October 29, 2009
Question Time is still dominated by what to do with the Oceanic Viking's 78 asylum seekers (ethnic Tamils) from Sri Lanka, anchored near Bintan Island on the eastern coast of Sumatra and close to Singapore. It's a charade that is becoming turning into a political hot potato.
We know that a deal has been struck behind the cloak of diplomacy in which Indonesia has been given money for their detention centres so they take the people Australia doesn't want. The asylum seekers do not want to leave the Oceanic Viking and step ashore to enter a detention centre and disappear into nobody's land for ten years.
What now? Send in the troops? Jakarta said it was not prepared to use force to get 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers to leave the Australian customs vessel Oceanic Viking. That was not part of the deal and the Oceanic Viking is an Australian flagged vessel. Australia has said that it would not allow the asylum seekers to go to Christmas Island, which is what they want. What now?
The ''Indonesian solution'' to the flow of boats is now tarnishing the Government's claim to be humane in its refugee policy. In The Age Michelle Grattan spells out the quandary of the Rudd Government:
Australian officials will try to persuade the people to leave voluntarily. It would be a bad look to have them taken off the ship by force, although Rudd and Smith don't rule that out. But who would do it? The Indonesians insist they won't and the idea of Australians carrying them off is preposterous.
So what is the future of the Indonesia solution, when the Indonesians do not want to be a dumping ground for asylum seekers? And it is still such a paltry flow of asylum seekers.
Rudd continues to duck and weave for domestic reasons: to avoid antagonising the anti-immigrant sentiment in the outer suburbs whilst talking up bigger population for Australia. How is the latter to occur? Mostly, through immigration. Rather than address that nexus politicians in both the Labor and Liberal parties are going in mock hysteria and exploiting the issue of race to whip up fear in the suburbs. We don't want coloured Asian immigrants is the subtext. We don't want ethnic enclaves in our capital cities. They harbor terrorists.
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Paul Howe of the AWU -- the AWU of all people--- says it right:
It looks like Rudd will have blood on his hands if he is not careful. The quick diplomatic fix is beginning to unravel.