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The Forum > Article Comments > Beyond self-interest: Australia’s post-Tampa choices > Comments

Beyond self-interest: Australia’s post-Tampa choices : Comments

By Guy Goodwin-Gill, published 17/2/2006

There is a case for a new inter-agency action group to deal with humanitarian problems at sea.

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“.. the idea of pursuing an idealised “obligation” of co-operation on refugees is probably pointless.”

Well, yes. After all, these obligations are unenforceable, and there is certainly nothing “in it” for countries taking refugees. And there is nothing wrong with self-interest when it comes to importing more people. We have too many of them in Australia now for our best interests.

Any possibility of an “emerging legal principle requiring states to co-operate on a basis of international solidarity and burden sharing”, would be far from “nice”, as the author thinks; it would mean that sovereign states were finally at the mercy of that looming ogre, World Government.

It’s to be hoped that Dr. Goodwin-Gill is right when he says that: - “Many states seem to want to put yet further distance between themselves and the United Nations ideal of co-operation in the resolution of humanitarian problems.” The retiring Australian ambassador to the United Nations was reported in the media yesterday as saying that the UN was “rotten”, as if we didn't know already.

To hell with the United Nations and internationalism. Let’s hear more about what is good for Australia and Australians, and how to pressure dozy governments into ensuring that the best interests of Australia and Australians are paramount.
Posted by Leigh, Friday, 17 February 2006 12:00:30 PM
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Leigh,
With you on getting dozy governments to look after Australians mate. Sadly Globalisation seems to be an inescapable fact, led of course by USA multinationals. Even Aunty, ABC is now showing cartoons made in the USA on breakfast time TV portraying little girls and boys as boyfriend and girlfriend, something I won't allow my 7 year old daughter to watch, but when she say's "Daddy, what else can I watch?" I change the channels but it is everywhere. I still feel that a supposedly "rich" country like Australia can take a few refugee's although I would prefer the non-muslim type.
Posted by SHONGA, Friday, 17 February 2006 12:15:21 PM
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Perhaps if the United Nations collectively enforced bad countries to treat their people in a humane manner, the world would not be awash with refugees.
The western nations have been overburdened by the worlds desperate, how many poverty stricken millions is one country supposed to absorb?
Why should we lose our own culture by taking in "refugees" who simply seeking a better life at someone elses expense and then have to endure the violence and terrible religious practises that have made their own homelands so disfunctional?
We have too many aliens now who disrespect Australian law, we do not want any more of the same.
Posted by mickijo, Friday, 17 February 2006 1:55:48 PM
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Just what the doctor ordered! A new bureaucracy to sort out the mess of a hundred other bureaucracies.

If we have not advanced enough to address these sorts of problems it is an indictment on the existing groups and their legal advisors that retard humanitarian help for 'Yes, Minister' reasons. It is the height of arrogance to proclaim that more of the same is the only answer.

Dr Goodwin-Gill, there are a thousand intellectual arguments that could be mounted in support of your hypothesis however, history is littered with the corrupted carcasses springing from the same, tired hypothetical solutions.

If the solution is to be found in hard decisions perhaps there should be real conditions imposed on foreign aid. If there are existing conditions I would imagine that they are crushed to zero on the political landscape in scenarios that would make the AWB look like a snow-white philanthropic organisation.

I live in a privileged country, by any measure, so I cannot empathise with the people that you are an advocate for but I can see what doesn't work and that is exactly what you are proposing.

If there is an answer here it is not in where we have been but in where we are willing to go.
Posted by Craig Blanch, Friday, 17 February 2006 6:13:01 PM
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The article commendably decries knee-jerk reactions to the ever-growing refugee problem. And it recognises that among the refugees are those who (quite reasonably in my opinion) abandon their country of origin for lands which hopefully will provide improved social and economic opportunity.
But the article shows the author to be the most culpable of knee-jerkers.
Where is the compassion for the child-brides, the women with long retinues of children forcibly conceived; their poorly-tended, malnourished, and suffering offspring; Those fellow-humans abandoned by the nations who could, and said they would, help but didn't?
Guy Goodwin-Gill, put your prejudices aside, cease knee-jerking and take up your pen for positive action: towards minimising the pressure which underlies the creation of refugees!
The matter is too urgent for you to wait for Vatican approval of contraception, and change from its underlying wish for followers to "outbreed" the others.
Guy, surely you know that the education and emancipation of women was agreed as a target at the major world conference in Cairo twelve years ago; That it was acknowledged there that all nations had a responsibility to control their human populations within their own borders; that the developed nations would provide assistance in achieving these aims. Surely you must be also aware that assistance has subsequently been inadequate.
We are currently six and a half billion people, and our waste products are grossly interfering with natural systems, including the atmosphere, upon which we depend. As our numbers increase social stress increases across the globe.
In the twelve years since Cairo, about a billion people have been added to world numbers; predominantly in less-developed countries. While the world is in thrall to people like Guy Goodwin-Gill, in the next twelve years it will head towards another billion of increasingly desperate people. The refugee industry will be a bonanza for them. And hundreds of millions of people will be subjected to unnecessary misery.
Posted by colinsett, Friday, 17 February 2006 8:56:21 PM
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I really have trouble trying to figure out what people like Guy Goodwin-Gill use for a brain.

Thirty million people are added to the world's population every single month of the year. Naturally, that population explosion is almost entirely contained within the world's poorest, and most socially backward and politically repressive countries. Mr Goodwin-Gill's solution is simple. Everybody who lives in a poor country under a represive regime should have the absolute right to immediately claim refugee status and go to Australia.

Yeah. Sure mate.
Posted by redneck, Saturday, 18 February 2006 5:28:44 AM
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Redneck and colinsett have got it right - if nothing is done about world overpopulation all humanitarian efforts are just pissing in the wind.

Tampa Day, the 29th August 2001, when the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth prevented illegal immigrants who had intimidated the Tampa's captain into attempting to disembark them at Cocos Island, will surely be one of the defining days in our 21st century history.

The thing that seems to be repeatedly ignored by the bleeding hearts is that the strongest supporters of John Howard's actions over Tampa were the Labor Party's heartland. They seem unable to realise that the way Iran is going there could be a major war in the Middle East in the next year or so, and this could result in another tidal wave of refugees. The australian people would not countenance any more than a small selected proportion of these coming to Australia, and if security concerns are considered, it might be better to take our quota of refugees from another region entirely. We don't want the British experience of the children of refugees engaging in terrorist acts.

The main thing to be resisted here is the left wing idea of downgrading national borders and creating the idea that somehow everyone in the world is entitled to live here. This is just as insane as the idea that everyone in the world is entitled to our standard of living. One of the most fortunate things Australia has is a sea boundary. In the horrendous decades to come, in which we will see the four horsemen of the apocalypse (War, Famine, Pestilence and Death) riding unrestrained around the third world as nature corrects the population problem, Australia will hopefully be able to shield herself from most of the effects.
Posted by plerdsus, Saturday, 18 February 2006 6:55:31 AM
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Though intruding, thought that our future is now so bound up with America, the apparently lessenning prestige of GW Bush through inept practices by his staff, should be truly worrying to us Australians.

According to Julian Borger, columnist of the Washington Diary, it seems that every day now in the White House, it seems another familiar face pops up with a problem, the latest being the episode of Dick Cheney peppering his friend with duckshot while on an illegal quail hunting expedition.

But much more to tell, the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales going before the Senate last week to defend George W’s wire-tapping scheme, under which the executive ordered calls and Emails to be monitored in the name of counter-terrorism without even an official warrant. It now looks like Congress will ignore a White House claim that the President had a right under the Constitution, and has ordered an official look into the wire-tapping project, a development with uncomfortable Nixonian echoes for Bush.

On to Michael Brown, the disgraced former head of FEMA which performed so poorly when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August last year. Now Brown has lost his post, and must front up as a private citizen, Bush trying hard not to remember who that man Brown was.

Not to forget Jack Abramoff, top Republicam lobbyists and chief fundraiser, who agreed in January this year to plead guilty to bribing politicians and who like Michael Brown later, seemed to slip from the President’s memory. But last Sunday a photograph of GWB and Abraham together was published, only adding to the downhill slope of the Bush regime.
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 18 February 2006 5:01:03 PM
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Part Two

We must add that it could not have been a worse week for the vice President to shoot a hunting buddy in the face. The victim will survive, but for the current White House residency it was just one more case of friendly fire, as well as possibly one more Presidential memory lapse.

To be sure it is just more ammunition for whom too many of our contributors are calling whacky academics, many of them Professors and Phd’s. It must also again be reminded that these persons are also competent historians, who will no doubt contribute to any genuine accounts of what has gone on in this 21st century, not only in America and Australia, but especially in the Middle East.

Finally, we could say, that because personality problems of the Bush republican regime are now being criticised by republicans themselves, as well as among Congressional members, it does not herald a bright finish for Bush in his second and last term.

We could also wonder how such a US Republican downturn might affect the other two nations of what many historians are calling the Anglophilic Triology, America, Britain and Australia?

Regards

George C,WA - Bushbred
Posted by bushbred, Saturday, 18 February 2006 5:11:29 PM
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This article is a shocker in its failure to show consideration for:

Our Government’s right, and duty, to protect our borders and expect all entrants to come through formal channels.

Australia’s fair dealings with a trickle of asylum seekers for many years, which suddenly required much firmer action when this movement was showing signs of massive increase.

Australia’s continued fair treatment of asylum-seekers, while being very mindful of the need to present a strong deterrence factor.

Australia’s acceptance of the vast majority of the Tampa and subsequent asylum seekers as refugees.

The relatively quick processing of most of them, with just the small difficult minority languishing behind razor wire for long periods.

Australia’s commendable intake of refugees – at the time 12 000 per annum, which was and still is very good on per-capita basis - in fact the highest or second highest of any country, over many years.

Australia’s quite commendable input into refugee issues at their sources, in many countries for many years.

Australia’s compliance with the Refugee Convention of 1951, and its strong awareness of its fatal flaw; the number of refugees that a destination country is compelled to deal with open-ended.

The strategy undertaken by the Howard Government has worked, inasmuch as the inflow of asylum seekers is again minimal. What would have happened if Beazley had been in power at the time of the Tampa, and had allowed them to reach our shores, then those of the next ten boats, and the hundred after than, then perhaps the many thousands of people that had heard about Australia’s soft touch. We would have been in a hell of a mess. The number of asylum seekers subjected to detention would have been much greater and you can bet that they would have been treated in a much harsher manner, with a much larger portion being found to be non-refugees. This sort of massive escalation was about to happen. It was curtailed not one moment too soon.

Action taken over the Tampa was one of the few things that the Howard government has done that I strongly support.
Posted by Ludwig, Sunday, 19 February 2006 1:41:42 PM
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There are a lot of "refugees" entering Australia from the Uk and Europe plus Africa ,all in flight from those newcomers who are making their homelands unbearable.
We must be extremely careful in our choice of immigrants because unlike those who are fleeing here now, we will have no where to go if our immigration policies are wrong.
The world is shrinking at a very fast rate.
Posted by mickijo, Sunday, 19 February 2006 3:28:25 PM
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"the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth prevented illegal immigrants who had intimidated the Tampa's captain into attempting to disembark them at Cocos Island, will surely be one of the defining days in our 21st century history."

Ah, illegal immigrants. You mean all those European fruit-pickers who overstay their visas until they’re caught, then return to their welfare-state homes with a suntan and an Aussie fiancé? Of course you don’t.

When you say “illegal” you mean “brown”. And when you say “intimidated” you mean “observed the common maritime practice of saving people from drowning”.

This wink-wink, nudge-nudge racism is contemptible. If you hate people for not being you, then at least have the guts to say so. After all, if we’d listened to Howard’s faithful 50 years ago, our only ally now would be North Korea: another country where anyone and anything different is considered a threat which must be destroyed.

Those on the right should be happy: the left is starting to realize that Islamic terrorism is a real threat. Instead, the hawks (who know what’s going on and exploit it) and chicken-hawks (who are easily frightened and know no better response than aggression) want to argue that the rise of terrorism is proof that every simplistic, antisocial, reactive idea thrown up by the conservatives is a sober and responsible answer to a complex problem.

The traditional left is blind to the state of the modern world, and the traditional right is blinding itself in order to avoid the dull process of analysis and problem-solving.

Perhaps Muslims will overpower our country and make it their own, or perhaps we will broker a compromise which serves as a model to the rest of the world. Either way, one thing is certain: the fantasy of maintaining a perpetual Anglo, Christian society is as plausible as the tooth fairy.

Assuming that our commitment to environmental degradation and nuclear armament don’t destroy us, future generations will look at this article and its responses as proof that 21st century society had its head up its arse at a crucial point in history.
Posted by Ozone, Sunday, 19 February 2006 10:16:49 PM
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The title of the article - Beyond self-interest - indicates what seems to me to be a fundamental problem. States must always act in their own interests, and populations will always elect governments to look after their own interests. The idea of moving "beyond self-interest" is utopian: it will not happen.

What we really need to do, as a number of posters have suggested, is to broaden the definition of our self-interest. Our long-term interests are best served not by bolting our doors and leaving the rest of the world to its problems, but by guarding our doors and simultaneously working to reduce the global problems that turn ordinary people into refugees.

If we are worried about our security, then self-interest says that we must deal with other people's poverty. If we are worried about terrorism, then self-interest says that we should be concerned about how people are oppressed. If we are worried about refugees, then self-interest says that we must do something about stopping the flow at the source, not at our door.

If we can turn the world into a place where everyone has the opportunity to build a good life for themselves in their own country, then the refugee problem will be over for all of us. And we don't even have to care about those people: it's just being guided by our own self-interest.
Posted by Ian, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 12:03:34 AM
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Oh thats just bloody lovely mate.

Thats all I can say. I was going to write a comment on this idealistic, remote - acadamic nonsense, when I find you have all done very superbly with out any help form me at all. I feel positively redundant well done all of you.

So for Leigh, Shonga, Mickijo, Craig blanch, Colinsett, Plerdsus, Ludwig, Ozone, and Ian, thanks a lot and most interesting.

As for Bushbred, regrettably, well, he was off chasing wild brumbies totally caught up in it all and sadly, got lost in the bush. Just where was he bred ?

As for good old Redneck, sure mate what ever. But keep working at it because your angle sure beats the PC and the bleeding hearts.

Thanks all
Posted by tribal, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 9:19:03 AM
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