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April 17, 2009
Doesn't the old hang on in the new? The Liberals are banging the old drum about border security, bad asylum seekers, boat people and soft on security. It is just like a replay of the old children overboard affair with its undercurrent of Asian hordes invading Australia.
Apparently desperate people in Afghanistan decided to catch a slow boat to fair Australia because they read The Australian and were informed that the Rudd Government had gone soft on the processing of asylum seekers. Open borders all round.
Kudelka,
Sure this, is a mockery of the conservative rhetoric, but my exaggeration is not that great. Thus Greg Sheridan in The Australian says:
There is no doubt the Rudd Government has been widely reported internationally as softening Australian border controls. That must act as a magnet for illegal immigrants. At the same time, there has been a general rise in illegal immigrants and asylum seekers around the world...The problem with taking a soft line on asylum seekers is that you end up establishing that virtually anyone who can physically get to Australia can stay. That will greatly encourage people-smuggling, with all the risks and tragedies this involves.There is also no evidence that the Australian people have any appetite for an unregulated inflow of people in this manner. Such an inflow could easily accelerate rapidly out of control.
The phrases "virtually anyone who can get to Australia can stay" , "unregulated flow", "accelerate out of control" are the rhetoric of the politics of fear. And that is what is being deployed by the conservatives.
The reality is that most asylum seekers arrive by plane, many are sent back, whilst the asylum seekers who arrive by boat are processed on Christmas Island. Children are treated more humanely,d the so-called "Pacific Solution", which had people sent to Nauru has been abolished and it has scrapped temporary protection visas, as well as reforming detention policy. As Michell Grattin points out in The Age:
. ..intercepted boat arrivals are taken to Christmas Island, where the Government uses the big custom-built centre commissioned by its predecessor. Even after their initial checks, these people can't leave the island until their cases are determined.Under the processing there, asylum seekers don't have access to Australian law because the "excision" provision, passed by the Howard government, prevents this. If a person's claim is rejected there is no appeal to an Australian court. Almost all these arrivals are, however, found to be refugees and are then settled in Australia permanently.
Notwithstanding this, the Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone quickly blamed the Government for encouraging people-smuggling by moderating procedures for dealing with asylum seekers. This is running a scare campaign on border protection.
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Colin Barnett, the WA Liberal Premier tried to recreate the children overboard strategy yesterday with his assertion that asylum seekers had set themselves alight.