http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2008/12/08/the-real-world-and-australia/ The world of politics, policy and public life Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:48:39 +1100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2008/12/08/the-real-world-and-australia/#comment-355 beevo Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:36:32 +0000 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/bartlett/?p=210#comment-355 Andrew you are so right here. It is so easy to distort statistics (the third type of lies)! Again the adversarial approach to politics leaves the public polarised and yet totally under-informed on the facts. It is a fact that this is a ridiculously small number of people we are talking about coming by boat and the trends have reduced remarkably in past years. Down from over 1200 in 2001/2002 and the number was even higher in the late nineties. This is a positive result and even the given variation over the last few years hardly stacks up. Just another political football. And why? Because it gets such a reaction from the press and the people. Get a grip people please and stop the panic. While you are all wailing about a couple of hundred people on illegal boats (pun?) over a 1300 -1400 people a year are stopped at airports. A government annual report from th immigration department estimates that as of June 2008 there were over 48,000 people illegally in the country! In 2007/8 there were over 6000 student visas cancelled due to non-compliance or dodgy practices. Investigations located more than 10,000 illegal non-citizens related to people smuggling operations with 1,478 of these working illegally. One joint operation uncovered a sex-trafficking trade worth over $3million/year (yes here in Australia people!) and 5 people were arrested and charged with crimes related to this slave-trade. The victims were all given assistance and support from the Victims of Trafficking Support Program. And this is still only part of the story. There is no doubt that a lot of heartache and suffering is behind many of these stories and we need to be compassionate where it is warranted. Sadly some legitimate cases are bungled and we need take care with those who genuinely need our help. Lets stop playing politics on both sides and focus on some of the success stories and keep working in the right direction. Andrew you are so right here. It is so easy to distort statistics (the third type of lies)! Again the adversarial approach to politics leaves the public polarised and yet totally under-informed on the facts. It is a fact that this is a ridiculously small number of people we are talking about coming by boat and the trends have reduced remarkably in past years. Down from over 1200 in 2001/2002 and the number was even higher in the late nineties. This is a positive result and even the given variation over the last few years hardly stacks up. Just another political football. And why? Because it gets such a reaction from the press and the people. Get a grip people please and stop the panic.
While you are all wailing about a couple of hundred people on illegal boats (pun?) over a 1300 -1400 people a year are stopped at airports. A government annual report from th immigration department estimates that as of June 2008 there were over 48,000 people illegally in the country!
In 2007/8 there were over 6000 student visas cancelled due to non-compliance or dodgy practices.
Investigations located more than 10,000 illegal non-citizens related to people smuggling operations with 1,478 of these working illegally.
One joint operation uncovered a sex-trafficking trade worth over $3million/year (yes here in Australia people!) and 5 people were arrested and charged with crimes related to this slave-trade. The victims were all given assistance and support from the Victims of Trafficking Support Program.
And this is still only part of the story. There is no doubt that a lot of heartache and suffering is behind many of these stories and we need to be compassionate where it is warranted. Sadly some legitimate cases are bungled and we need take care with those who genuinely need our help. Lets stop playing politics on both sides and focus on some of the success stories and keep working in the right direction.

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