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Who invents this cruelty?

By 2353NM

In the past fortnight, the Turnbull Coalition government announced proposed legislation to ensure that each person on Manus Island or Nauru sentenced to the cruel and unusual punishment for no legal or moral reason since an arbitrary date in 2013, will never come to Australia. That’s never ever; doesn’t matter if they want to visit the Great Barrier Reef before government lack of policy on climate change kills it off; doesn’t matter if the person is a famous actor, musician or movie star in their future life; doesn’t matter if the person is representing a country at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast; and it even doesn’t matter if a current refugee on Manus Island or Nauru is a head of state in the future — they won’t be allowed to visit Australia (or only allowed to visit at the absolute discretion of the minister for immigration at the time).

Blatantly unfair, unreasonable and un-called for? — certainly. Unfortunately, we should be used to the Abbott/Turnbull government doubling down on the nastiness and sheer hate defined by their policy on refugees. The Abbott/Turnbull government will tell you that they are stopping the people smugglers from sending people on dangerous open sea voyages using equipment that is clearly not designed for the purpose. Immigration Minister Dutton claims:

What we don’t want is if someone is to go to a third country, that they apply for a tourist visa or some other way to circumvent what the government’s policy intent is by coming back to Australia from that third country.

The Abbott/Turnbull government has a problem. After being given a lesson in humanity by the Papua New Guinea High Court when it ruled that the detention camp on Manus Island breached PNG law, Turnbull has to find a place to house the 1200 or so people we as Australians have illegally imprisoned by various governments going back to the Rudd ALP government. Politically, the government can’t let these people come to Australia as the neo-conservative right wing of the Liberal and National Parties will head further towards the divisive policies of the ultra-right wing parties such as One Nation. As well as that, if the refugees were housed in (say) New Zealand or other countries in the South Pacific, the argument could be made that refugees could simply board a plane to Australia after they had residency in the third country. Logically you would have to ask why anyone that had been treated so poorly by others would ever want to ‘darken the door’ of their oppressors, but according to Dutton it is a concern. While yes, that is a hole in the current arrangements if those on Manus Island or Nauru are successfully integrated into a third country’s society, they might want to come to Australia at a later date, has anyone stopped to think what we are potentially losing by not standing up to the vindictive and xenophobic policies of successive Australian governments?

The Political Sword looked at the contributions made to our society by refugees in March 2014. We looked at Michael Gawenda, the ‘ten pound poms’ (which include Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, the Gibb Brothers (aka The Bee Gees), Noni Hazlehurst, Alan Bond, Frank Tyson, Harold Larwood, and the parents of people such as Kylie Minogue, Al Grassby and Hugh Jackman), Tony Le Nguyen and Munjed Al Muderis. All the people listed in this paragraph have made a wonderful contribution to this country, and if the governments that supported and encouraged the immigration of these Australians had the same racist policies of the current government, we would live in a much poorer place.

This isn’t solely the view of this admittedly left of centre political blog, this letter was shared around on social media in the few days after Turnbull and Dutton announced their draconian policy.

1234

Clearly, Dr Al Muderis makes a significant contribution to Australia and the world — as people fly to Australia from around the world just to see Dr Al Muderis.

Noni Hazelhurst, the Bee Gees and even Gillard and Abbott have also made a contribution to this country in their own sphere of influence. So why are we persecuting those that are attempting to become refugees in Australia in the twenty teens? While many were ridiculing (probably with some justification) ex-Prime Minister Rudd’s contribution to the debate at the beginning of the month, Rudd does have a few points that are worth considering. Rudd claims:

This is both bad policy and bad politics: on policy, the far right in Australia represent the worst of the xenophobic, nationalist and protectionist wave that we now see raging across Europe and America; while on politics, appeasement of political thugs like Abbott, Dutton, Abetz, Andrews and, depending on which way the wind is blowing, Morrison, only embolden the far right to demand more, not less.

And:

This measure is about the politics of symbols, designed to throw red meat at the right, including the Hansonite insurgency, and to grovel to the broad politics of xenophobia. Turnbull, once an intelligent, global citizen, knows better.

Rudd claims that Gillard (his successor and predecessor) changed his policy.

It sought to negotiate offshore processing arrangements with East Timor and later Malaysia. These failed. Then in August 2012, the government announced the reopening of offshore processing in Manus and Nauru. The government also increased the number of refugees we would take from the UNHCR “global pool” of refugees from 13,000 to 20,000. Nonetheless, in the first half of 2013, the UNHCR delivered reports criticising the treatment of refugees, which the government sought to respond to.

It is also claimed that when Rudd regained power he made significant changes to the agreement around refugees that Australia had signed with PNG, including a clause that the Manus Island camp would only operate for one year. Rudd’s opinion article concludes by stating:

I have kept silent on Australian domestic policy debates for the past three years. But this one sinks to new lows. It is pure politics designed to appease the xenophobes. It is without any policy merit in dealing with the real policy challenges all countries face today in what is now a global refugees crisis. And it does nothing to help those refugees left to rot for more than three years, who should be resettled now.

While a lot of the article by Rudd is an attempt to justify his own past deeds, he is correct to suggest that refugees are not solely an Australian ‘problem’ and, to be realistic, Australia’s ‘problem’ is insignificant on a global scale. Rudd is also correct that far right political groups around the world are attracting votes using issues such as protectionism, isolationism and blatant racism. The Guardian runs a series called ‘The Long Read’. Co-incidentally, on 1 November, it published an article in the series titled ‘The ruthlessly effective branding of Europe’s far right’.

As The Guardian suggests:

They have effectively claimed the progressive causes of the left — from gay rights to women’s equality and protecting Jews from antisemitism — as their own, by depicting Muslim immigrants as the primary threat to all three groups. As fear of Islam has spread, with their encouragement, they have presented themselves as the only true defenders of western identity and western liberties — the last bulwark protecting a besieged Judeo-Christian civilisation from the barbarians at the gates.

These parties have steadily filled an electoral vacuum left open by social democratic and centre-right parties, who ignored voters’ growing anger over immigration – some of it legitimate, some of it bigoted – or simply waited too long to address it.

The move to the far right is not just a problem in Europe or arguably part of the reason for Donald Trump’s nomination as President by the Republican Party in the USA. The New Yorker recently published a stinging takedown of Trump and the ultra-conservatives noting:

Trumpism does not seek simply to make a point and pass on its genes to more politically palatable heirs, nor is it readily apparent why he would need to settle for this. When George Will announced his departure from the G.O.P., last summer, he offered a modified version of Ronald Reagan’s quote about leaving the Democrats—“I didn’t leave the Party; the Party left me.” But a kind of converse narrative applies to Trump; he didn’t join the Republican Party so much as its most febrile elements joined him. Trump is partly a product of forces that the G.O.P. created by pandering to a base whose dilated pupils the Party mistook for gullibility, not abject, irrational fear that would send those voters scurrying to the nearest authoritarian savior they could find. The error was in thinking that this populace, mainlining Glenn Beck and Alex Jones theories and pondering how the Minutemen would have fought Sharia law, could be controlled. (For evidence to the contrary, the Party needed look no further than the premature political demise of Eric Cantor.) The old adage warns that one should beware of puppets that begin pulling their own strings.

Australia too has its extreme right wing claiming far more influence than they deserve.

Pauline Hanson stood as the Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Oxley in Queensland at the 1996 election and was dis-endorsed two weeks prior to the election due to some extremely ill-advised remarks made in the campaign on Aboriginal welfare. In her 1996 maiden speech in the House of Representatives, Hanson claimed that Australia was being ‘swamped’ by Asians. On the morning of Hanson’s maiden Senate speech last September, the ABC looked at her claim from 20 years ago and looked at the immigration figures from the 2011 census. It found:

By 2011, the proportion of people in Australia who were born in Asia had almost doubled to 8.08 per cent.

The proportion of people born in Australia fell from 73.93 per cent to 69.83 per cent — more than eight times the proportion of people born in Asia.

In addition, the ABC reported that:

James Raymer, head of the School of Demography at the Australian National University, said the incidence of Asian migration to Australia was hardly surprising, given our geographical location in the region and the sheer size of the world’s Asian population.

“The whole Asian population represents 60 per cent of the world’s population … Europe only represents 10 per cent of the world’s population,” he said.

“There’s a lot of Asians in Europe, there’s a lot of Asians in North America, a lot of Asians in Canada, and they’ve all been increasing.”

Undeterred by her previous prediction falling somewhat short of the mark, when Hanson made her maiden speech in the Senate in September 2016, she warned Australia was at risk of being “swamped” by Muslims.

As far back as 2011, Fairfax media was questioning the racism of politicians such as Cory Bernardi:

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie should be applauded for his stand against racism in the Liberal Party and, in particular, the recent comments by Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, singling out Muslims for denigration.

Does Bernardi think that by demonising Islam he will win votes, and is Opposition Leader Tony Abbott tacitly approving this latest attempt to play the politics of hate so he can watch where it goes?

This is a disturbing insight into the thinking of some senior Liberal figures. It comes from a party that has, in turn, used fear of Muslim extremism to lead us into two wars and then used that fear to prevent the victims of those same wars coming to Australia.

The current hatred of refugees isn’t logical, moral or ethical — it is a part of a political race to the bottom of the ocean. Ultra-conservatives such as Hanson, Bernardi, Trump, Le Pen in France and so on are using the misery of fellow humans to improve the prospects of a political career and are manipulating the vulnerable and hard done by to do so.

In the 1970’s, Coalition Prime Minister Fraser and the ALP both supported the arrival of hundreds of thousands of South East Asian refugees who came to settle in Australia. While the policy at the time was not universally popular, the benefits to Australia in the long term have clearly outweighed any problems. On a logical basis, the policy was fair enough — we had been part of a coalition of armies that had bombed much of South East Asia in an attempt to stop the expansion of communism. It is now history that the Vietnam War was unsuccessful, communism didn’t expand and the refugees that came here have largely integrated into our society. So why the difference with those from the middle east? We are a part of coalition of armies that are bombing that area of the world to stop the rise of ISIS. Don’t we owe something to those that are the unintended victims of having their homes bombed back to the stone age?

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, successive Coalition Australian governments, with support from the ALP, supported the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Europeans who were displaced before or during World War 2. The photos at the top of this article are not recent, they are from social media and portray Europeans using whatever they can to emigrate to North Africa prior to Hitler’s Germany taking over parts of Southern Europe. What goes around comes around apparently. And as The Political Sword observed in September 2014, Jesus was a refugee.

This article was originally published on The Political Sword

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31 comments

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  1. win jeavons

    Tony Abbott madE a wonderful contribution ? I think NOT !

  2. townsvilleblog

    Today’s cruelty as far as I’m concerned is my 87 year old mother being affected by the heat but in Queensland you must ring 000 talk to the ambulance then the ambulance must contact the fire brigade, but in this case the ambulance say that they contacted the fire brigade but they refused to help. Then, the head banana turns up to give me a pep talk but again nothing to move my elderly mother upstairs to airconditioning, yesterday it was 37 degrees in Townsville, what would you do?

  3. Max Gross

    Vindictive. Hateful. Petty. Cowardly. Incompetent. The Abbott/Turnbull mob excels in such stuff. Welcome to Monstralia!

  4. David

    There are forces beyond evil driving this dramatic world migration. When the media start addressing the issue and the people who are funding it, then maybe we will have a more enlightened debate. When the white races are being attacked from all quarters, don’t expect a peaceful resolution. Even the Dalai Lama has the guts to tell it like it is!

  5. helvityni

    Earlier on NZ offered to take some of the refugees from Nauru and Manus. Fizza thought NZ was a too nice country for them, and declined the offer.

    Now they been offered to US. Ben Pobjie tweeted: “So. It finally happened. America became awful enough for Australia to send refugees to”.

    Sad and cruel, Monstralia, thanks for that, Max Gross !

  6. Peter F

    So now we are told that , in order to prevent refugees arriving in Australia, we are sending them to the USA! Now, that WiII deter them, wont it…….!!!!…………..After all, second best is not good enough.

  7. Terry2

    Despite the claims made by Turnbull that there was no swap deal with refugees from Costa Rica with those held on Manus and Nauru, there is now a swap deal : why has Malcolm not been kept in the loop on this ?

    The silly ‘wedge’ legislation put up by Dutton to prevent any former asylum seeker from ever visiting Australia even after they have been resettled and gained full citizenship in their adopted country, was purely and simply playing politics and the wedge has failed as no doubt will the legislation. It is clearly not a requirement of the resettlement deal announced today by Turnbull.

    This whole disastrous episode has been a tragedy for the people caught in the middle and I am mindful that it was Rudd who put the ‘never ever settle in Australia’ program in place originally. However it has been enthusiastically followed by the coalition and turned from offshore processing into offshore indefinite detention.

    Congratulations Julie Bishop for breaking this log jam of male intransigence. Now let’s just get on with it and have them all resettled in the USA by Christmas, and lets not forget that they will need some very compassionate treatment after what they have been put through in the last three years.

    Nobody comes out of this with clean hands but at least it seems that this nightmare is finally coming to an end as we all new it would, ultimately. Now just close down these rotten camps.

    As for Peter Dutton, go back to pulling the wings off flies for you jollies. It is an ironic thought that when this man finally departs politics, we will be stuck with paying him a generous pension for the rest of his life.

  8. helvityni

    I find it hard to believe that Muslim hating Trump would welcome these refugees…?

  9. diannaart

    Dear Mr Turnbull

    Now you have made a swapsie arrangement with the USA, could you please let the refugees on Manus and Nauru wait for their transfer IN Australia WITH all the health aid and basic human amenities they have not had for so many years?

  10. Ron

    This article proves that some people have more mouth than brains, it is the people who don’t want rufugees (Illegal Emigrants) here. Are we supposed accept these people who have no papers or proof of who they are or what their history is. Does it matter if one or more of these refugees only reason for getting the chance to destroy as many people as possible through acts of terrorism. Remember, nobody asked these people to try to enter Australia illegally

  11. david1

    “even Julia Gillard made a contribution” …even!! what sort of back handed comment is that? Julia made a huge contribution, her minority Govt passed over 760 bills .
    Do some Googling if you want to discuss her contribution.

  12. Matters Not

    Terry2 there’s a few complication you should be aware of. Here’s the take from a former Head of the Immigration Department who’s aware of the technicalities. Note this para in particular.

    The other unknown is that the US resettlement program for refugees do not give them permanent residency immediately. That is unlike Australia where resettlement automatically brings permanent residence. Refugees enter into the US on a one year visa and are then expected to apply within a year for their Green Card. There is a risk that many may not realise that they will have only temporary residence and could become illegal and be deported back to the country they fled from.

    So permanent residency is not automatic and indeed a Trump presidency may decide after resettlement not to grant permanency.

    Most will be Muslims and Trump’s attitudes are les than favourable.

    JOHN MENADUE. A refugee swap with the US to end the horror of refugees in Manus and Nauru may be on the cards!

    BTW, Ron seems nice. Not too bright but nice.

  13. Jaquix

    Bill Shorten in a press conference said Malcolm Turnbull had rung him (last week I think) to discuss the proposed Never Ever legislation, and get his support for it, and when asked, told him that there was NO DEAL in the offing. One of them was lying …..

  14. david1

    Suspect Ron has got hold of some of Duttons talking points. No way to boost ones IQ

  15. Nato

    The left really needs to get out there, get in people’s faces, shut down the CBD at peak hour with protests and make sure that this message is heard by the population.

    A few more hunger strikes and destruction of the squalid concentration camps by the refugees can only help the cause and drum up sympathy from regular Australians, too.

  16. Kyran

    Up until last week, I did not know we had an ‘Ambassador for People Smugglers’, apparently since 2002. Up until last week, I did not know we didn’t have an ‘Ambassador for Refugee’s’. The language of kerry in NZ is important, when looking at this agreement.
    “We, the United States, have agreed to consider referrals from UNHCR on refugees now residing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea,”
    They, post trump triumph, have ‘agreed’ to ‘consider’ ‘referrals’ from the UNHCR.
    Pardon my scepticism. Uma Patel wrote an article on ‘Where asylum seekers on Manus & Nauru Islands could be resettled’.
    America didn’t qualify.
    Pardon my scepticism. Hasn’t America defunded its obligations to the UN for decades? And now America wants to sanction a deal with rogue state’s (Ostraya, PNG, Nauru) under the very banner it treats with contempt.
    Terry2, having read many of your posts, this bit is real.
    “Nobody comes out of this with clean hands but at least it seems that this nightmare is finally coming to an end”.
    When the likes of dutton, kerry, nauru, talcum, bishop, manus, are the negotiators, I suspect this nightmare has a long way to go.
    ‘Matters Not’ observation about residency in America should be a harbinger of doubt.
    “Who invents this cruelty?” is a great question. The only answer I can suggest is “The beneficiaries of the cruelty.”.
    “Nobody comes out of this with clean hands but at least it seems that this nightmare is finally coming to an end”.
    If that’s the best we can hope for, we don’t hope for much. Thank you 2353NM. Take care

  17. helvityni

    david1,I’m with you, if we still had Julia, we would not be in this mess.

  18. 2353

    @ Ron – thanks for you comment which by the way is completely wrong. The 1951 Refugee Convention was signed by Australia’s then government lead by a certain Mr Menzies of the Liberal Party heading a coalition with the Country Party (who subsequently changed its name to the National Party) – maybe it was back in the day when the Liberal Party was slightly liberal. In total, there are 140 countries around the world who have signed it. One of the articles in the convention is that a refugee can apply for asylum in any country that has signed the convention, not necessarily the first country they come to. Another article bans refoulment, which is placing a refugee into danger by sending them back from where the came. Illegal immigrants overstay visas and blend into the community, refugees are not illegal as they make themselves known to authorities in the country where they intend to claim refugee status at or close to the time of arrival.

    I’d suggest that you read the UNHCR’s Refugee Convention website rather than taking advice from talkback radio announcers and those with a political motive rather than common decency, morals and ethics. In case you can’t find it, try here -> http://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html.

    @Matters Not – no Ron has swallowed the Kool-Aid

    @Hyran – thanks for the kind wishes. I hopefully will take care as I hope you do as well.

  19. tet02

    So if a yacht full of Wall St merchant bankers fleeing the U.S. was to arrive seeking refugee status I can only assume our illustrious immigration minister would ship them to Manus or his other island resort likkity split, hypothetically speaking of course

  20. Matters Not

    tet02, you might watch this video.

    US refugees will be treated exactly the same. However the reactions might be different.

  21. Kronomex

    How can they call the deal, if it gets past The Donald, a “good news story”? This is simply a repulsive piece of work by Turncoat, the rabid right and the loony’s on the cross bench and senate (who Truffles has to keep happy and on his side). It also doesn’t help that Labor seems to have thrown in the towel on the matter as well. If it goes ahead who is going to foot the bill for the upkeep of the people when they are dumped, yes dumped, in the US? I can’t see The Donald offering to kick in money, so I guess the Australian Taxpayer will.

  22. Terry2

    Just heard Peter Dutton talking to Fran Kelly and saying that resettlement in New Zealand is still not an option as it would ‘put the sugar back on the table’.

    I gained no information from the interview whatsoever : suggestion to ABC and other media – when interviewing Dutton please have on hand an interpreter to explain what he is actually saying – problem is, the interpreter would probably translate to:

    ” waffle waffle, rhetoric, rhubarb, rhubarb, Labor bad, waffle waffle”

  23. helvityni

    A loathsome couple, Turncoat and Mutton; make it threesome, Scottie’s no better…I dislike them all equally…I feel dirtied just by writing about them..

  24. Kronomex

    Helvityni, say hello to three of the Horsearses of the Shitalypse: Turncoat, Duncehead and Morriscum. Now all we need is the fourth Horsearse and we have the set. Suggestions?

  25. helvityni

    Is there some kind of Aussie Ruling that prevents us using terms of ‘endearment’ when referring to the lovely Liberal Ladies like Michaelia and Kelly, and the ex-Lib, Pauline? At least I haven’t seen or heard of any..??

  26. tet02

    Matters not, and there it is, Trumps new reality tv show, with reference to Lindsay Lohan and Spielberg;
    “Celebrity Refugee Rehab”, a guaranteed winner on Trump TV

  27. guest

    This matter of refugees has been thrashed out for years and years. Still there are people who have no idea of what it is about. I am compelled to say something about Ron @5.07 pm. It is important to look at what people say.

    It is his first ‘sentence’ which seems to claim that the people who do not want “illegals” are the ones who have” more mouth than brains”. Ron needs to look at that ‘sentence’ very carefully. He refers to “illegal Emigrants”. He does not seem to realise that he is saying that it is illegal to run away from one’s own country. Of course, he means “illegal immigrants” – that is, people fleeing to Oz. But it is not illegal to flee to some other country when one’s own country is in great danger of the kind we see, say, in Syria. See 2353’s details about the Refugee Convention.

    Then we have Ron’s concern that these people do not always have identity papers. I wonder of Ron were suddenly threatened and decided to run away to some other place whether he would have time to collect up all (or any) of his ID papers. How would he prove who he was without them? How would he like being locked away in an ugly jail, not knowing if he will be released?

    He claims that some of these refugees could be coming as terrorists. Is such an idea a sensible thing for a terrorist to do when there is danger involved, such as pirates or drowning -or being jailed indefinitely on a far off island?

    And would Ron as he fled be expecting an invitation? Well, he might. In Oz there are some people who would invite them – and there are some who would not. And among those who would not are those who have the same ‘explanation’ as Ron – which in my opinion is no explanation at all.

    Of course Ron is allowed to have his opinion. The problem is immense and solutions are not simple. But I believe a little compassion and understanding would help. Then we might begin to understand why so many people are fleeing around the world for all kinds of reasons. And among those reasons is the lack of compassion and understanding in places where it is possible to come by plane but not by boat.

  28. Kronomex

    Turnbull is “confident” that The Donald will honour the agreement. No he’s not, he’s desperate for the agreement to go through because it’s yet another nail in the coffin of Malcolm remaining PM and leader of the Largely Nasty Party. Oh yes, with what appears to be the imminent failure of the TPP getting off the ground you can make that several more nails in the leadership coffin.

  29. Kyran

    “Unfortunately, we should be used to the Abbott/Turnbull government doubling down on the nastiness and sheer hate defined by their policy on refugees.”
    For what this is worth, I’m calling ‘bullshit’ on this deal.
    Talcum says he first started talking to Obama in January about this deal. Talcum says they have been working on this for ‘a long time’. Yet this cretin cannot announce any specific details about this plan.
    The ASRC fact sheet on the deal mirrors Ms Wilkinson’s interview of talcum. There is no detail. Whether it be ‘January’ or a ‘long time’, you’d think the git could give some information, The UNHCR is meant to be overseeing this, according to talcum and kerry.
    “The agency stressed it was not a party to the deal struck by the Australian and US Governments, but said it would endorse the arrangement.
    It has, however, called on both countries to act quickly.
    “People can’t afford to wait a long time anymore,” Ms Stubberfield said.”
    No detail. No facts.
    But wait, there’s more.
    “Australia’s “largest maritime operation” in peacetime history involves up to a dozen patrol boats and a supporting naval warship, as well as an offshore patrol vessel, to create a so-called “ring of steel” to block future people-smuggling ventures.”
    There you go. The announcement of a non-solution, devoid of fact, detail, specifics, time frames, will encourage those evil people smugglers to reinvigorate their insidious practices to such an extent, we need to deploy the largest maritime operation in ‘peacetime’ history.
    talcum is having his tiny moment. Manufacture a problem, get photographed in front of the military. And to hell with any of the people you are toying with.
    I do so hope I’m wrong. Take care.

  30. jim

    The Abbott/Turnbull government has a problem. After being given a lesson in humanity by the Papua New Guinea High Court when it ruled that the detention camp on Manus Island breached PNG law, Turnbull has to find a place to house the 1200 or so people we as Australians have illegally imprisoned by various governments going back to the Rudd ALP government.
    It goes back to the LNP’s Little Johnny Howard.

    The data just does not support the never-ending claims by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison that they stopped the boats. The under-resourced and uncritical media accepts the Coalition’s line.

    Action by the Coalition along with the Greens in the Senate to prevent amendments to the Migration Act greatly assisted people-smugglers and boat arrivals from 2011 onwards……….When the High Court rejected the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That number increased to 1200 by May 2012, and kept on rising.
    Then we had Liberal stooges telling the Americans that the more boats that arrive in Australia the better..,their cunning plan to stop Labor from stopping the boats.

    What largely stopped the boats, was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on the 19th July 2013 that in future any persons coming by boat and found to be a refugee would not be settled in Australia. This was biggest drop in refugees ever! We may argue about the wisdom of that policy, but it effectively crippled the business case of the people-smugglers. between July and September, people arriving by boat fell from 4,145 to 837 and the number of boats fell from 47 to 15. The trend largely continued after that time. so the numbers fell two months before the LNP lied its way into power then they carried on but totally/fully secretive (so easy to do with the MSM on your side)…….‘Soft’ border protection laws did NOT cause an influx of ‘boat people………….The fact that most people don’t know this stuff is testament to the dishonesty of our politicians and the brainwashing by or media.

    Incidentally, we’re further breaching our responsibilities by changing workplace safety laws to exempt Navy sailors from their obligation to take ‘reasonable care’ to ensure the safety of asylum-seekers.

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