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The Forum > Article Comments > Leaky asylum boats and the Federal Election > Comments

Leaky asylum boats and the Federal Election : Comments

By Frank Brennan, published 28/9/2007

Hopefully fewer people will vote for the Howard Government in the coming election because of policies like the Pacific solution.

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Well said Marilyn.
Zorro's comments are rather sad.
Posted by Bobby Skilton, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 11:36:07 AM
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That the author is gleefully anticipating a backlash against the government, based on 72 individuals who WANT to come to Australia illegally, is typical of the self-deluding attitude of socialist fools everywhere. Their credo always screams, " I am against everything you do, but have no good to offer ".
We MUST continue to make it as difficult as possible for anyone attempting to enter Australia by bypassing normal procedure. We cannot be seen as an easy place to get to and settle in for asylum seekers, real or otherwise. To do so is inviting unwanted challenges, as alluded to by other posters.

And Yindin, please stop whinging about being invaded. BORING. Be grateful that wholesale extermination didn't take place otherwise you wouldn't be here, right?(Can't WAIT for comments on that!lol)
MY cultural heritage makes no apologies for our actions. To be the people we are, and who you seem to despise, our forefathers have gone through feasts, famine, plague, untold wars, multiple evolutions of thinking, industrial revolutions, and sundry other events. The common thread in all these events was ADAPTATION. Get OVER yourself. Stop whining and be the best you can with the cards you've been dealt, because WE have to and, quite frankly, the bulk of the population don't have the time, or interest, to concern themselves with your "carryings on". As "Chopper" Read might say "Harden the F#@k up!"
Posted by tRAKKA, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 12:36:07 PM
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Zorro if you want to insult me you will have to do a good deal better than that, you are an amateur mate.

Now once more into the fray. It is not illegal to come to Australia without a visa to ask for protection under the refugee convention and no amount of insulting me will make it so. We agreed with 145 other nations that it is legal.

2.5 million Iraqis have been forced to flee into the rest of the world recently because we helped to bomb their nation to bits, they do not have papers. No-one but the three nations who blew the country up is sending them back to Iraq.

As the 72 Sri Lankans are actually refugees now that means they were refugees when they arrived so it is we who are acting illegally and not them.

Now if you all want to insult a barrister of the calibre of Frank Brennan and our own High Court who showed in the case of Al Kateb that the law changed in 1992 making it that there is no offence anymore in entering or staying in Australia go right ahead but you will be fighting a battle that you have already run and lost.
Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 2:07:01 PM
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Marilyn,

Like many Leftists you seem to see the West, and no doubt the US in particular, as uniquely evil, while poor brown people can do no wrong. Like many other people, I was against the Iraq war from the beginning, but that doesn't change the fact that most of the people being killed there are being killed by other Iraqis. A similar situation exists in Afghanistan with supporters of the Taliban. How far are we really responsible for this?

The British did invade Australia, but people have always (unfortunately) behaved in this way. This is no reason to allow it to be done to us. There is now DNA evidence that the ancestors of the Aboriginal people were in a position to settle Australia because they displaced the ancestors of the New Guinea Highlanders from the coasts

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3659/is_200106/ai_n8988825

Check the Migration Watch UK site and you will see that Britain spent 2 billion pounds (not dollars) on asylum seekers in 2004 alone. Most of these asylum seekers had their claims for refugee status rejected.

Numbers have not been a problem here to date, but what evidence do you have that numbers could not become large in Australia, as they did in Europe in the 1990s? How is it possible to deter economic migrants claiming to be refugees (according to the UNHCR the vast majority of asylum seekers worldwide) if they are to be free to enter the community before their refugee status is established? Britain only managed to deport 20% of its rejected asylum seekers in the 1997-2004 period.

I have no problems with Bronwyn's idea of a refugee intake of 20,000 a year, but an open borders approach (regardless of any legalities) is stupid and unsupportable. It would be interesting to see your answers to Plerdsus' questions. Bronwyn is prepared to be rational. Are you?
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 4:12:38 PM
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Sorry Marilyn but the people coming to Australia are not usually refugees.
They may want to come here but their right to do so does not exist under international law if they have already set foot in a country which could offer them safe haven. International law requires them to apply for asylum in the first available country and it is only in very rare instances that this would be Australia.
Refugees do not have the legal right to pick and choose their destination.
Posted by Communicat, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 5:06:28 PM
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Australians have a tendency towards xenophobia as the above comments illustrate.
The Keating Government started building the camps - Wasn't Larry Hand the one that had a hand in it? Liberal and Labor are very similar in their xenophobic approach to refugees. They hate them and will even lock up small children in the prison camps. This is smart politics because on the one hand the 80,000 or so legal migrants, the ones with money let in each year can be juxtaposed against the hated refugees. This is good politics because the refugees can be sacrificed to pacify the xenophobic public whilst getting on with the job of nation building with wealthy migrants.

Frank's problem lies in the ethics of this. Is it moral to abuse hundreds of children and their parents to the point of suicide to gain votes and pacify the xenophobes both inside and outside parliament? Is it right to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this abuse?

One million Australians have already voted on this issue with their feet in the last ten years. They have left to work overseas. That leaves a greater concentration of xenophobes in this desert continent. To protect the poisoned rivers, sandy deserts and choked sweltering cities maybe we need to get closer to uncle Sam and get 'nucular' missiles, power stations and saline plants ready to stop the hoards of desert hungry foreigners building their leaky boats to sail the pirate infested seas to these shores.

Australians really should travel more to get a better grip on reality. Australia, contrary to Government propaganda, is not the best country in the world and probably never was.
Posted by Barfenzie, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:39:08 PM
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