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John Quiggin 
Kevin Rudd finished his “community cabinet” in Rockhampton tonight with a hint that he intends to be less disgraceful toward refugees:
I believe that there is a significant slice of the voting public who want this country to be more humane, less racist, less xenophobic, less bed-wetting, more sensible and simply compassionate toward refugees – like every other country in the grown-up world.
This comment, at a fairly public forum, doesn’t make sense if we’re suposed to believe that this election is going to be about nothing more substantial than how to “Stop The Boats!!”
Despite the screaming from the Establishment Media about refugees, the refugee ‘debate’ and ‘problem’, this could be enough to get Australia back into pre-Tampa sanity.
According to a Lowy Institute survey:
– 58% of Australians somewhat or strongly support offshore asylum seeker processing,
– 22% are strongly against offshore processing, and
-74% are concerned about asylum seeker boat arrivals.
Also note that 61% of Australians support US bases in Australia while 82% think the Australia-US alliance is important.
I think the majority is right on each of these issues.
Well, if the Pond’s Institute says so…
That’s good enough for you.
The Lowy Institute poll findings reflect other poll findings.
I don’t see what you’re whingeing about. You’re the one who keeps saying pollies should consult the public.
The public has made its wishes very clear- stop the boats- offshore processing – a strong Oz-US alliance.
That is all.
@Mel
The public can only make its wishes clear through the questions that are asked on the questionnaires that they complete. Questionnaires often ask questions that people cannot answer in a way that actually expresses their ‘wishes’. Questionnaires can be structured so that the outcome is what the pollster wants to hear.
In my experience and I meet a lot of ordinary people in the volunteer work I do and I talk to them without any political agenda. I find that these people – the public – have many wishes about ‘the boats’ and the people who come on them and what to do about the problem.
I’d say that most are confused about what the situation really is and what options are available, and that most people who are not right wing asshats want to do the most humane thing we can do in the circumstances.
@megan
While you may suppose that I share your general sentiment on the asylum seeker question, I don’t agree that one can simply characterise the Lowy people as a front for some political or commercial interest. While I take Julie Thomas’s point that questions in polls can predispose a particular answer to questions, it seems unlikely that the Lowy Institute would wittingly push poll. It seems to me that the political context around terms such as “offshore/onshore processing” and concepts such as “concern over asylum seeker boat arrivals” probably causes people to appear to declare hostility and angst towards asylum seekers using irregular marine passage as their means to seek protection.
That said, I’ve no doubt that there are very substantial numbers of people who simply are ignorant and fearful about “those who come on boats”. There has always been (since about 1850) a very large number of people of in this country who fear being swamped by foreigners — especially those of other than ostensibly European descent. Given that both the major parties are openly touting for votes from such folk, it’s hardly surprising that they register strongly in polls.
Let’s face it — if IMAs including children are seen as such a threat to authentic Australia that they need to be held in terriotory excised from Australia’s migration zone, and behind razor wire, what are your low-information and angst-ridden folk to make of them but that their arrival is a cause for concern. These people have been presented by the spivs who make policy as being part of a criminal enterprise with “a business model” and as likely to bring crime or disease or internecine conflict to Australian shores. The ubiquity of this underlying animus and the perceived need to win the votes of such folk has priompted some who are squeamish about the bigotry and want of compassion attendant to resort to cognitive dissonance, hiding behind faux concerns for the “drownings” or “Australia’s fragile environment”. Once you give those who don’t like bigotry in the normal course of events to make common cause with open bigots, you do have a problem.
Fran:
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were taken in by the United States as refugees when they were children. They thanked the American public with pressure cooker b0mbs laced with nails. Apart from the small number of deaths, a couple of dozen Americans ended up with amputated limbs, fingers, hands, eyes and other body parts.
Hundreds of terror!sts convicted in the West since 9/11 arrived as child refugees or are the children of refugees. This is well documented but unfortunately a taboo subject in the left-liberal media.
test
I voted Green at the last election, I supported their policies on boat arrivals and that of Rudd’s changes to a more humane treatment and processing of boat arrivals. I considered the Coalition’s policies inhumane and rhetoric of the right to be effectively racist and xenophobic or at least naive to what was happening. Hell, that’s probably still right to some degree, but unfortunately, it’s brutally clear that we have lost control of boat arrivals and the numbers making the treacherous journey from South Asia. Something significant has to be done. The evidence is unambiguous. Maybe we need to increase our asylum seeker quota even more… dunno, but we have to stop these boat journeys.
@Troy Prideaux
It either is or it is not. What if anything has changed since 2007 about attitudes to ‘boats’?
“We” have never had control of ‘boat arrivals’.
Yes. We have to begin acting like humane beings.
The regime could stop them almost immediately, if it were so minded, either by extreme brutality, or simply processing them expeditiously in the major aggregation points. The regime would love the first option but probably doesn’t have the stomach for it, and the second option is risky for the first mover, in political terms, given the corner they have painted themselves into.
Fran:
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were taken in by the United States as refugees when they were children. They thanked the American public with b0mbs laced with nails. Apart from the small number of deaths, a couple of dozen Americans ended up with amputated limbs, fingers, hands, eyes and other body parts.
Most low information types would be well aware of this.
Hermit will like this.
Moreover hundreds of terror!sts convicted in the West since 911 arrived as child refugees or are the children of refugees.
This is well documented but unfortunately this subject is deemed unnewsworthy by the left-liberal media.
@Fran Barlow
There was a period under howard when there were few boat arrivals.
I have not seen an explanation of why howard’s way would not work now, but I assume it is in game theory.
we are now in an arms race with a high-arrivals equilibrium.
when hardly any boats came after Howard’s introduced offshore processing, no one wants to be first on a boat to test a new regime, so few boats come
when boats arrive every week, it is a safe bet that a claim will be upheld, and you will not be made an example off. plenty of people are willing to test the process.
Does anyone know of a mainstream Australian film, completed, planned or in progress, about asylum seekers, their motivation, journey and fate? Either documentary or “faction”? I was out of the country for a couple of years and may have missed something. I thought there was one planned on SIEV X but maybe it didn’t come to pass.
It has been said in the past that Australian authors and screenwriters tend to ignore topical and political issues. I thought of this after seeing the film “The other son” about a switched-at-birth event between a palestinian and a jew, and the identity issues and family consequences. Using the power of film to grab people’s attention seems a useful way to convey empathy and complex ethical problems to a broad populace.
@kevin1
Probably depends on how you define “mainstream”, in the context of your enquiry that’s probably oxymoronic! The first one that comes to mind is:
“Devil and The Deep Blue Sea”
Or look on youtube for the panel discussion about 2 weeks ago with Malcolm Fraser and Sarah Hanson-Young. It is seriously rivetting.
As Fraser pointed out: We had this “problem” after we participated in an earlier insane bloodfest called Vietnam. His government recognised that it wasn’t fair on Malaysia to tell them to deal with all the refugees so we (and other countries) agreed to a lot of funding and personnel to house refugees in humane conditions as we processed them as quickly as possible and brought them here in the tens of thousands.
If anyone really cares about people dying on crappy boats OR breaking evil people smugglers “business model” the easiest solution to both is to do something like Fraser did in the late ’70s early ’80s – just go and get them. No more boats, no more business model.
It’s so simple, and it’s been done before and it works.
Mel’s “refugees are terrrrsts” comment is just silly. All Vietnamese are in heroin drug rings and crime gangs. All Italians are in the mafia. All Lebanese are also in heroin drug rings and gangs. It’s just like the old days!
@Mel
“For the purposes of my book, I used the 10 years after 9/11 as the area that I was going to analyze data in, and what we know is that in the 10 years after 9/11, there were a little more than 500 defendants who were charged with federal crimes involving international terrorism. About 250 involved people who were charged with things like immigration violations or lying to the FBI and who are somehow linked to terrorism.
Their charges did not involve any sort of terrorist plot. Of the 500, you have about 150 who were caught in sting operations; these operations that were solely the creation of the FBI through an FBI informant or undercover agent providing the means and the opportunity, the bomb, the idea and so on.
Then if you’re really being generous, you can find only about five people of the 500 charged with international terrorism who were involved in some sort of plot that either had weapons of their creation or their acquisition or were connected to international terrorists in some way. These include Najibullah Zazi who came close to bombing the New York City subway system, Faisal Shahzad, who delivered a bomb to Times Square that fortunately didn’t go off, and then you have Jose Padilla—the dirty bomber—the underwear bomber and the shoe bomber, for example.
Being generous, those are the five that you can point to in the decade after 9/11 who seemed to pose a significant threat. Fortunately, none of them were successful. That’s a handful compared to the more than 150 who were caught in these sting operations, and in these sting operations the men never had access to weapons; it was only the FBI that provided it as part of the sting operation that they were controlling from beginning to end.”
So of the 5 only 3 fit your description of refugees or children of refugees. Notably, one of them was the child of a high ranking fighter pilot well regarded by the “West” for his role in the Pakistan military.
The world is not a Murdoch headline.
My mistake.
Of the five: one was a child of a ‘refugee’, one was the son of the fighter pilot, one was a US citizen born in the US, one was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker and one was an Englishman with a history of petty crime.
99% of these “plots” were FBI/MI5 frame-ups using entrapment techniques.
“Mel’s “refugees are terrrrsts” comment is just silly.”
I didn’t say that, thicky.
The British situation:
The cost of trying to prevent terrorist acts runs into many tens of billions of dollars that could be put to better use in hospitals and schools.
@Mel
I paraphrased you:
Thicky? What are you, 5?
Megan, you verballed me just like some bogan police officer in some 70s B-grade cop show.
I’ve just read an Aaronson article in Mother Jones. The guy is a complete shonk.
Aaronson starts his article by complaining about how a Bangladeshi student in the US called Nafir was set up by the Feds but admits that Nafir (and I quote):
And
Nafir sounds like the Boston bombers, young men who loved puppies and were incapable of hurting a fly according to everybody who knew them. I’d be much more worried if creeps like Nafir were left on the streets.
@Jim Rose
That’s no more evidence of “control over boats” than a period of drought (which we also had under Howard is “control over rain” or a minerals price boom (also under Howard) was “control over mining super profits”. The push factors at the end of the Afghan War declined for a time.
Then you have been averting your eyes and covering your ears. It won’t work because, in part, the push factors are greater — there are now 15 million refugees, apparently — and people have worked out that Nauru and Manus and Christmas Island are only a delay between arrival and eventually refugee status, assuming they qualify.
What I am yet to hear is any strong reason for thinking that the arrival of “boats” is a policy problem for the Australian government. It’s asserted all the time — and even tonight Abbott asserted, that like “the budget” it’s a national emergency, when it’s even less an emergency for us than is the condition of the budget.
I concede it’s an emergency for asylum seekers most of whom have fled intolerable circumstances and are now being brutalised so that some people here can feel as if the regime is doing its level-best to keep the wrong kind of foreigners from our shores.
@Mel
Sorry if I took you the wrong way.
What was your purpose or point at #7, #11 and #13 of using “refugees” and “terrrsts” together?
Did I misunderstand?
@Mel
Jeez you’ve got the guns trained on your feet tonight haven’t you?
How does he become a “complete shonk” for making the point that the FBI deliberately target disaffected youths when pretending to prevent fake “terrrrrst plots” (which were never going to happen anyway, if it wasn’t for the FBI doing all the recruiting, planning, funding, logistics and – fake – weaponry)?
For an apparently intelligent person you really are weird.
@Megan #3
Ridicule of this type is not funny, it just dumbs down this blog. Reasoned argument is what we’re here for.
Mel
“Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were taken in by the United States as refugees when they were children. They thanked the American public with b0mbs laced with nails. Apart from the small number of deaths, a couple of dozen Americans ended up with amputated limbs, fingers, hands, eyes and other body parts.”
But why did they ‘thank the US’ in this way? Was it inevitable that they would grow up to be bad or mad? Or is it possible that this behaviour resulted from some set of events that happened as they grew up in the country that ‘took them in’?
Does the sequence of cause and effect not matter? Is there no hope of understanding the reasons that people turn out to be bad, mad or sad?
maybe they were bullied at school, like timothy mcveigh. -a.v.
That’s flatly wrong! Yes there are push factors, no doubt, that provide an influence, but the numbers can’t lie Fran, not when they’re this clear. Unambiguously clear that policy had by far the most significant influence.
@alfred venison
lol good point. Have you seen the Rolling Stone cover discussion?
yes, i have, Julie Thomas and i’m not much impressed & not surprised. obviously, a lot of people have invested emotionally in the rolling stone cover as a pop icon pinup suitable for teens young & old. obviously, its the same photo that’s appeared everywhere else accompanying articles asking questions; but on the rolling stone cover its controversial. i get it, but i’m not outraged. i am startled & exasperated, though, when people use superficial associations to equate specific forms of villainy with specific ethnic groups.
here’s a listing, courtesy of the southern poverty law center, showing active patriot groups in the usa last year. warning: use the side bar or the page down key, don’t scroll with the wheel, you’ll sprain your finger:- http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/spring/active-patriot-groups-in-the-united-s
a.v.
Julie Thomas:
No, it isn’t possible. No “set of events” by themselves lead placing pressure-cooker b0mbs in public places. If they did we’d see a lot more of them.
Mel what is your hypothesis?
@Megan
I have to admit I got that spectacularly wrong. (See, Bolt? That’s how you do it.)
Channel 7’s Mark Riley nailed it just now on the news when he said:
Howard ‘got tough’ on ‘boat people’ by sending them to Manus and Nauru or locking them up in desert camps behind razor wire – while their claims were processed. Many of them had recourse through the legal system and in the end something like 90%+ eventually ended up being granted asylum and residency here. He was reviled by real and fake ‘lefties’ for the cruelty of the TPV system which allowed people to stay in the Australian community but under great uncertainty.
Rudd has just announced that any refugees who arrive by boat will never be allowed into Australia. Never, ever. They will be sent to Manus and Nauru, locked up behind razor wire and then eventually sent to PNG to live out their days.
Not a lefty in sight, real or otherwise. Astonishing.
This will not end well for these refugees, and who knows what will happen to PNG society when their local Murdoch mono-media gets started up on bashing the “refos”.
In a stroke of pure genius Kevin Rudd has destroyed the “Abbott would be worse” meme.
It’s really quite hard to see how this can be described as a lurch to the right.
It’s quite close to the alleged Malaysia Solution. There is no refoulement There is no limit on numbers like the absurdly small cap of 800. The refugees’ Convention rights are preserved. PNG’s human rights record is vastly better than Malaysia’s and PNG’s failings tend to be issues of capacity, not tyranny.
According to Rudd’s announcement all refugees will be sent to PNG which tends to suggest the Nauru camp will be closed. There are obvious problems,like the PNG capacity issue but that can be worked through by the government and indeed Australia’s capacity issue when it comes to providing humane facilities at Manus.
The problem of deaths at sea, if it is ever to be solved, will be solved by small carefully-worked out steps like Indonesia’s moves on Iranian visas. The great big solutions advocated by Abbot are security theatre purely for domestic consumption.
The wider problem of worldwide refugee movements is only going to be solved by peace and human rights in the source countries, and I don’t think anyone has a quick solution to that.
@Fran Barlow there are more boat people because of rising living standards in developing countries.
People can save enough to pay the smugglers. Real wages are higher in destinations so they can repay loans back home.
Julie Thomas:
I think young folk have always been prone to copycatting, for example a spate of youth suicides followed Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Crime is already known to be subject to copycatting.
Currently we have a very power a meme in our culture aether about disgruntled Muslims turning to terrorism to solve some perceived problem and the mere existence of that meme is enough to induce a small but significant minority of Muslims, especially youth, to live the meme.
Oops, i forgot the link re copycat crime.
@Jim Rose
Carr is saying the opposite — that the refugees are economic migrants. On PM tonight, the difficult circumstances of the Iranian economy, hit by sanctions from, inter alia Australia, was said to be predisposing some departures.
One suspects these ‘loans’ are usurious since the risk would be high. Accordingly, conditions in the home country can’t be that good or people would simply save the money, unless of course they really did fear for their lives.
@Alan
Under Rudd no refugee can be granted asylum in Australia unless they come by plane, essentially.
No matter how vile the treatment they are fleeing, he has said “F-ck Off! We’re Full!”
Even the ridiculous Malaysia solution purported to take refugees from here and stick them at the ‘back’ of the imaginary ‘queue’ in Malaysia – and then take five times their number from the ‘front’ of that ‘queue’. They notionally stood a chance of coming to Australia, eventually.
Under Rudd it’s NEVER.
How can this NOT be the most extreme right refugee policy this country has ever had (at least since 1951)?
We have repudiated the UN Refugee Convention. Disgraceful.
Are there many refos from China, Vietnam etc?
Why the racist attack on PNG?
A genuine asylum seeker should be happier than a pig in sh!t if allowed to settle in PNG.
@Jim Rose #36
Fran shows she’s a thinker – being from the Left. So instead of just making your comfortable assertions, can you fire up the “brain” boiler and give us some evidence? And I don’t mean quotes out of context from Niskanen/Hayek/Posner. I mean your intellectual production
Or does it just “feel” right?
@Mel
Good point.
Rudd’s argument says: “The boats will stop because PNG is a sh’t-hole and we’ll send refugees there (after a lengthy stint behind razor wire in an island gulag).”
By the way, there has been a riot, breakout and at least 8 explosions (attributed to burning vehicles) on Nauru in the last few hours – ongoing – but info out of Nauru is sketchy and the Establishment Media aren’t interested, obviously.
@Megan
Can you give me a ref for the Nauru info?
@Alan
Gosh …
No, but there is punitive rendition — refugee capture and storage isn’t a bad description.
Laughable. One of the rights is not to have one’s form of passage adduced against their claims. One might add that 7(1) which provides that refugees shall be treated no more harshly than aliens is also breached. There’s also article 17 on wage-earning employment, Articles 21 and 22 on housing and education, Article 26 on Freedom of Movement, Article 28 where a party issues valid travel documents for travel outside their territory …
I could continue … but why bother?
It’s scandalous what tribal politics does to the judgement of people.
The PNG Solution is a ruddy masterstroke. If this policy works, only genuine political asylum seekers rather economic rent seekers will try to make it to Oz because PNG is a developing country. This should cut the numbers by about 90% if my hunch is correct.
@kevin1
Clint Diedenang (on Nauru) & others on twitter and I see ABC news “just in” and “news radio” are just starting to report it now – poorly.
About 15 guards have apparently been injured and about 400 local men have been recruited into an unoffical posse to bash refugees by the privatised Australian mercenary forces.
Locals just now reported to be attacking a prisoner transfer bus with iron bars.
Beware what you believe from DIAC. They have a record as far as truth and refugees go. Look into “Mark Davies” and his report on SBS on Manus.
Megan:
Resident lunatic who thinks fluoridated water makes your teeth drop out now makes racist attack against Nauruan men just moments after her racist attack on Papuans.
Apparently Nauruan locals are allowed, and currently encouraged, to turn up at the police station to be deputised and given policing powers.
PR people for the rent-seeking businesses operating on Nauru are reporting that “everything is under control” – they would say that, wouldn’t they.
Well done ALP. It costs us $400,000 p.a. per person to keep these people there. Why not just buy them a house in regional Australia and give them $50,000 cash? It would be cheaper and more beneficial for our society. (No, I don’t mean that seriously. But why don’t we have a discussion about the more than $1Billion we give annually to the foreign owned Serco to run our gulags?).