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The Forum > Article Comments > Nauru solution a dodgy deal > Comments

Nauru solution a dodgy deal : Comments

By Susan Metcalfe, published 19/7/2010

Any notion of returning to our past treatment of refugees in Nauru must be taken off the table by both major parties in Australia.

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I am very sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers. Nothing in our normal lives even compares. But can we really afford to not utilise the pacific solution? Ludwig was right! The boats would've kept coming, and it has!! The significance of this arrangement to the Nauruan people, was and will be employment. And whats wrong with killing two birds with one stone? We limit inflows thereby minimising expenses and community unrest, but at the same time we assist our neighbour, who by the way, we should be looking after. The current aid to Nauru is technical only. there are no new employment for out of work nauruans. Most of the departmental heads within the govt are Australians or Australian funded, not nauruans. So it really isn't fair to say that we are injecting cash into the island when in fact we are just paying our own people to work there on a permanent basis rather than as trainers/teachers to help the people there to fend for themselves. Of course asylum seekers are going to bad mouth their conditions there! That wasn't their final destination! They were right to keep you out. But its your job to fight for these people isn't it?
Posted by Marco Polo, Monday, 19 July 2010 1:14:57 PM
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Wow! This is a first time I can remember where all the posts to an article on online opinion have been (almost) unanimous in panning the article. We've had substantial agreement before but not unanimity. For what it is worth, I also agree that none of the writer's objections amount to sufficient reason to stop having refugee camps on Nauru or on Christmas Island - not even close.
Anyone accepted as refugees who arrive on boats blocks someone else in a camp elsewhere in the world from being accepted into Australia.. the quotas are not increased.. so why should we accept boat refugees, who often do not have papers as one post points out, over other refugees who can prove that they are genuine refugees?
The boats are not necessary even from an humanitarian point of view, and should be discouraged. The Pacific solution camps did that.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Monday, 19 July 2010 2:12:06 PM
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what a pack of self congratulating bullies, indulging in personal abuse in these comments! Whatever your cumudgeon name is thinks it's a success that 7 people support australia selling refugees to a country that money launders and sells passports and wasted all it's millions. Talk about dealing with illegals! We should keep the poor refugees away from you people. I don't know that anyone who supports refguees would want to comment on a board so full of bigotry and abuse and ignorance. Wow!
Posted by King Kong, Monday, 19 July 2010 3:19:04 PM
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I agree with Hasbeen. It is any Australian Government’s job to serve Australians and to act on what the majority of Australians want. That’s what democracy is about, not about loud minorities and people who were never invited to come to Australia. There is a clear majority of Australians demanding that the illegal boats be stopped, and only genuine, off-shore refugees who have been waiting patiently should be allowed into Australia.

The whole refugee business is a giant con, with very few people even coming near fulfilling the UNHRC criteria that qualifies them as worthy of international protection. Most of them are going to spend a lot of time in camps, only to return to their own countries in the long run. Most of them are ‘giving it a go’ to get a better life without the reasons or abilities of selected immigrants. They are doomed to failure, and so they should be. Their problems are not Australia’s problems.

There are 148 signatories to the outdated Refugee Convention of 1951, but most of the so-called refugees only want to go to a few select, wealthy Western countries like Australia. In their turn, these Western countries have been cowered by the United Nations and other ‘world’ ratbag groups into thinking that we are bad people if we don’t continue to be soft on protection of our own borders, our culture, the sustainability of our environment and infrastructure and, most of all, our sovereign right to decide who is and who is not allowed to enter Australia.

Unless someone wakes up, the West, including Australia, is going to be swamped and annihilated because of its own guilty feelings about the actions of long-dead people, and by the constant unfounded criticism of vociferous minorities whose own self-hatred and masochism is frightening gutless politicians looking for ‘preferences’ and deals which serve to give the minorities much more influence than their electoral popularity entitles them.

Successive Australia governments have not been fulfilling their obligations to their Australian employers for some time now. They have no business trying to help any more people come here.
Posted by Leigh, Monday, 19 July 2010 3:36:29 PM
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Curmudgeon,

I'm another one to break the consensus - I thought this was a reasonable article. The author is not actually arguing here against using Christmas Island or some variation of the “Pacific solution,” such as the Government’s proposed “Timor solution” (though I dare say she might oppose these). She is arguing specifically against using Nauru, on the grounds that it is unable to provide the levels of governance, human rights and basic services that we should expect from any place to which we effectively contract-out our refugee processing responsibilities.

I have the unpleasant suspicion that the poor treatment of refugees and lack of transparency and accountability regarding their treatment in Nauru was actually deliberate. It allowed refugees to be treated worse than they would have been treated in Australia, with limited media or NGO scrutiny, in order to remove them from the media spotlight in Australia and act as a deterrent to other prospective asylum seekers. This is a kind of “extraordinary rendition lite,” which handballs dirty work we could not allow ourselves to be seen to do, to others with fewer scruples.

Personally I oppose any form of “Pacific solution”, but if we are to take this approach, let’s at least contract-out our responsibilities to a country where we can expect, and ensure, minimum standards of fair, humane and legal treatment for refugees.
Posted by Rhian, Monday, 19 July 2010 3:40:06 PM
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The comments on the forum don't seem to be very related to the piece and I question if posters have read it or thought about what it says. Anything with the word refugee, asylum seeker, or boat has become a call to arms for people from the extreme right. Anonymous comments boards are now platforms for derogatory comments where great ignorance is allowed to take up space. I am sure the author can stand up for herself but I support what has been written in the article and agree that we should not be using refugees as cargo to be traded with corrupt countries. The problems of Nauru will not be solved by throwing more money.
Posted by Gregory G, Monday, 19 July 2010 3:57:27 PM
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