Dear oh dear! The basic tenet of this article is just ridiculous! How on earth can you Susan Metcalfe rationalise Rudd’s weakening of border-protection policy as an insignificant factor in the recent escalation in arrivals?

OF COURSE it is a significant factor, and probably the key factor.

At any rate, Rudd knows that the push factors have increased. So it follows that a dilution of Australia’s policy at this time is just plain stupid. It needed to remain strong, if not strengthened further.

What a silly concept: criticising the opposition for complaining about the weakening of this policy and pointing the finger at them for spreading the word around the world and thus possibly spurring an increase in boat-people movement towards us, but to not apportion any blame to the instigators of the new policy. Crackers!

“Australia’s major political parties must find a way to deal with the subject of boat arrivals within a mature and humane bipartisan dialogue and both parties must maintain a responsibility to ensure that this is achieved into the future.”

So what would you have our political leaders do Susan? Please tell us…what is your solution or best option or point of balance between accommodating a small number of desperate asylum seekers without opening the proverbial floodgates? Should we just let them come here with open borders and minimal processing? Or should we be striving to close off the onshore asylum seeker route entirely… and boost our offshore refugee efforts and input into addressing the causal factors?

It's quite disapponting to read such a niaive posting. So what if none of the illegal immigrants (correct use of the term because they had not at that stage been assessed as legitimate asylum seekers) had heard of a particular form, process or entitlement. Apart from the fact that everything that comes out of their mouth is not gospel and they will lie and cheat when they think they can extract advantage from doing so, I bet their people smuggling hosts had heard and I bet they had also been waiting until the ALP once again had its hands on the levers of power in Australia. Every business, legitimate or otherwise should have been preparing contingency plans for a change of government well before the November 2007 election, to do otherwise would simply be poor business planning.

To suggest that the Rudd Government quietly and without fuss changed the policy to a more humane one while blaming the Opposition for telling the world about Australia's welcome mat is simply poor form. Nice try ... big fail.

“Agents are not at all interested in whether their human cargo is processed in Nauru or Christmas Island or if people will receive a temporary or permanent visa.”

They are also not interested in whether their clients are genuine refugees or economic migrants posing as refugees in order to settle in an affluent western country.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/12/1037080728677.html

Good post, Ludwig. Ms. Metcalfe clearly has not seen interviews of illegals in which they say that it is Rudd’s softening up that has made them try another run. Some of them have been sitting in Indonesia for 8 years for an opportunity as good as the one Rudd has given them.

The idea of “bipartisan dialogue” on this matter – which has clearly divided Australians – is absolute nonsense. The woman would have voices of at least half (probably more) of her own countrymen silenced for the sake of foreigners who might or might not be genuine refugees.

These bleeding hearts certainly have strange morals. They are all for believing people who turn up illegally, with their set patter to fool immigration, but they don’t spare a thought for the brave, stolid people left behind in places like Afghanistan, who plod through life, taking what comes

"In desperation people sell everything they own, or they borrow money from distant relatives, friends or unscrupulous money lenders, to buy their way to safety."

I was reading the “Jack the Insider” blog in “The Australian” recently and came across this comment made by a contributor named “Ironside”.

“I was actually involved in the border protection operations off Christmas island in both 2001 and 2003 …… I have actually been on the SIEVs ….. I have seen the so called refugees on many of those boats throw their paperwork over board to prevent them from being identified, I have been on board those boats as the “refugees” have done everything in their power to destroy the boats including but not limited to, trying to set them on fire, destroying the engine or steering gear and chopping holes in the hull. I have also searched the luggage of people who have been detained and found tens of thousands of US dollars (it’s almost always US dollars by the way) stashed away. These people are not legitimate refugees they are economic migrants who are trying to get the best deal for themselves.”

Detention centers had facilities for the safe storage of cash and valuables carried by asylum seekers, a newspaper acticle I once read on this topic noted the amount of cash in storage was in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wonder if a freedom of information application could establish exactly how much cash was held for asylum seekers in detention.

Of course it is the Rudd government's fault, it is happening on their watch.

Regardless of the spin, as this article is trying to generate, the blame is correctly sheeted home to PM Rudd and his cohorts.

If PM Howard had tried such a ridiculous and contrived cop out, the media and other bleeding hearts would be screaming about propaganda and manipulation of information

Dear oh dear! I've been away from OLO for a few weeks, and what do I find on my return? People uncritically churning out all the old trite nonsense about "illegals" (they haven't been assessed yet so they must be illegal). And the weakening of border security (without any capacity to spot historical non-sequiturs).

It's all that nice young man Kevin's fault. They're all hanging on to his every word in Indonesia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. If only we could have kept Honest John, he'd know how to manage the media!

I think I'd better go somewhere else to find intellectual honesty and logical rigour.

I'm with you Spikey, I think OLO has been hit early with the swine virus, with a particularly nasty variation called zenophobia. There are only a small number of infected parties but they have swept through OLO sneezing violently on anyone trying to bring some balance and compassion to the current hysteria on asylum seekers(particularly those evil and naive academics who spend far too much time thinking). Better go and have a rest now with my mask on.

The Howard govt turned itself inside out to excise huge slices of the migration zone as part of its manic determination to repel 'boat people'. The Pacific Solution fiasco underpinned the 'illegal boat people' wedge Howard launched in 2001. I was part of the PM's task force that worked on these issues.

Sadly, the 'dog whistle' has been sounded loud and clear by Turnbull et al, and the 'xenophobe' crowd have responded with alacrity. Within their simple-minded construct it's all the Rudd government's fault! Labor instigated a more humane approach to refugees, although it could be improved by taking the Christmas Island stopover out of the equation. Rudd abolished the egregious TPV regime, which was a violation of refugee rights and a nasty scar on our human rights landscape.

Some of the comments here explain why the Coalition politicizes refugees. The posture is so effective - and is'nt it great to hear back from that bastion of 'multilateralism', erstwhile FM Downer on how his mates would have handled this situation? How can anyone forget the Libs' response to Tampa and kids overboard?

Yes, blame the victims for their own plight, extract as much sensationalism out of the role of people smugglers, put words in the mouth of ADF personnel who cannot answer for themselves, and then whip up public sentiment against refugees. Throw in dollops of confected outrage over your political opponents complete lack of preparedness to face down the 'threat' and you have your stock in trade 'dog whistle' response to the terrible plight of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Oh, I forgot - then you can set about making weak neighbouring countries complicit in policies that violate human rights!

The cruel stupidity of the Howard Govt saw asylum seekers ending up in an excised area, unable to access the same legal rights as those who reach our migration zone. The recent case of 29 asylum seekers deposited on an offshore rig brought the small-mindedness of the previous regime back into sharp focus. Labor must align our Migration Act with international law and refugee conventions.

Susan Metcalfe’s article is packed full of misrepresentations:

1) The boat people are :“ people who cannot find safe haven through official resettlement programs”.
Actually – most of such arrivals were never in any refugee camp, or resettlement programs – they simply took it upon themselves to shoulder their way to the front of the queue.

2) “Some countries DEAL WITH thousands arriving directly by land routes over borders; Australia intercepts small numbers of asylum seekers coming by boat and air”
Blurs the fact that most of those coming by land route to other countries (Pakistan/Indonesia) never end up with citizenship in those countries – Australia’s incoming more often than not do .

3) “Some travelled by boat to Australia because it was the cheapest of the options offered by agents” .
After flying into Indonesia and , having a Thomas Cook for years. The final leg by small, leaky boat is partly to avoid airport security – but largely, stage managed to pluck the heart strings of the gullible .

4) Re:“softer policies”
Whatever the substance of Labors new stand – Labors electioneering rhetoric –portrayed itself as unwinding Howard’s draconian policies. You don’t need satellite dishes & CNN or even, twitter, to received the message that things might be easier under a labour govt , just a few savvy letter-writing relatives.
--Another factor that has up till now been overlooked is the antics of “refugee advocates” in selling Aust as a soft-target – some of whom you might remember have publicly offered to house & hide illegals from the authorities .
---And for yet another factor: set the parameters on Aust and Google “refugee”. You’ll be blown-away with the barrage of material selling the refugees cause , everything from Refugee Advocate groups , to immigration agents and lawyers spruiking services , to sympathetic lefty news sites , to official Dept Of Immigration briefs on Rights of Refugees, to information kits for teachers and students– all presenting the pro-cause , all shouting to any would be refugee :“Come on-a my house my house, I'm gonna give you candy”

Nicely put Donkey!

It IS good to see some countering of the usual tripe, appearing here, though I did think of leaving this thread to the z-phob's so that they could exercise their intolerant bile to the full.

If not checked, it would have been interesting to see how far they would go.

Ginx

Perhaps a discussion thread could be set-up called "SPEW".

See how far people can go in venting their bile.

The 'winner' receives a white cloak and pointy white dunce's cap.

Sounds good to me!! ;)

Much of marketing is managing perception.

The question is not how we perceive the changes to the Pacific solution, but how it is conveyed to potential boat people, given that the people telling them most probably won't be immigration officials, but those selling the seats on the boat.

That there is a push factor in that there are more refugees, and that this will have an effect on numbers, there is no dispute, however, the question as to whether the increased numbers is solely due to the push factors or partially due to the relaxing of the immigration policy is difficult to substantiate. However, some of the information I gleaned from an ABC radio interview and from newspapers: (I am open to correction)

Worldwide refugees have increased by about 12%
Asylum seekers to Australia have increased by about 20-25%
Asylum seekers in interviews are aware of the relaxation of the immigration policy.

In the absence of the push and pull factors happening independently, the above figures could well be mostly due to the unique attraction of Australia, and a lopsided refugee exodus, but equally the imbalance could be entirely due to change in policy.

Labor claims that the entire increase is due to push factors, the liberals claim the pull factor, as per their own interests.

I personally believe that it is somewhere in between.