The escape, however, shows that what they should really be worried about is plum pickers.

Continue reading "Government forced to defend detention security breach" »

This time last year, almost to the day, I was standing on the jetty at Christmas Island’s Flying Fish Cove.

It was dawn, on a perfectly still morning, and the sea was flat. Moored just inside the harbour was the infamous Australian Customs boat, the Oceanic Viking, waiting to disembark a number of asylum seekers from a vessel they had intercepted.

The images and footage of this week’s tragedy on Christmas Island showed a scene that could not have been more different from that calm morning in December last year.

Continue reading "A year ago on Christmas Island" »

The heartbreaking boat crash off Christmas Island is the tragic climax of the confused and contradictory approach to asylum seekers that is now strangling the Labor Party. This confusion was perfectly crystalised in a small item buried in the Federal Budget in May this year.

In an obvious attempt to throw a blanket on the issue, the Rudd Government had just announced a freeze on processing Afghani asylum claims, signalling it expected to shortly reclassify the war-torn Middle-East country as safe to return to.

Yet before any final decision had been made the Government quietly inserted $5.8 million to pay for two immigration officers to go to Kabul to repatriate deported asylum seekers.

Continue reading "How Labor wedged itself into a bad policy on boat people" »

Julia Gillard is not just between a rock and a hard place in the aftermath of the Christmas Island tragedy - she’s wedged between an angry Left and a rabid Right.

It was hardly unexpected that Andrew Bolt and his gang quickly trotted out the “blood on her hands” mantra after dozens of asylum-seekers met their awful deaths yesterday, but they’ve been joined by a loud chorus of refugee advocates claiming the atrocity could have been prevented with a softer government policy.

The only people not attacking the Prime Minister today are the Opposition, who’ve remained for the past 24 hours particularly civil towards Gillard and her Immigration Minister Chris Bowen. And Gillard’s announcement this afternoon of a standing group including the Opposition and representatives from the Greens to examine the fact of the boat’s sinking could well prolong that cease-fire beyond the usual limits.

Continue reading "The day both extremes almost met in the middle" »

Are the people of Inverbrackie racists?  Are South Australians who complain about a lack of consultation in the decision to house 400 asylum-seekers in the Adelaide Hills actually closet rednecks who simply don’t like foreigners turning up unannounced on our shores?

Some of them might be. But overwhelmingly, most of them are not. Whatever you think of Mike Rann, you would be hard pressed to accuse the Premier of racism in questioning the less-than-transparent process by which Inverbrackie was chosen as the venue for a detention centre.

There are plenty of other South Australians with similar concerns, and to suggest that they’re all pitchfork-wielding hillbillies does them a disservice.

Continue reading "Inverbrackie: so much for the new era of transparency" »

The Prime Minister made a major mistake on Monday when she said “I don’t think it’s the Australian way to have kids behind razor-wire.”

Whether it’s as a deterrent or something else, this has in fact, been the Australian way since the early 1990s. The announcement that more families and children will be moved out of detention centres was accompanied by another, that two new centre will be constructed near Adelaide and Perth.

The rhetoric of nationalism and security were once again set upon asylum-seekers.

Continue reading "The real reason you’re scared of boat people" »

On Monday Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Immigration, flew out to East Timor, Indonesia and Malaysia to push for the development of a so-called ‘regional framework’ for addressing refugee issues, and more specifically to progress the idea of a regional processing centre for asylum seekers in East Timor.

The day before he left, Minister Bowen told Laurie Oakes that the trip was about more than just regional processing centre and that he is working towards the development of “an entire regional framework” to deal with the refugee issue.

In the same interview, he also made the point that “it makes sense for all of us, all of our regional neighbours to work together in reaching a solution to what is essentially an international and regional problem.”

Continue reading "How Labor roped Timor into asylum seeker vote-grabbing" »

In a recent article about balanced reporting, the former director of the Australia Institute Clive Hamilton noted that to give equal weighting that reflected the opinion of those who accept climate change as human induced and a cross section of sceptics would be 39:1.

As someone who spends a lot of time on climate debates, I would say that this is kind of generous to sceptics – the ratio would be more like 100:1.

How do I come up with this figure? Recently Stephan Lewandowsky, a Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia, analysed the number of peer-reviewed articles published by scientists at the UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre versus those who argue against anthropogenic global warming. The results since 2007? Zero to the sceptics and 110 peer-reviewed to the research centre. This is only one research centre of hundreds so maybe even 100:1 is generous. So why does the public still remain confused about the reality of climate change?

Continue reading "Debate suffers when pollies think we’re too dumb to get it" »

Nauru has the greatest airline in the world. It’s called Our Airline. The leased-from-Taiwan 737-300 looks a little dated, not having those upturned wing tips which denote a modern plane, but the smiles of the Nauruan flight attendants are warm and welcoming.

There are plenty of spare seats (flying in and flying out) and they offer long-flight sedation in the form of brimming plastic cups of red wine. One of the flight attendants even has her own baby on board, a homey touch.

This airline used to be called Air Nauru. Then, in 2005, the last of its more contemporary 737-400 series jets was repossessed as the country fell into a heap. Clearly, the older plane’s navigational equipment is up to scratch. You’d need it to find this pin-drop island in the middle of the night.

Continue reading "Nauru, unemployment 90%, is ready for business" »

Earlier this month, I published an opinion piece on The Punch. It talked about Abdul, a refugee from Afghanistan, who I met on Christmas Island.

There were 159 comments on my piece. Julia Gillard encouraged people to have an open, frank debate. I reckon an open, frank debate means calling bigotry when you see it, and some of the comments made on my blog, like this one:

…every leaking fishing boat [is] loaded with people who are unprocessed on issues like health, criminal element, terrorist infiltration or the blatant open fact of illegal entry…

....simply peddled fear and prejudice. But many readers had real questions.

Continue reading "A systematic rebuttal of the myths about asylum seekers" »

Perhaps the lack of bold vision for Australia in the election campaign thus far can be understood by looking at what happened to Kevin Rudd. He was the last mainstream political leader to stand before the country making bold promises about the future, and look where he ended up.

John Howard may have been victim of a tired electorate looking for a change in 2007, but he was also hobbled by the thousand pin-pricks sustained in attacks by left-wingers on a range of issues.

The “Howard haters” were angry about the Iraq war, reconciliation, asylum seekers, and climate change. Rudd said he would do something about all of these. In what is now one of the great political parables about the dangers of overpromising, Rudd’s efforts in some of these areas would ultimately prove his undoing.

Continue reading "Whither the loud lefties?" »

With the major parties flexing their muscles on border protection, the Australian public has sent Canberra a message that it is the protection of Australian jobs that is the real security issue for them.

In what looms as the sleeper issue for the 2010 election campaign, a quarter of all voters placed “Australian jobs and the protection of local industries” as key election issue, behind only economic management and health.

As the latest Essential Report shows that economic protectionism towers over headline-grabbing issues like climate change, asylum seekers, housing affordability, industrial laws and population growth as a priority election issue.

Continue reading "Even with a strong economy, jobs are a top concern" »

It’s the electorate where the Howard era began in triumph and ended in farce.

The electorate where “Trackie Dackie” Jackie Kelly was elected not once but twice in 1996, scoring a thumping by-election victory after being dudded out of office on a constitutional technicality. The electorate where Kelly’s dentist husband was implicated when a group of Liberal Party activists were photographed in the dead of night in 2007 distributing stooged, misspelt pamphlets reading “Alu Akbar” on behalf of a fictitious local Muslim group claiming Labor support for the construction of a mosque.

Lindsay, on the westernmost edge of Sydney at the foot of the Blue Mountains, was named after the artist, writer and bon vivant Norman Lindsay, who these days would probably be regarded as a weirdo in this proudly suburban, no bullshit seat where the biggest source of local entertainment is the Penrith Panthers Leagues Club, a venue so preposterously big that it can be seen from space.

Continue reading "Election 2010: Meet the Kingmakers" »

Gillard’s certainly been galloping, but she’s not polling too far ahead.

The mad pre-election scramble for support has begun and the latest wild grab for ammunition has taken the form of a controversial refugee policy. Gillard played up to her rapidly forming image as one of the few straight talking, honest pollies when she said she wanted a “frank, open discussion” about Australia’s borders. She then proceeded to make decisions with insufficient Cabinet consultation, and indeed neglected to inform the Prime Minister of the country on which she planned to dump the sea-bound asylum seekers.

That, off the back of caving in to the big mining companies, confirming a belief in but lack of commitment to resolving climate change and a remarkable lack of progression when it comes to gay marriage, lead up to the election polls released today.

Continue reading "New-look Labor is a free advert for the Greens" »

Julia Gillard has kept Labor in a winning position - but unsurprisingly, Labor has shed votes to the Greens after the new PM did a passable impersonation of a couple of notable recent conservatives on the border protection question. You can read Phil Coorey on the latest SMH-Nielsen poll here, an interesting take from Mal Farr in The Daily Telegraph on how Kevin Rudd might have handled the so-called Dili solution here,  and Peter Van Onselen on how both Labor and the Coalition have bungled the issue here. Below is my take on Gillard’s last week in which asylum seekers dominated.

There was something laughable about the ham-fisted symbolism of it all – our new Prime Minister Julia Gillard selecting western Sydney MP David Bradbury as her First Mate for a naval exercise off the coast of Darwin last week so they could be photographed scouring the Arafura Sea for pesky queue-jumpers.

According to Google Maps, Bradbury’s marginal seat of Lindsay is 3932km from Darwin. It contains two water features, the Nepean River and the Penrith Aquatic Centre, neither of which are navigable from the Top End.

Continue reading "Campaign countdown: she will decide who comes here" »

BORDER protection policy has been an albatross around the neck of successive federal governments.

From the “children overboard” incident in 2001 which threatened to derail John Howard’s re-election to Julia Gillard’s confused strategy last week on boat arrivals, bridging the troubled waters of the asylum seekers debate has been fraught with electoral risk. Neither side of politics has been able to break through the entrenched attitudes that divide the Australian population on the issue.

These attitudes came to the fore again in the public arena, triggered by Gillard’s decision to wade into the murky waters of the boatpeople debate. The plan was to try to look tough and yet compassionate in an effort to win back Labor voters concerned about the increasing numbers of refugees clamouring to reach our shores.

Continue reading "Readers overboard with PM’s Timor plan" »

Two things are crystal clear from yesterday’s policy shoot-out at the OK Corrale over asylum seekers.

One, that an election is now perilously close and could be called within days. The rate at which Julia Gillard is crossing off the problem areas suggests she wants to go to Yarralumla very soon.

And two, that Ms Gillard and Tony Abbott believe that election can be won or lost on this policy alone.

Continue reading "Leaders aim right to stop the boats that leak votes" »

The groundwork for Julia Gillard’s speech today began four days ago when she started talking about fear (sorry, concern) that was understandable in the electorate (sorry, among people) about boats “looming on the horizon”.

Labor MPs too had legitimate concerns when they saw an election looming and had no convincing way of addressing voters’ worries about the boats.

The substance of Gillard’s announcements today was aimed at dealing with that. What we got was a promise that Sri Lankan asylum seekers will probably all be returned home, and an idea - let’s call it the Dili Proposal for now - to create a “regional processing centre” for people arriving by boat.

Continue reading "The Dili Proposal" »

If reports in this morning’s Australian are true - that Julia Gillard is intending to send asylum seekers back to their country of origin - then Australians should be very concerned that their Prime Minister and her government are so ignorant of international legal convention.

Put bluntly, to return asylum seekers to a location where they will more than likely face death or severe injury is a gross breach of the 1951 Refugees Convention to which Australia is a signatory. 

The report says: “hundreds of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are likely to be sent home under Julia Gillard’s tough policy agenda to deter boatpeople.”  Ms Gillard will apparently seek assurances from the governments of those countries that persons who are not judged to be asylum seekers by Australia will not be persecuted when they are sent back home.  From a diplomatic perspective, such assurances are a sick joke given the fact that Afghanistan’s Karzai government in Kabul is hopelessly corrupt and dishonest and has no control over the security of the country.

Continue reading "Doesn’t Julia Gillard know the law on asylum seekers?" »

Walking through the streets of Amsterdam, one of Europe’s most vibrant capitals, it is easy to get caught up in the cosmopolitan nature of the city. Being World Cup time, the city is not only awash in Dutch flags, but an array of other nationalities hang their national banners alongside the recognisable orange of the Dutch team.

The backpackers, tour groups, sightseers and locals politely wrestle for space in the crowded streets and bars, while cars with engines smaller than 50cc and motor scooters share bike lanes. On the bikes, no one wears a helmet, people smoke, talk on their phones and sometimes can be spotted drinking beer. Here, everyone rides: from the men and women in expensive suits, to girls dressed in glamorous outfits on their way out to club, as well as families of four on various sized bikes, and young Muslim women wearing hijabs.

I sit in a café (as distinct from the famous Amsterdam ‘coffee shops’) and speak to various politically active young people. Telling them that I am slowly falling in love with their city and pointing to Geert Mak’s fascinating historical account of Amsterdam, we turn to the political landscape of the Netherlands and the rest Europe.

Continue reading "Fear, change, and the rise of the right as the world shrinks" »

When businesses take out advertisements making claims about how great they are or highlight the adverse characteristics of a competitor they are legally required to substantiate them in the fine print.

These rules do not apply to our politicians; such restrictions are seen to be against the interests of a healthy democracy. Put aside the archaic - and seldom enforced - rules about misleading Parliament, and lying, exaggerating and dissembling are tools of the trade.

But if ever an issue has challenged this convention it is the furore over asylum seekers, where another wave of arrivals is sparking another wave of public disquiet whipped up by another wave of political opportunism. And all these waves are based on lies.

Continue reading "We’re all at sea on the facts about boat arrivals" »

Each year Amnesty International releases an assessment of the human rights realities in the majority of countries around the world, and each year it is a sobering reminder of how governments are failing to deliver on their human rights promises.

Our 2010 report shows that torture or other ill-treatment were practised last year in at least 111 countries, there were unfair trials in at least 55 countries, restrictions on free speech in at least 96 countries and prisoners of conscience imprisoned in at least 48 countries. 18 countries executed their own citizens. And the list goes on.

The achievement of universal human rights relies on the world’s governments being held accountable for their actions. It relies on the international community enforcing international law and seeking justice for the victims of human rights violations.  All too often, however, powerful governments stand above the law on human rights and act only when it is politically expedient. 

Continue reading "Australia cannot claim leadership on human rights" »

Tony Abbott has just upped the ante in the boat people debate. But the Government will probably still have Julie Bishop and her loose lips in its sights. Join us here from 2pm for live coverage of Question Time.

Continue reading "Question Time Live: 27/05/2010" »

DOES anyone in the Rudd Government know morse code? Because it seems the message that Australia is getting tough on asylum seekers is not reaching the people smugglers or their human cargo.

More than a week after the Government trumpeted a freeze on processing Sri Lankan and Afghani arrivals, citing improved circumstances in the two countries, there is no sign of an end to the boats heading our way.

In excess of 40 boats have been intercepted since the beginning of 2010 and the detention centre on Christmas Island is now full to overflowing with asylum seekers.

Continue reading "Rudd’s boat people election fix hasn’t fooled anyone" »

In light of last Friday’s announcement that the Australian Government has implemented a blanket suspension on the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals, it is worth going back to basics and taking a moment to consider the human rights reality for many people living in those countries. 

It may not be pleasant to read, but it certainly places the government’s announcement in the international context in which it should rightly be considered, and gives an insight into the reasons people are fleeing.

On 24 January Sri Lankan journalist and political analyst Prageeth Eknaligoda disappeared shortly after leaving work at the Lanka-e-News office in Homagama, near the capital Colombo. He has not been heard from since. In the lead up to his disappearance, Prageeth Eknaligoda had been actively reporting on Sri Lanka’s presidential elections, had been critical of the Sri Lankan Government and had received threats.

Continue reading "A journalist vanishes, along with our compassion" »

Earlier this year the Prime Minister sought to justify his stance on climate change by asking three questions of the opposition. Is there a problem, do you think we should do anything about it and are you committed to the solution?

‬‪Last week in parliament I asked these same questions of the Prime Minister in relation to border protection. His answers confirmed something I have long suspected. Kevin Rudd is a border protection sceptic.‬‪

The Rudd Government is now in the nervous nineties on illegal boat arrivals. Julia Gillard used to say another boat arrival, another policy failure. Well 93 boats on Kevin Rudd’s watch and more than 4250 people can’t be wrong.‬‪

Continue reading "Why Kevin Rudd is a border protection sceptic" »

You learn a lot about people when the pressure is on.

Some interesting facts emerged recently about what really happened during those extraordinary four weeks last year when the Oceanic Viking abandoned our Patagonian tooth fish to become home to 78 Tamil asylum seekers.

During these events the debate raged about who knew what and when. Where would they go and on what terms? The answers to many of these questions came to light during recent questioning in Senate estimates.

Continue reading "Rudd fails the Tampa test" »

It must be hard for a conservative politician to make a decision he or she knows will distress heartland followers. John Howard upset a certain hardcore group of loyalists – even within his own cabinet – by banning semi-automatic rifles after the Port Arthur massacre.

It is even harder when Labor politicians make decisions that might appear to lack compassion, because they are supposed to be the party that cares about social justice.

But there seems to be a greater willingness to find excuses for Labor politicians, as Melbourne barrister and civil libertarian, Robert Richter QC, demonstrated on Lateline Thursday night.

Continue reading "Heartlessness at the centre of an immigration scandal" »

Who knew the lower north shore of Sydney was a hunting ground for anti-immigrationists. This flyer popped up in mail boxes last weekend in more than one apartment block, in more than one suburb. Unauthorised of course, and probably the work of a nutter.

But it’s an election year, and these things don’t tend to happen in a vacuum. During the next six months there’ll be a lot more of this rubbish peddled by those outside the political mainstream.

Scott Morrison has requested we be able to debate immigration without labeling people racist. That’s more than fair. But keeping the debate clean is a two way street.

Continue reading "Want to lose “racist” from the debate, lose the racism" »

Marty Natalegawa is a consummate diplomat. The Indonesian Foreign Minister is also his country’s former representative to the United Nations and Ambassador to the UK.

At the age of 46 he has done more than most top diplomats do in an entire career. Now he’s the Foreign Minister.

On Tuesday this week I interviewed Marty Natelagawa in his Jakarta offices. In a long line of difficult issues between Australia and Indonesia, people smuggling has been the most awkward in recent months, so of course I had to begin our discussion on just that.

Continue reading "This man may be our best ally against people smugglers" »

Last week I returned from a visit to Christmas Island to Parliament where the Labor Member MP, John Sullivan, from Longman in Brisbane, interjected during a speech and called me a racist.

At the time, I was speaking to an Appropriations Bill that was seeking additional funds to make up for shortfalls in this year’s budget. Included in these shortfalls was $132 million for off shore processing of asylum seekers.  We were supporting the Bill.

I noted that the 100 per cent plus blow out in costs demonstrated the Government had failed to appreciate the impact of their policy changes on the detention population on Christmas Island, that is now at unsustainable levels.

Continue reading "You can’t debate immigration without being called a racist" »

Tony Abbott’s incendiary comments about immigration could ignite an Australia Day tinderbox.

Speaking last week at an Australia Day Council dinner, the federal opposition leader used language reminiscent of the darkest days of the Howard regime.

‘‘The inescapable minimum that we insist upon is obedience to the law,’’ he said.

Continue reading "Abbott’s message to migrants too incendiary by half" »

As a moderator of comments for news.com.au I see a lot of intolerance expressed in the debate over asylum seeker boats, especially from a vocal minority prepared to get very nasty.

The comments from this quarter typically employ broad-brush terms of abuse to stereotype on the basis of nationality.

The targets of these hateful attacks are Australians. The most popular terms of abuse are “redneck” and “racist”.

Continue reading "Rednecks! The new racist term for ordinary Australians" »

This is an emotional week. It started with the National Prayer Breakfast in the Great Hall of Parliament House where the keynote address was from Gemma Sisia, the founder and continuing driver of the school of St Jude in Arusha in Tanzania.

It was inspirational. A rigorous selection process of children who are 5, 6 or 7 (not 4 ½ or 8) as Mrs Sisia emphasised, are selected on the basis of intellectual ability, work ethic and poverty. If they get in they get 14 years of free education. The aim is to produce a professional class of doctors, engineers, and architects etc, who will lead the Tanzaman nation. That is they will stay in Tanzania and help their own people.

Mrs Sisia, an Australian, who now obviously lives and works in Tanzania seeks financial support from all over the world with her last big donor being American.

Continue reading "Australians who need compassion" »

Here are the eight inconvenient truths in the ongoing conversation on boat people over the last weeks and months in The Punch.

The first inconvenient truth relates to the claim that Australia can’t handle an influx of refugees, and we shouldn’t be forced to because we already take so many. In the face of the kind of suffering, and the numbers involved, in refugee camps around the world, and given the extent of our wealth, Australians could take many more – thousands more – refugees than we do. We would need far better integration programs, but we have the wealth that should allow us to provide these too. We could also afford a far more generous, even if better targeted, refugee aid program, especially with our South East Asian neighbours.

The defence of popular opposition to greater refugee intake in this regard is the morally unsustainable defence of a privileged country that refuses to take its own values, and what are arguably its international moral obligations, seriously.

Continue reading "The eight inconvenient truths on boat people" »

Evidence is now mounting that last week’s Newspoll poll showing a seven point drop in Labor support was a rogue result, with Essential Research’s weekly tracking showing no movement in the two-party preferred vote.

The Essential Report, that has Labor comfortably ahead 59-41, follows on the heels of Monday’s Herald/Nielson poll that was also steady.

Beneath the headline figures there are some intriguing sub-plots, with the public going close to welcoming the increase in interest rates, while continuing to rate the Prime Minister down on his handling of the asylum seeker issue.

Continue reading "It’s a blip – Rudd maintains lead with interest" »

John Howard’s dramatic re-entry in the political debate is notable for two reasons - the former PM has steadfastly refused requests for anniversary-type interviews, and he has also said repeatedly he would not “do a Keating” by commenting on domestic affairs, save to defend his record.

His interview with The Herald-Sun’s senior writer John Hamilton went well beyond defending his own record - rather, it was an exocet missile aimed squarely at Kevin Rudd’s record, most provocatively on border protection. The word in Liberal ranks is that the interview went ahead with the knowledge and support of Malcolm Turnbull, who has been buoyed by a Newspoll turnaround widely attributed to the border question. EMC director and Punch contributor Peter Lewis detected the same sentiment.

Lefties will regard the re-emergence of the man they despise as like something from a horror film. But the many millions of Australians who still voted for Howard in 2007 - and more disturbingly for Labor, some swinging voters who gently saw him off with no major sense of animosity - will have been interested to hear the input from the man from the toughness side of the ledger on unauthorised arrivals.

Continue reading "Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny" »

Are you feeling left right out of the political debate in Australia?

As the parliament prepares to consider the Rudd Government’s ETS and the global bureaucracy invades Copenhagen, I’m getting a little tired of the forced and clichéd polarisation of the climate change and other important debates, such as border protection.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was on Friday when #KRudd tweeted the world at 6.54pm saying “Time for the “do nothing” climate change skeptics (sic) to stop playing roulette with our kids future. KRudd.” It was one tweet too many. Seriously, what a silly and juvenile thing for a PM to say.

Continue reading "Rudd tweets insults to every fair-minded Australian" »

Let’s accept the Federal Opposition’s interpretation of this week’s polling figures at face value; as a consequence of his “softness” on the issue of the alleged armada of boats laden with asylum-seekers arriving on our watery doorstep day by day, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his government are falling rapidly out of favour with the Australian public.

And for the sake of the argument, let’s also accept the statistical and methodological reliability – which we can do with considerable confidence – of The Australian newspaper’s latest set of Newspoll numbers.

So, accepting all of that, what does it all add up to? And what does it say about our collective set of national values?

Continue reading "What polls and asylum seekers say about our values" »

The debate around the Sri Lanka asylum seekers is beginning to spiral into Tampa territory with the Australian public ready to support tough action over compassion and prepared to believe the boats are harbouring terrorists.

For the PM it is a diabolical political dilemma, with this week’s Essential Report showing his attempts to play tough cop are failing to translate into public approval for his handling of the issue.

Given the bind, I reckon his only option is to follow the lead of his predecessor John Howard – not in sending in the troops, but by shifting debate through invoking the nation’s obsession with sport.

Continue reading "Most Australians want a tougher stand on boatpeople" »

With the re-emergence of asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia as a major issue in this country it has led to an accompanying rise in confusing politics.

The average observer can be left lost by the bedazzling display offensive and defensive political tactics and what it all means, so The Punch has put together a users guide of boat people politics.

Tough but humane:

Nobody has quite gotten to the bottom of what this phrase, formulated by the Government to explain its policy, actually means. Scientists in Switzerland have constructed an atomic “tough but humane” collider and are currently clashing the two words up against each other at the speed of light to find the solution. So far the closest they have come to an answer is that you can leave 78 asylum seekers on a boat in the sea off Indonesia for days on end, but give them a good brand of bottled water to drink.

Continue reading "I’m on a boat: a user’s guide to boat people politics" »

Of the 9.1 million people who the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) describes as refugees, there are 827, 323 with outstanding applications for asylum around the world. This compares to 9.6 million refugees five years ago and 912,291 people still seeking asylum. Five years prior to that, there were 11.5 million refugees worldwide and 1.3 million seeking asylum.

Looking at even more recent data, between January and August 2009, there were 226,069 asylum applications worldwide. During the same period in 2008 there were 226,857 applications.

So much for the Rudd Government’s claim that international push forces are the cause of 41 boat arrivals since last August with almost 2,000 people on board, putting their lives at risk.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd has no idea what he’s doing on boat arrivals" »

For a nation whose history is not exactly littered with foreign invasions, illegal immigration and refugee crises, Australia has a strange fascination with border security.

John Howard discovered the political mileage in appearing to be tough on border protection with his “we’ll decide who comes here” speech of 2001.

Kevin Rudd knows he can’t stray too far from Howard’s approach to retain the affection of middle Australia and has even sticky-taped the words Border Protection on to the end of the Australian Customs Service as if to prove his dedication to the cause.

Continue reading "Postcard from London: Poms see Aussies in dim new light" »

Once again, Australia’s focus has been on the so-called threat of boat people heading our way. Do we defend our borders? Are we soft on people smugglers? Is our way of life under threat?

It is a debate that has raged on and off for more than 30 years, since the first boats appeared off Australia’s northern coastline in the wake of the Vietnam War. There were many Australians who did not want to welcome those for whom we had sacrificed so many young Australians.

Good enough to defend, but not good enough to welcome. It was a time when a young man named Hieu Van Le set out on a perilous journey in search of freedom and opportunity.

Continue reading "The human story behind asylum-seeker hysteria" »