Jumping the queue
Users browsing this topic:0 Registered, 0 Hidden and 0 Guests
Registered Users: None |
 |
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Which illegal immigrant policy is the least worst? |
| Abbott's |
|
0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Howard's |
|
16% |
[ 3 ] |
| Gillard's |
|
38% |
[ 7 ] |
| Rudd's |
|
11% |
[ 2 ] |
| Brown's |
|
33% |
[ 6 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 18 |
|
| Author |
Message |
Pied Piper 
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
| Tannin wrote: | What you are getting at, them, Piper, is an open slather policy. It's really very simple:
EITHER: We have have a quota
OR: We do not have a quota.
................
What can we do?
- Have a rational, effective refugee policy instead of the crazy mess we have now. Take more refugees, fewer economic migrants. Accept, however, that we cannot hope to resettle even a tiny fraction of the many that desire it. Trying to do so would only result in this country becoming as much of a disaster as so many others are.
- Work harder on the diplomatic front - less mindless support for the Americans (who are just as often the cause as they are the cure) and more attention to what progressive nations are doing would be a good start. But certainly still be prepared to work with the Yanks if/when/where they get it right.
- Work harder to target our foreign aid to achieve long-term benefits. The majority of conflict situations leading to refugee crises arise from overcrowding and lack of resources: willingness to address population grown issues must be a non-negotiable prerequisite for aid.
- Tie aid much more closely to human rights and democracy.
- Explicitly tie trade (import or export) to human rights and democracy using, for example, differential tariffs. Australia alone cannot achieve a lot, but we can set an example, and in doing so make some small progress.
- Act to restrict Australian industries and businesses which exploit foreign countries in unethical ways.
- Lots more, but these will do to start with.
|
Tannin - you are misrepresenting me, and the facts I have already put forward. I am not suggesting open slather, and neither is anyone else. For you to say that's what I'm really getting at is quite untrue, so play fair and quit trying to pin that one on me, OK?
The fact is this: Australia already HAS a quota of 12,000 refugees per year. I have not argued anywhere that we should throw open the borders to all comers and drop the quota. Nor do I think we should do that.
However, to put our contribution towards this global humanitarian problem into perspective, countries far smaller than Australia receive and process significantly more asylum claims: Sweden, for example, has half our population yet received four times as many onshore asylum applications in 2009. In that year, we received a mere 1.6 percent of the 377,000-odd applications received across 44 industrialised nations.
As for your suggestions, I agree with many of them, particularly in regard to our incredibly stingy foreign aid. But they are long-term and only partial solutions, and don't absolve us of our legal and moral obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention in the short to medium term.
Stui, I'll come back to you tomorrow; it's time for bed.
_________________
"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen |
|
|
|
 |
Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Pied Piper wrote: | Tannin - you are misrepresenting me, and the facts I have already put forward. I am not suggesting open slather, and neither is anyone else. For you to say that's what I'm really getting at is quite untrue, so play fair and quit trying to pin that one on me, OK?
|
^ Absolute, utter nonsense.
Either you support a quota or you don't.
If you support a quota, then you must explain why taking the richest refugees (those who can afford to get to Indonesia and hire a smuggler to take them to Australia) is somehow more fair than taking people according to greatest humanitarian need. You, along with every other participant who shares your view, have comprehensively failed to justify or explain the rationale for this very, very strange set of priorities.*
(* Probably because the actual rationale, which in most cases I assume is the consequence of shallow thinking rather than outright cynicism, is that doing it this way is easier as it (a) does something feelgood about the people on TV in the boats, and (b) does not force us to think about and act upon the real, underlying issues; in particular, it does not force us to confront the disturbing reality that there are massive humanitarian problems in many parts of the world that are vastly too large for us to solve or even make a noticeable difference to unless we comprehensively rethink our policies on a whol;e-of-government basis.)
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
Culprit 
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Let's bring back the "White Australia Policy"  |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| What do you have that is it? |
|
|
|
|
Pied Piper
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Tannin wrote: | | Pied Piper wrote: | Tannin - you are misrepresenting me, and the facts I have already put forward. I am not suggesting open slather, and neither is anyone else. For you to say that's what I'm really getting at is quite untrue, so play fair and quit trying to pin that one on me, OK?
|
^ Absolute, utter nonsense.
Either you support a quota or you don't. |
Tannin, did you actually read what I said? It's not "utter nonsense" at all; I think you're so fired up you're not taking in anything I'm saying, and you're being uncharacteristically rude besides. So I'll say it again:
I've just told you that (a) Australia already has a quota and (b) I've not argued anywhere in this thread that we shouldn't have one. So, I'm sorry to say it, but suggesting I'm advocating "open slather" is misrepresenting me, as far as I'm concerned.
For the record, yes, of course I support a quota. It would be truly foolish to think we can just admit as many people who want to come here, for a whole host of reasons so obvious I don't feel the need to detail them, because neither of us are that stupid. I think there may be a case for raising our intake of refugees, since our contribution to international resettlement is extremely small relative to the rest of the developed world. But I haven't argued that elsewhere in the thread, as I've been preoccupied with other points at issue, mainly dispelling some of the myths you and others have put forward. For now, I'll put that in the "another debate for another day" file.
To your next point:
| Tannin wrote: | | If you support a quota, then you must explain why taking the richest refugees (those who can afford to get to Indonesia and hire a smuggler to take them to Australia) is somehow more fair than taking people according to greatest humanitarian need. You, along with every other participant who shares your view, have comprehensively failed to justify or explain the rationale for this very, very strange set of priorities. |
Again, I think you've failed to read much of what I've posted. I feel like I'm mainly doing this for the benefit of others now. But I'll keep trying:
| The ARC wrote: | "If someone can afford to pay a people smuggler thousands of dollars to travel to Australia, they cannot be a ‘genuine’ refugee.”
Economic status has no bearing on refugee status. A refugee is someone who has a well founded fear of being persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It makes no difference whether a refugee is rich or poor – the point is that they are at risk of, or have experienced, persecution. Many refugees who come to Australia are educated middle-class people, whose education, profession or political opinions have drawn them to the attention of the authorities and resulted in their persecution. |
_________________
"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | ^
The boat wasn't just down the road though.
By getting to Indonesia and boarding the boat, they've demonstrated a capacity to look after themselves well beyond that of most refugees. |
Australia is a rare safe haven in the region; most countries in between will simply send people back to the place where they are at risk of death. So they are basically on the run; at risk of death in one place, and illegal and at risk of being sent back in the next place. It's not hard to imagine when you look at the map, and the data shows it's not an uncommon phenomenon at all. So as the UNHCR says, each case has to be carefully considered on its own merits.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
London Dave 
Ješte jedna pivo prosím
Joined: 16 Dec 1998
Location: Iceland on Thames
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Culprit wrote: | | Let's bring back the "White Australia Policy" |
It never really left... |
|
|
|
|
Black_White 
Joined: 19 Mar 2001
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| London Dave wrote: | | Culprit wrote: | | Let's bring back the "White Australia Policy" |
It never really left... |
Yep.
And certainly a statement that could do without the "smilie". |
|
|
|
|
Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
|
|
|
|
Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| member34259 wrote: | | London Dave wrote: | | Culprit wrote: | | Let's bring back the "White Australia Policy" |
It never really left... |
Yep.
And certainly a statement that could do without the "smilie". |
It was tongue in cheek.  I love the self righteous. None of them will have them in their neighbourhood but will throw them in the slums to fend for themselves thinking they have done a good deed. |
|
|
|
|
David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
What, do you want our military to get the torpedoes out?
(I'm being sarcastic, but for all I know that may actually be your solution).
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Anytime soon? |
|
|
|
|
Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
My point is David this is all huff and puff. Both parties know they cannot do anything as we sign the UNHCR agreement. All this is for political gain nothing more or nothing less. it's the "race card" being played by both sides.
Personally no need for a torpedo, the solution is to tear up the agreement and start shipping them back to their last port of call.
In saying that the boats are a minor issue as far as freeloaders go. More of them walk through the airports daily and we simply let them as we are such an apathetic country. |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Here's Bob Brown's view on the refugee situation (among other things) in an interview with Laurie Oakes:
http://australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3918:laurie-oakes-and-bob-brown-on-today-on-sunday&catid=101:australian-news&Itemid=167
| Quote: | LO: You didn’t demur when I suggested Julia Gillard had stuffed up her asylum seeker policy announcement, but do you think she has any choice but to take into account the concern in certain sections of the community and in key electorates about the asylum seeker issue?
BB: Well there is a great deal of concern in this country that we are not being the humanitarian and fair go country that we’ve always said we would be. When you look at the polls the latest polls I’ve seen show that most people in Australia think we should take genuine asylum seekers into this country and properly process them. That has been Greens policy right the way through. The forty three million people displaced last year Laurie through war and conflict and persecution. We are taking a tiny, tiny part of one percent of those refugees, much fewer than the US or Italy or UK. Yet it has been made .. Tony Abbott..
LO: What would the Greens do about the boats then? Just let them come? Not stop them at all?
BB: No, we want to urge Indonesia and Malaysia and there are thirty thousand people in Malaysia who have no where to go, to accept their responsibilities and we need a much greater effort to have those countries sign the UN refugee law, so that people are properly processed in those countries in the mean time we should be abiding by our own commitments and properly processing people who come to Australia. Send the people who aren’t refugees home but get those who are refugees and we know that more than ninety five percent of people for example from Afghanistan are genuine refugees as productive citizens in our own community.
LO: But if you are saying that the Indonesians and Malaysians should process people properly there, that means you are accepting the queue jumping argument doesn’t it?
BB: No, it means that we also, we are signed up to the refugee program and we should be properly processing people in our own country. Not as the wealthiest country in the region dumping this problem on to the poorest country in the region which is Timor-Leste. There is a lot more we can be doing for Timor-Leste but transferring our problems - if boat people are seen as a problem, I think they are seen as a responsibility - they should be seen as a responsibility but not dumping them across to Timor-Leste in the way the Prime Minister has done in the last week or two. |
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
Pied Piper
Joined: 20 May 2003
Location: Pig City
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Referring to people as "freeloaders" serves only to dehumanise people in genuine need. What I am seeing in this thread is a lack of willingness/ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others.
Let's say you and your wife and child are forced to flee your homeland, due to the ravages of war, or through persecution on account of your religion or political beliefs. You leave behind everything you have ever known, including members of your extended family and all your friends.
You seek refuge over the border, shunted into a makeshift camp with maybe 10s of thousands of other benighted souls. You know that this country is only a temporary refuge, with no means to permanently resettle you in any real community. You are essentially stateless. And you have no way of knowing how long you are going to be in that situation.
There is no school for your child to attend, no employment, and no hope. You are dependent on the charity of others just to stay fed and clothed. If you have the means - any means - to escape that situation, you will take it. And you will take terrible risks to do it. Of course you would. Anyone would.
Let me tell you a story that may help explain why I have come to the position I have.
In late October of 2001, in the maelstrom of the Tampa federal election, I was lucky enough to be birdwatching on a chartered vessel off Broome in WA. Our destination was Ashmore Reef. Ashmore is a paradise for tropical seabirds. It was then also the prime destination for asylum seekers trying to enter Australian territory.
When we arrived at the reef we were confronted with a vessel far smaller than ours with 220 people on board. Most of them were Iraqis who had fled Saddam Hussein's regime. The rest were from Afghanistan and they had fled the Taliban. The so-called Coalition of the Willing was waging war on both nations.
The boat was barely seaworthy and it was massively overcrowded. There were men, women and small children huddled cheek by jowl in appalling heat. But all of them were willing to take this terrible risk in search of a better future than the circumstances they had fled.
As a journalist, I felt I had a responsibility to report this situation. I was in a unique and fortunate position. Journalists had been banned from visiting this area and from photographing these people. I was surrounded by fellow birdwatchers with high-quality photographic equipment. A colleague's photo from 200 metres away was enough to actually put a human face on this misery.
We needed to have our environmental permits inspected, and I was able to board the customs vessel on standby and ask some questions on condition of anonymity.
(When the story appeared in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald the week before the election, officials in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMIA) hit the roof. "How was a f*cking journalist posing as a f*cking birdwatcher allowed out there?", one thundered. Of course it made no difference, but I was very proud of that. Journalists are supposed to tell stories people in power would rather not be told.)
Well, the Howard government turned back that boat, identified as SIEV 7 - the Mirnawaty - in David Marr and Marian Wilkinson's award-winning book Dark Victory. What happened next is barely speakable. The boat ran aground 300 metres from the shores of Roti Island in Indonesia. Three men died. Many survivors were trapped on Roti for months.
Three men died and untold misery was caused to hundreds of others by a government that, in the heat of an election campaign, refused to honour our international obligations under a treaty that the Australian government was a signatory to.
This is not a defence of people-smuggling; indeed it is an indictment. However, I am asking why we want to punish the victims: human beings who are only doing as any other human being, including you or I, would do under the same terrible circumstances.
And I am asking why we want to punish them when the numbers of people who arrive by boat is so pathetically small; when we take in so few refugees relative to others; and why, when we are a prosperous and wealthy nation, our government wants to get some of the poorest nations in the world (Timor and, previously, Nauru) to do our dirty laundry for us.
Above all, I'm asking what we are afraid of.
_________________
"The greatest thing that could happen to the nation is when we get rid of all the media. Then we could live in peace and tranquillity, and no one would know anything." - Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Last edited by Pied Piper on Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
