Refugees

With detention facilities on Christmas Island getting closer and closer to capacity, and a Federal election looming, the issue of desperate people seeking asylum on Australian shores remains a hotbed of cheap political point-scoring at the expense of some of the world’s neediest people.

Disappointingly, the term “queue jumper” is now so deeply entrenched in our nation’s vernacular that some Australian politicians use it interchangeably with the term “asylum seeker”.

Let me be clear and point out that two are not synonymous. In fact, the queue is a myth. 

Continue reading "There’s no such thing as a “queue”" »

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" »

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" »

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" »

We have had the ‘Pacific Solution’, the Christmas Island solution, and now the Indonesian solution - it’s time for an Australian solution to the problem of asylum seekers making the desperate and dangerous voyage to seek the protection of our country.

Reasonable people would agree that - those who cynically exploit desperate asylum seekers for profits should be stopped; it is appalling to see women and children making dangerous voyages and putting their lives at risk; people fleeing persecution will give everything they have to get their families to safety; there should be an orderly and fair refugee assessment system and Australia must honour its international obligations.

The core problem is that those who embark on boats are desperate. Between 85 per cent and 98 per cent of people arriving by boat are ultimately accepted by Immigration to have legitimate refugee claims. That is, they have fled from serious harm in their home countries for reasons covered by the Refugee Convention.

Continue reading "Asylum seekers: time for the Australian Solution" »

I missed the last week of Parliament during the ongoing debate concerning boat people.

I was in Uganda at a board meeting of my favorite charity Watoto, a charity that rescues abandoned children and babies and gives them hope and a future.

I’ve been going to Africa every year for many years working with some of the poorest people on earth.

Continue reading "Refugees are dying while they wait in the queue" »

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" »

Amnesty International flatly rejects the assertion that recent changes to Government policy have led to an increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.

Despite much sensationalist reporting on the issue of boat arrivals, the fact remains that only a tiny percentage of the millions of people seeking asylum choose to seek that protection on Australia’s shores.

Statistics published in June by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international body responsible for addressing refugee issues worldwide, show that at the end of 2008 there were 827,323 pending asylum seeker cases worldwide. Australia was handling 2159 of these – which is substantially less than one per cent.

Continue reading "All sides of politics ignore facts of asylum arrivals" »

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" »

No matter if you’re sitting in a boozed state in the back of a cab at 2am,  if you’re being taken on a half-hour “shortcut” or have to revert to sign language to say ``take the next left’’, always take time to share a nice word with your cabbie.

Those on the road we never feel guilty to rage at, honk or flick the bird, cabbies are fast becoming public enemy No.1 - And there’s no mystery as to why.

In hometown Brisbane it’s hard to get a driver who speaks English and doesn’t stare at you blankly when you ask them to drive you into town.  Their 12 hours shifts means they get bored with indicating, speed limits, right of way and other minor road rules and a simple ``to the airport please’’ usually provokes a frantic tom-tom tap-fest.

Continue reading "Try talking to your cabbie, you might learn something" »

It’s not a new adage that it takes a community to raise a child, but sometimes the simple assumptions we take for granted need to be brought back into the spotlight to reinforce their relevance.

If we’re to expect to be able to raise well-adjusted children who each have a sense of security and belonging, we need to be progressive in our definition of community – including in our consideration of where our individual responsibility to community starts and ends.

While Australia provides a safe-haven for many thousands of refugees seeking asylum every year, their relief can be short-lived if they fail to adjust to a life so completely different to any they have ever known.

Continue reading "Lost in translation: helping refugees find a voice" »

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" »