Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Seeking a policy, somewhere, anywhere


I have been too angry, shocked, frustrated, sad and a million other things to have written a blog about the latest announcements on how Australia's leaders intend to address the human rights issue of seeking asylum.

And in my delay - Julia has been doing a nice job of self-destructing on this issue. Her plans for East Timor seem to be without foundation, Tony's alternate plans for the Defence Force to play decision maker on which boats stay and which boats go also seems to without foundation. Key point for both politicians (in case they were looking here for advice) -  If you are making an announcement that involves 2 parties, get the ok from the other group before you make that announcement!!

So... the facts:
  • Australia receives less than 1% of the world's refugees
  • In total we are talking about around 3,000 people in one year at most by boat
  • of those who arrive by boat, in recent years -  more than 90% were found to be genuine refugees
  • There is no queue to jump and there are usually no papers to be thrown over board. Many people in the world never receive a birth certificate, and you try going to a Government office  asking staff there for a passport because you'd like to leave the country - the office is run by the people who killed your mother, or that office is a 200km walk from your home over a hill, past the football field, past a few hundred landmines and through a few groups of rebel fighters keen top recruit you. 
The Government is trying to convince us that a processing centre (I'll call it a detention centre) in East Timor will stop the potentially fatal boat trips that people are making. Ummm.... a bit of geography here, East Timor is an island!! To get there you need a boat, asylum seekers don't pass by the coast of East Timor, decide not to stop and then head on to Australia -  check out a map. They leave Indonesia and head down the Indian Ocean towards Australia's West Coast - not for fun, because that is a navigational route.  

I am all for a regional processing centre -  one where people are detained for the shortest possible time, where they can live in the community, work and have their health and education needs met whilst awaiting assessment. But is a developing nation such as East Timor the best place for this?? Or is it one that needs the money and one where Australia has some influence? The asylum seekers would either continue down the Indian Ocean, be picked up and transferred back across the top of Australia and through the Timor Sea. OR -  they would be taken straight from hiding in Indonesian ports to East Timor.  Indonesia and East Timor are not exactly best friends, I can't see how this plan actually work. This doesn't seem like complex political or logistical information to me, why has our adept, intelligent PM not thought about it or even chatted it through with oh, i don't know, East Timor's PM for one?? No, not Jose, he's the Pres and that's great, but you gotta talk to the PM too Goolia!

Julia says she didn't want a race to the bottom. She says that the debate should be honest and calm. ok... go for it. 

I have just noticed that in my first par of this blog I called these politicians 'leaders'. They are not, they are following an ill-informed, racist and therefore fearful public. Leadership would be to take a stand, announce the facts and state that Australia will uphold its international obligations and be a humane country. That'd get my vote. 

Just for fun, check out this clip, it has no point but i love it.

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