Go Back To Where You Came From

Asylum seekers are back on top of the news cycle again. It’s almost like those heady days when MV Tampa was anchored threateningly off Christmas Island. This time round there is a delightful little twist.

Rather than anxiously imagining the horrible wretches that threaten to penetrate our sovereign territory, viewers are instead invited to ponder the imagination - or lack thereof - amongst a representative sample of middle Australians who suffer from refugee anxiety.

The most interesting aspect of this undertaking is that Go Back To Where You Came From resembles an Escher engraving. All those years ago, the Howard government recognised that boat-borne asylum seekers could be used to stage an extremely successful political pantomime. It had pirate-like people smugglers, captured cargo ships, illegal immigrants, the Navy, the Army: a great ensemble by any measure.

Continue reading "The more we talk about it, the less we face up to it" »

I’ve always half-liked the Labor Government’s Malaysian solution on asylum seekers. I like the half that involves bringing an additional 4000 refugees from Malaysia to Australia. It’s a small additional burden that our rich little country is very capable of bearing.

It’s quite a clever strategy, too, in light of new research showing humanitarian arrivals are generally younger and more likely to live in regional areas, thereby helping to counter our rapidly ageing, urbanised population.

But I abhor the other half of the equation – the part that involves sending 800 asylum seekers to Kuala Lumpur, where 90,000 mostly Burmese are already rotting in a refugee quagmire in the hope of a better life they’ll never get.

Continue reading "Malaysia’s no dumping ground for our refugees" »