Two or three thousand boat arrivals a year is not an immigration crisis, given an intake of over 130,000. Amnesty figures show that the bulk (96%) of on shore asylum seekers arrive by plane. Australia could easily deal with the relatively small number of extra sea borne applicants, were they allowed to land in Australia and go through the usual vetting processes. The main difference is that the boat arrivals were demonised by the Howard government and the Rudd government has tried to retain a version of the Pacific solution.
One of Howard’s core provisions was the excising of certain territories from Australia to prevent arrivals invoking Australian legal protections. While Rudd’s lot stopped sending the intercepted boat people to Nauru etc, they sent them to the excised territory of Christmas Island. The somewhat weak excuse was that there was a new expensive centre that needed to be used, despite the acknowledged heavy costs of running it and transporting people there.
This was obviously the ALP compromise version: we will be nicer to refugees, once their legitimacy is determined, but we will continue to look tough by sending them to an excised offshore island. However, this decision has now created an unnecessary problem because the facility has limited places and the numbers are becoming a political football of oversize proportions.
We have a major news story, moral panic and full blown political crisis because Christmas Island is about to overflow.
When 200 extra bunk beds make the media, there is a problem. Had the Government stopped sending the boat people to such a limited and visible facility, the extra numbers would have been a much smaller story. The fact that they continued this odd process reinforces the perception that there is a threat in the arrival of boat people that required both anxieties and high levels of spending.
We now have many years of settled boat arrivals, including those that arrived under Fraser and Hawke and NO evidence that they are in any way a threat to our social fabric. Yet Opposition politicians are still demonising the arrivals and creating a political panic and the Government has been caught in its own ambivalences. It should show some ethical courage by just bringing people to the mainland and processing them normally. Then people could just see them as just problematic arrivals who arrive inadequately documented.
I met some of the damaged people produced by the last Government’s policies and am appalled to see the start of another media feeding frenzy. Ruddock has learned nothing from the distress he caused, and the Opposition needs lessons in ethics v national and political self interest.
Please can we avoid the same mistakes again?
18 Comments
given the state the opposition is in, it would be nice if the govt could do something that is morally right, rather than afraid of a backlash. They could always say, transporting the arrivals to the mainland would be cheaper.
And Christmass Is is the closest port to where the boats arrive.
The difference between Refugee’s arriving by plane, and the ones arriving by boat is very simple.
Refugee’s arriving by plane have been sitting patiently in a decrepid U.N Refugee Camp somewhere in the world, waited patienly through the U.N processing period, have been deemed refugee’s by the U.N, have recieved Australia’s permission to enter the country at our invation and have arrived here with valid idenitification including passports and refugee visa’s.
Illegals arriving by boat meanwhile, pay people smugglers large amounts of money, skip through various safe havens, past all the Australian embassy’s and UN offices on the way, stay at the Jakarta Hilton for a few months, pay the people smugglers some more money, burn their identification papers, jump on a leaky boat and head down to Australia, burn and scuttle their boat as soon as they are spotted by the Australian Navy, demand Australia accept them in or they will cut themselves, burn down the detention centre or go on a hunger strike.
The left are trying to blur the lines between Refugee’s and these Illegal Boatpeople, but Australians aren’t buying it.
Eva:
“Ruddock’s learnt nothing from the suffering he caused”
Are you sure you have the right year. It’s 2009… October 14 2009 to be exact and Ruddock isn’t immigration minster nor is HoWARd the PM. Perhaps you’ve slept through it?
As far as I understand things it’s the Rudd government that is now sending/dumping alleged political refugees into the Christmas Island detention camps.
@ TheTruthHurts – I’d be interested in seeing the stats on how many ‘plane’ people claiming asylum arrive on regular visas and then apply for refugee status. How many leftovers from World Youth Day alone? Aren’t they queue jumpers too?
@ Tee – The government isn’t dog whistling or running a scare campaign. That’s the difference.
TheTruthHurts
Yes, we accept about 12 000 refugees a year who have been through the “proper” processes and they arrive by plane. There are also maybe a 1 000 a year (varies of course) who come by boat and apply for asylum on arrival.
However, as alluded to by Gibbot there are many more thousands who come by plane with valid visas, such as tourists or students, and who apply for refugee status when they arrive.
Those who come by boat are held in detention centres such as Christmas Is while they are processed and the majority are found to be genuine refugees and allowed to stay. Those who come by plane are allowed to live in the community while they are processed and a smaller proportion are found to be genuine refugees. Makes no sense to me either.
And of course there is the other huge group of people who come on genuine visas, overstay their visas and just disappear into the community. If anyone is illegal it is this group but of course they are mostly white skinned so we overlook them
Perhaps we can have the leaky boat known formally as the Liberal Party of Australia towed towards Christmas Island, and its passengers processed in the name of protecting our ethical and social fabrics.
For one thing, we’d need far less bedding to house the uncivilized mob aboard, as their numbers sit at roughly 85 (although projected to decline following upcoming elections). This should more than half the requirement for another 200 beds on the off-shore facility. Padded cells and secured gurneys would be retained, however, in order to control deranged elements within the processed populace – especially the individual known as ‘Wilson T.’, who has been described in leaked reports as a “red-faced and inflatable rubberneck, with the commonsense and verbal skills of your standard school volleyball”.
I’m sure they’ll adapt well to the Survivor-like lifestyle; forming shady alliances and engaging in ceaseless political shenanigans in order to vote rivals off the island and out of leadership positions, stopping only when offered a snippet of air-time in which to yell as loud and as blithely as possible whatever backward sentiment had caught their interest that day.
Maybe the problem Eva is not covering up the truth, trying to get the media to hide information from the Australian people and making excuses for Christmas Island detention centre overflowing… but the policies introduced in August 2008 that made Australia the biggest soft touch in the South Pacific?
Christmas Island detention centre is embarrassing to our government because they have encouraged illegal immigration to this country and now it’s full. The bleeding heart solution seems to be put another bucket under the leaking tap and hope the water will stop flowing and fix itself. The previous government meanwhile successfully fixed the leaking tap by making coming to Australia illegally undesirable as a result their bucket was empty.
Rudd needs to admit his mistake… go back to the old laws, go back to the policies that WORKED!
TheTruthHurts
I agree that the Christmas Is detention centre is embarrassing to our government, and indeed all of us, but it was the Howard government that built it. The question is why.
By what criteria do judge that the old policies “worked”
Kevin Rudd’s determination not to take advantage of the unholy state of the opposition to deal with all the things he said he would do is deplorable. Illegal boat immigrants, the whaling issue, pollution and kow-towing to the big coal mining companies, his pathetic ETS program. If ever a more glorious opportunity existed to make Oz a better country, this is it.
Having said that, it is to be admitted that if ever a greater Australian criminal existed than Steve Fielding, I’d like to know it. Thanks to him and an opposition who by opposing everything achieve nothing more than keeping Australians and immigrants in an unfair and inequitable manner, while at the same time they continue to feed off themselves like sharks indulging in a free-for-all romp.
To see someone like Philip Ruddock mouthing his cretinous beliefs on the rightness of the appalling little John Howard’s crusade against the least able to defend themselves, illegal immigrants, not only shows us he has learned nothing, it proves the worthlessness of his party as they wallow in their own muck.
According to the ABC on 30/8/09, 96.7% of refugees from the offshore centres were resettled within Australia and New Zealand. Resettlement in Australia from NZ is relatively simple so it can be assumed some of those who went to NZ will end up here. Only 2 were left on Naurue at the time of the report, and they eventually came to Australia too for mental health reasons. This means that we effectively prolonged and deepened the agony of geunine asylum seekers who, in contradiction of the stated aim of the pacific solution, we did not prevent from arriving onshore, albeit eventually. http://abc.gov.au/news/stories/2007/08/30/2019170.htm
There is plenty of evidence to show that the drop in boat numbers after the Tampa incident coincided with a dramatic drop in asylum seekers worldwide after 9/11 and the international response and that the current increase coincides with increasing numbers worldwide. Even if you accept that the pacific solution had an impact (which I don’t), you have to acknowledge that this impact occured in a global context which the tampa incident and the pacific solution could not possibly be the main factor.
There is also a very disturbing record of evidence in the Palmer, Comrie and Ombudsmen’s inquiries following the Rua and Solon cases that points to a culture in the Immigration dept under Phillip Ruddock that was anything but acceptable and does add support Eva’s comments about his having learnt nothing
“There is plenty of evidence to show that the drop in boat numbers after the Tampa incident coincided with a dramatic drop in asylum seekers worldwide after 9/11 and the international response and that the current increase coincides with increasing numbers worldwide.”
Well lets see this evidence then.
Heres one from Spain to get you started: http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/16057/boat-people-numbers-down-28
It says numbers PEAKED in 2006 and are now down 28%, dated December 2008.
Boatpeople numbers to Australia meanwhile peaked in 2001, and then dropped suddenly after the Pacific Solution was introduced. 5500 in 2001, Pacific Solution introduced at the end of 2001 and then the numbers for 2002? 1 PERSON. 1 TOTAL!
Absolutely undeniable proof that Howards Pacific Solution worked.
@ TheTruthHurts
The wingnuttery maek mah brane hert.
@ TheTruthHurts
Try this one, it’s a little older than yours, but it shows the clear trend downward post-9/11 and upward from 2005 to 2007. It also shows a much higher level of dispalaced persons throughout the 2000-2007 period that refugees
http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpPages)/10C43F54DA2C34A7C12573A1004EF9FF?OpenDocument&count=1000
@ TheTruthHurts “biggest soft touch in the South Pacific”.
Pretty funny how we are the biggest country in the South Pacific.
TTH/TEE/MPM et al – surely some tekwiz at Crikey can check to see if the IPs are the same?
@ The TruthHurts
If you were running a business that had problems with illegal activity and you spent 90% of your funds in trying to combat between 1% and 3% of the illegal activity, you’d be regarded as an idiot (ok, and presumably given a big golden handshake when asked to leave).
The boat people generally constitute that 1% to 3% of known numbers of illegal immigrants in Australia at any given time. It turns out most of them are acceptable and accepted as asylum seekers, so presumably the huge problem they cause is less than half of 1% to 3%. Which makes the “return” on expenditure of about half a billion dollars just after the Tampa incident look pretty ridiculous.
Meanwhile, about 97,000 or more illegal immigrants in Australia at any given time, and who came in by plane, are quietly ignored, even though they are the most likely to contain would-be terrorists amongst their numbers.
So the “soft touch” in the South Pacific is at Mascot and Tullamarine where, on average, we can assume we get as many illegal refugees per week as come in annually as boat people.
If you think your truth hurts, and want to get it taken seriously, get it into perspective. Try a touch of Pareto.
If we are going to decide who comes into our country, we should be doing something effective about the majority illegals. And yep, guess where most of they come from?
The critical issue with boat arrivals isn’t some sort of allegedly “perceived threat to social fabric” (achum *insinuations of racism and xenophobia*), its the nature of the voyage/process. People smugglers are exploiting these poor people, and moving them in extremely unsafe manners while making significant profits. Who knows how many die on the way. This is the critical issue and this is what policy needs to address. Surely we can all agree that this behavior/mechanism can not be encouraged? If the issue was a fear of the “yellow peril” to our north then why isn’t “legal” migration a major issue with the electorate?