Rhetoric won't help stem boat arrivals | The Australian
Lenore Taylor, National correspondent | April 18, 2009
Article from: The Australian
KEVIN Rudd says people smugglers are the vilest form of human life and should rot in hell. Which is all very well, but it doesn't answer the real question, which is how to stop them plying their evil trade in the first place.
To that question neither side of politics seems to have a real, as opposed to a rhetorical, answer.
Labor is using tough talk to disguise that its efforts plainly weren't enough to stop the traffickers whose cargo now lies in intensive care units across Western Australia.
But the Liberals are making the serious allegation that Labor's softer detention policies are in part responsible for the tragedy off the West Australian coast.
That is an argument for which there is limited evidence.
To start with, Labor's policy left many of the hard aspects of Australia's asylum laws firmly in place, including mandatory detention on arrival and, if the applicant is a security risk, the possible continued operation of the Christmas Island detention centre, naval patrols and the interdiction of boats and the excision of islands under the Immigration Act.
To the extent that the laws were softened - by allowing most applicants to live in the community, closing the detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island, and abolishing the temporary protection visas that denied rights to refugees who arrived by boat, including the ability to seek reunion with their families - there is no clear evidence that this caused an increase in desperate asylum-seekers putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers.
Much of the increase can be explained by global factors, with a recent report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees showing a big jump in worldwide asylum applications during the past year.
Although asylum applications in Australia have increased by 19 per cent, less than 4 per cent of the applicants made the perilous journey in people smugglers' boats. The vast majority arrived by plane.
And if people smugglers are marketing their services on the back of misrepresenting the changes that Labor made, and if their customers, who are risking everything, are not checking whether the smugglers' claims of an easy ride are true, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is the detention policies that need to be changed.
But by defining the problem in terms of Australia's supposedly softer policy, the Liberal Party is clearly suggesting that a move back towards the old, harder policies of the Pacific Solution is a viable option.
"You can't slash funds, you can't take your eye off the ball, you can't announce a softer policy and then not expect people to lose their lives through people smuggling efforts," Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone said within minutes of the first reports of the tragedy.
Last December she was a member of a parliamentary committee report that welcomed Labor's detention policy changes, saying they would usher in a "fairer and more humane system for asylum-seekers and others who are detained in immigration custody". She tried to define her message this week around the claim that Labor had bungled its communication of the detention changes, allowing them to be portrayed by people smugglers as a signal that the path to Australia was easy now or, as she put it, that the Australian Government was in fact saying: "Come on down."
On the extent to which the Liberals would advocate a return to tougher detention policies she was far less clear, although yesterday she did sound supportive of a return to temporary protection visas.
"When we had temporary protection visas it meant illegal arrivals did not enjoy the same rights for family reunion as those refugees who came in legally and that severely curtailed the ability of people smugglers to sell their product," she said. "Labor should have looked a lot harder at the consequences of abolishing the TPVs."
There were, of course, other serious consequences of TPVs for those living on them in limbo for three years until a reassessment, including an uncertain existence in which they had no guarantees of staying in Australia and no right to travel to their home, and a ban on being reunited with their families. And some say that ban encouraged desperate families to resort topeople smugglers.
The Liberals are refusing to say whether they would reinstate TPVs or other hard detention policies, whether they would reopen Nauru or reinstate full-blown mandatory detention.
Theirs is also a rhetorical message.
I think they would be ill-advised to return to the Pacific Solution: it cost a bomb, breached international law and didn't stop the boats arriving anyway. Even if the people smugglers are "trying it on" under our new laws, as a civilised nation we have to find a better way to stop them.
In the past the only enduring solutions to boat arrivals have been diplomatic ones, such as the "safe third country" legislation passed when Nick Bolkus was immigration minister, which stopped almost immediately the flow of Sino-Vietnamese asylum-seekers.
This Government and the previous government have been in constant negotiation with Indonesia, the third country from which the present wave of boats has originated, to date with limited success.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, Immigration Minister Chris Evans and Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus were negotiating these issues at a Bali conference this week, but afterwards said only that they were hopeful Indonesia would change some of itslaws.
In the meantime we have legal and humanitarian obligations to the fearful, desperate and in some cases now desperately ill people risking their lives to get here, no matter how much we despise the people who bring them.
And we have to manage a political debate, where fear is once again rising in line with the leaky boats' arrival, with Labor suddenly emphasising its toughness rather than its compassion and the Coalition inching back to the inflammatory debate of 2001.
We owe it to ourselves to avoid scare-mongering over this issue even though it touches a raw political nerve.
The facts show that in reality it is far less of a problem for us than it is for the asylum-seekers we are receiving.
For their sakes we need to work for a real, not a rhetorical, solution.
This is a job for Jakarta | The AustralianIF there is a solution to the surge in illegal immigrants coming to Australia by boat from the north, it lies in Indonesia. But let's be clear about what that involves.
It involves Indonesia detaining illegal immigrants indefinitely or sending them back to Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever they came from.
This is the solution both sides of Australian politics ardently desire. It's why we had such a big ministerial delegation to the Bali conference on people smuggling last week.
But isn't this really the Pacific Solution Mark II, with Indonesia functioning as the giant new version of Nauru and Manus Island?
Neither side of politics is quite honest about this matter of illegal immigrants coming by boat. Kevin Rudd calls people smugglers "the vilest form of human life" and even goes so far as to hope they rot in hell. Malcolm Turnbull is hardly less condemnatory.
But if our measures to combat people smuggling are essentially more navy effort in the north, to keep control of our own borders, we are actually helping the people smugglers by ensuring their passengers get to Australia.
The only thing that really discourages the people-smuggling trade is if their customers cannot get to Australia. If they get picked up, sent to Christmas Island for assessment, released into the community and later settled in Australia, then we are completing the people smugglers' work for them.
The harsh logic of the Pacific Solution - which I opposed at the time but which worked - was that only by stopping the people smugglers' customers getting an immigration outcome in Australia could you prevent people paying thousands of dollars to people smugglers.
I have no criticism of the Afghan or other illegal immigrants. If I were living in Kandahar and had the opportunity, for a few thousand dollars, of flying to Malaysia, catching a boat to Indonesia, living in a hotel for a couple of weeks, then catching another boat to Australia, I'd certainly be inclined to take the risk. A few weeks on Christmas Island would be no deterrent.
We are determined this time to be kinder to the illegal immigrants and that's a good instinct. But don't for a moment think the Australian public has an appetite for a large, unregulated flow of permanent settlers into Australia of anyone who can simply physically get to Ashmore Reef.
After John Howard stopped the boats, he quietly let most of the people settle in Australia.
But the only way to stop people smuggling is to prevent smugglers from credibly selling the claim that they can get you to Australia.
Over to you, Jakarta.
Politics is harder on women | The AustralianAlthough this is an old article, but I found it resonating with the current situation in Indonesia
Michael Costello | January 11, 2008
Article from: The Australian
WHO becomes president of the US is not only a matter of great moment to America but to the world at large. So I've been watching the US election process with intense interest these past 12 months. There have been many gripping stories, such as the rise of Barack Obama, the collapse and resurrection of John McCain, and the emergence as a genuine contender for US president of a man, Mike Huckabee, who sincerely believes the world was literally created by his god in six days some 6000 years ago.
But what has been most fascinating has been the hostility of the broad media to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who bounced back from a big defeat in the first contest in the presidential race in Iowa to an unexpected victory in New Hampshire.
I know accusations of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are all too easily and freely thrown around, and are often easy excuses for a candidate's own failings. But there is something different about the treatment of Clinton.
Interestingly, hostility can come from women. For example, she was bitterly criticised by many women because she stayed married to president Bill Clinton despite his infidelity with Monica Lewinsky.
In doing so, she is accused of having sold out women everywhere, only because she needed her husband if she was to become a senator from New York (which she did by brilliant local campaigning).
The argument further goes that she needs him even more if she is to become the president.
Now the first rule of any marriage is no one outside it has any real idea of what's going on inside it. Nobody seems to have given credence to the idea that Hillary Clinton might have stayed with her husband because she genuinely wanted to preserve their marriage and their family and was prepared to forgive him.
You may think she was wise or unwise in doing so, but that's not the point: it's something normal men and women do every day around the world. Yet Clinton is castigated for it.
The reason people seem to doubt her motivation seems to be largely because she is manifestly extremely politically ambitious. She wants to be president.
The media's working hypothesis seems to be that any woman who pursues her ambition for the highest office with intensity somehow becomes less of a woman. The most complimentary description made about Margaret Thatcher was that she was "the only man in the cabinet". And remember that when Lady Macbeth was steeling her will to pursue the ruthless course on which she had set herself, she had first to call on dark powers to "unsex me here".
Women are not supposed to be like this. So Clinton has consistently been portrayed as being insincere, manipulative and calculating because women aren't supposed to be tough, focused, tireless, determined: that's what men are supposed to be for.
Now there is the New Hampshire election result. Here's an array of the reasons given for her victory. First it was only her gender that got her up. Now it's true that more women voted for her than for Obama by a margin of 12 per cent. Obama won 11 per cent more of the male vote than did she, yet I've seen nobody interpret this vote for Obama as being based on his gender.
Second, she is supposed to have won because she "cried", "broke down", had "an emotional outburst". Note the words. Well she did none of those things. I have watched the video a large number of times and I have seen no tears shed, and heard no more than a slight quaver in her voice.
One interpretation was that this was a sign of weakness that made her unfit to be commander-in-chief. An alternative interpretation was that it was a deliberate false display calculated to gain sympathy and votes. Note that these two interpretations are entirely opposite, but that did not stop them both running. I saw no one suggest that it might just be a reflection of a genuine emotional commitment to her ideas and her hopes for America, because patriotism is really only for a man.
A final contradiction was the treatment of the last New Hampshire debate between the candidates. In that debate, John Edwards joined Obama in getting stuck into her. Clinton refused to be intimidated and fought back. She hit Obama and Edwards where it hurt. She was described not as strong, aggressive, tough and forceful, which any man would have been in the circumstances, but as rattled, hysterical, showing her vulnerability, of giving Edwards her "Medusa look".
It's sure tough for women in politics. If they show emotion, they're accused of being weak and unsuited for the really big jobs, unlike men who are to be congratulated for showing their human side. If they don't show emotion, they are accused of being hard and ruthless, which in a man is seen as acceptable, indeed desirable, but in a woman is a sign of being manipulative, false and unlikable.
Obama beat Clinton in Iowa in significant part because he set up his full organisation there before she did. She only turned up in Iowa in a serious way later in the year. He out-organised her. In New Hampshire the opposite was the case. She was well in advance and she out-organised him.
But Clinton did something else in New Hampshire. As she put it, she "found her own voice". The successful Republican candidate in New Hampshire, McCain, also won because he rediscovered his own voice, which until a few months ago he had put to one side while he pretended to be something he was not. Both Clinton and McCain discovered that they had more chance of success when they were themselves, for good or ill.
That's the most important lesson of New Hampshire.
Rudd Government immigration policies encourage people smugglers, say Opposition | National News | News.com.auAAP
April 16, 2009 03:28pm
THE Rudd Government has created the impression that Australia is now more accommodating for asylum seekers, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says.
At least three people died when a boat carrying asylum seekers exploded off the northwest coast of Australia.
Mr Turnbull said there had been a rise in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australian waters.
"The Rudd Government has made changes to the rules and procedures dealing with unlawful asylum seekers ... and people smuggling," Mr Turnbull said.
"There is no doubt the impression had been created that we are more accommodating, or taking a less hard line on people smuggling than we have in the past.
"There has been a significant increase in people smuggling.
"That is a very bad thing."
Earlier, opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone said the Government had created a "dangerous situation" that was always going to end in tragedy with its "soft policy".
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"Perhaps we are going to see more of these tragedies in the coming weeks and months," she told Sky News.
Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said this was not the time to be making that kind of accusation.
"The last time people tried to make politics in an incident like this we had a most unpleasant circumstance in Australian national life," Mr Debus said, presumably referring to the "children overboard" episode during John Howard's time in office.
"I do assure that the Rudd Government is not going to be playing politics out of these kind of incidents.
"We are going to give you the truth and we are going to report to you accurately what is going on.
We are not going to speculate and certainly we are not going to play that political card."
Mr Turnbull said the explosion was a terrible tragedy.
He said the injuries to ADF personnel and the deaths of asylum seekers showed the dangers of people smuggling.
"It puts lives at risk - the lives of those that venture in the boats, and as we can see, the lives of Australian servicemen and servicewomen," he said.
