Hi Michael, Quoting "Michael Scott" <luv@inoz.net>
Peter, I'm not devaluing your pleas at all. I don't disagree with you.
Thank you. Please take your time to go through this: http://www.truthaboutmanus.com/?utm_medium=email-sf&utm_source=1312mns&utm_c... It illustrates refugee life on Manus Island.
All I will ask is, if we drop our barriers, will more boats leave Indonesia? Will more boats sink off Java?
Please let me give some more thoughts to it.
The policies of both parties are mixed and confusing, but it's not cut and dried. If we had a land-based border it would be more simple.
In Europe people swim through rivers, climb over fences, taking boats to cross seas. They all risk a lot. Detection, detention, drowning.. it's not that unique. Unique is: Australia is "far far away" from many places where the people come from. Most of them stay in the same region, hoping for improvement. The strwm of refugees becomes thinner and thinner as further you're away. E.g. see this map of Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries: http://www.unhcr.org/3bbc5f484.html. It shows 2.3 million in Iran, 2 million in Pakistan. Please compare it to the number of boat people arriving here.
The "no boats" policies are more complicated than just not allowing asylum seekers. Unfortunately there are people who seek to make a profit from sending people in leaky boats. They need to be stopped!
Everybody desperate enough will use all the resources they have to get out of situations that do not offer any hope. People bought their way out from Nazi Germany. I know Bahai using up all the family jewellery to escape persecution in Iran. I know an East German who paid 15 000 Mark to be smuggled to the West, in a truck, in darkness for many hours and sometimes close to panicking. You would probably sell your house when your life is in danger or maybe just bleak and use the money to go to somewhere else? People profit from sparse resources all the time. Our refugee politics are helping to keep that business alive. We do not have a reasonably regulated way to take refugees in, to give them hope to come here in other ways. Abbott slashed the refugee intake by 6,250 (down from 20,000 to 13,750) when he came to power. Besides, capitalism is making business all the time, and our governments constantly feed vested interests. I do not hear much outrage about that. The politicians (and Murdoch press) outrage about people smugglers is fake. At the moment we are destroying other peoples' life. It is a variation of the line "In order to save them we have to kill them". After World War II states signed the refugee convention, to avoid replication of some shameful episodes in the future. Sometimes law is inconvenient, but is bounding for a reason, to avoid wriggling your way out and escaping responsibilities. Australia is doing it for many years now. The proper re-instatement of the refugee convention and the acknowledgement of our responsibilities should be a starting point of all our discussions. We are humans and should behave like humans. Scott Morrison is doing the opposite - considering abandoning this convention completely. As said, there are other ways of dealing with it. Some of them can be human and consider "Australian sensitivities" to a certain extend. E.g. regional development. Local business in Christmas Island and somewhere else is okay with feeding the refugees, building camps etc. Let's expand that. Give people hope: a 12 month screening process, e.g., before they are allowed to resettle, will be acceptable for most. The Vietnamese hairdresser spent 5 years in a camp in Hong Kong, being hungry most of the time - but still in high spirits because she was confident to have a future. This 12 months could be used. The refugees can run the camp by themselves, building, cooking etc. AFAIK that how prisoners of war or the "alien enemies" were allowed to keep themselves busy while detained. That keeps the costs low too (a billion dollars per year for a few thousand refugees is a sh*load of money - look how many times our government is looking for money to save elsewhere) Combined with training in trades and English it can be useful time for all. Give them "regional visas" for three years. Some remote areas are crying out for labor and development. We have these visas to facilitate skilled migration. It also helps us so we do not have to squeeze all arrivals in Melbourne and Sydney. I am pretty sure some of the mentioned billion dollar a year could be used to assist that, helping us to develop our country. Nothing is perfect in God's perfect plan - but it is definitely better to start with humanity and according to law then trying to tackle an issue in a lawless manner. But it needs some politicians to establish some basic understanding too. I do not think the Coalition or Labor have done a reasonably good job in this regard. Some of them are not interested, just greedy for power ("Whatever it takes".. with apologies to Bomber supporters for borrowing that unfortunately slightly tainted line;-) or plainly mean or shy away from the task. It should be our task to tell them that we care. That may help as well. So, a long story - and if you sign the petition under the URL above - even better! Regards Peter