Pacific Solution

Tony Abbott is a beautiful boy. His straight hair, perfect eyes, ears and nose. No, I am not talking about the Opposition Leader but the 3.47kg baby boy in Nauru who now bears his name.

On the way into Nauru Hospital on Sunday June 12, Nauru Foreign Minister Dr Kieren Keke warned Mr Abbott that he should watch out if a child was born while he was in the maternity unit.

Nauru mothers often name their babies after the first person they see, he explained, and there are plenty of Nauruans named after celebrities. “You might have a few questions to answer,” Dr Keke said with a laugh.

Continue reading "Nauru, where Gillard may one day wed Tony Abbott" »

Clear the waffle and you find the Government and the Opposition now have a bipartisan position on dealing with asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

It’s quite simple: Put them in the closest to squalor we dare endorse, and hope that the nastiness of the accommodation deters other refugee hopefuls.

And it is an unmistakable message: Our Hell hole could be worse than the Hell hole you are now living in. Or at least, it might not be worth the risk and expense of setting out by boat to find out.

Continue reading "Australia. It’s really horrible. Don’t come here." »

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" »

At the press conference announcing his hard-line policy on asylum seekers Tony Abbott declared himself ‘a big risk to people smugglers’. While he claimed that ‘if I get elected, people smugglers will go out of business’, Abbott stressed that ‘my argument is not with desperate people who want a better life’.

If only it were that simple. The reality is that the Opposition’s policy constitutes a grave risk to traumatized people who will, if the policy is implemented, be traumatized further.

Temporary protection visas will be reintroduced for irregular maritime arrivals who are found to engage Australia’s protection obligations, as well as for others.

Continue reading "Abbott’s asylum seeker policy is out of its mind" »

The Pacific Solution has been replaced by the Indian Ocean non-solution.

In the ABC documentary The Howard Years those responsible for the Pacific Solution said that the mandatory detention camps they inherited from Labor were almost bursting, due to the influx of boats.

We face the same situation with the Christmas Island Detention Centre rapidly filling up as the boats keep coming.

Continue reading "Increase in asylum seekers is a problem of Rudd’s making" »