Stop the boats. 5k a head. (cont. in Part 2)

[Todman]

U cannot be cereal Toddy! There is a great deal to be ashamed about re our attitude and actions in this -it will go down as a very black mark in our history.

There is nothing to be ashamed about. History is written by the winners.

 

[CLUBMEDhurst]

tens of thousands of arrivals under labor and rising rapidly until the png solution. Your maths is wonky.

Hardly. The NCOA reports costs were attributed to the detention and processing of asylum seekers. The total costs of the policy aren't known, as the report does not include the costs to the RAN, AFP, ASIO, the judiciary etc etc. Your basing your judgement on unproven and hysterical projections of a tsunami of boat arrivals

 

[Todman]

We are sending 4 from Nauru to Cambodia @ $40million, great value for the tax payer

If we send all of the Nauru and Manus Island people to Cambodia it would still cost less than what Rudd Gillard mess created.

 

[romeohwho]

There is nothing to be ashamed about. History is written by the winners.

Yep largely agree about history but you are presupposing we are the winners here. The perameters for being 'winners' here are so questionable and your lack of vision re this is a concern.

 

[Todman]

Yep largely agree about history but you are presupposing we are the winners here. The perameters for being 'winners' here are so questionable and your lack of vision re this is a concern.

Oohhh very judgemental.

 

[CM86]

Gotta love how anti-pull factor we are... because we are humanitarians...

But we support bombing the s**t out or areas, and creating push factors... because... * 'em!

 

[Jakko]

If we send all of the Nauru and Manus Island people to Cambodia it would still cost less than what Rudd Gillard mess created.

Its almost like closing of several detention centres with all the associated costs like medical, food, legal aid, case investigation, transport, security, maintenance, interpreters, general staffers, TVs, internet, phones etc doesn't save anything.

Maybe one day an outlet like the ABC might tell the story of the many thousands of long term refugees who we have taken in since the slowing of boat arrivals. The forgotten voice that NO reffo advocate ever considers.....

 

[romeohwho]

Oohhh very judgemental.

Haha -wotevs trevs.
The world has a real crisis, its not going away. Thank goodness for Cambodia eh?
I see that Malaysia and Indonesia are meeting and talking and seeking solutions, looking at the causes etc-why aren't we doing that?-regional approach etc

 

[Max zero]

Haha -wotevs trevs.
The world has a real crisis, its not going away. Thank goodness for Cambodia eh?
I see that Malaysia and Indonesia are meeting and talking and seeking solutions, looking at the causes etc-why aren't we doing that?-regional approach etc

They are also turning back boats.

All for talking about a solution. But an open door approach or even a 'just slightly ajar door' approach has been shown to be a complete failure both in deaths and in resources.

Lets not repeat the failures of the past.

 

[Jakko]

Haha -wotevs trevs.
The world has a real crisis, its not going away. Thank goodness for Cambodia eh?
I see that Malaysia and Indonesia are meeting and talking and seeking solutions, looking at the causes etc-why aren't we doing that?-regional approach etc

Haven't they agreed to take in those already on water and no more? With a UN guarantee that they will be repatriated "somewhere" after 12 months?

 

[midorigreenwood]

The total costs of the policy aren't known, as the report does not include the costs to the RAN, AFP, ASIO, the judiciary etc etc. Your basing your judgement on unproven and hysterical projections of a tsunami of boat arrivals

Seriously, some of you folks are just as intellectually dishonest as climate change deniers

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/pacific-solution-cost-1b/2007/08/24/1187462523594.html

In calculating the $1 billion cost, the authors included navy interception, detention centre infrastructure and running costs, aid packages to Pacific governments, transport and health services.

"The Pacific solution is neither value for money nor humane," said Andrew Hewett, the head of Oxfam Australia. "In six years since Tampa the cost of the Pacific solution to the Australian taxpayer has been $1 billion.

Since 2007 the costs associated with asylum seekers have risen over ten billion dollars because of the rapid rise in the number of arrivals in comparison to Howard Era.

 

[midorigreenwood]

Haven't they agreed to take in those already on water and no more? With a UN guarantee that they will be repatriated "somewhere" after 12 months?

Yeah even folks from the UNHCR say giving the boat people resettlement will encourage more people to get on boats.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/reuters...ement-of-asian--boat-people----unhcr/41446768

Responding to international concern about thousands of migrants adrift at sea, Indonesia and Malaysia on Wednesday said they would offer shelter to 7,000 migrants, provided they were repatriated or resettled in third countries within a year.

Those places are very, very precious. There are perhaps 100,000 people a year who manage to be referred for third country resettlement," said Alistair Boulton, UNHCR's assistant regional representative

Repatriating people on the boats identified as Bangladeshi economic migrants would not be a problem, with Bangladesh willing to take them back, Boulton said on Thursday.

However, resettlement outside the region for those identified as refugees or stateless may encourage more people to join the exodus, he said.

 

[rodney hoo]

If we send all of the Nauru and Manus Island people to Cambodia it would still cost less than what Rudd Gillard mess created.

The mess was started by JW, Blair, Howard when we attacked a sovereign country for no reason, now all these despot states are at it , most with American military hardware witch was sent to help but abandoned and now in the hands of Isis.
What's your answer, the refugees that were saved by the fishermen in Aceh certainly did not look like country shoppers, unless they all suffer from bulimia. I do not no the answers but some times you have to show some humanity not like the world did to the Jews in WW2, more like Mal Fraser did for the Vietnamese.

 

[midorigreenwood]

I didn't realize australia invaded Burma or Iran or Sri Lanka.

Let's look at it another way

When I say the cost associated with asylum seekers have risen to over 10 billion dollars since 2007 I was being conservative.

If you include the costs since the election it's probably over 15 billion dollars.

So roughly 2 billion a year since the Pacific solution was dismantled.

If the rudd government in 2007 had decided to use two billion dollars a year to increase our refugee intake rather than tampering with howard era policy they could have raised it by 40000 people. (Using labors figures in raising the intake to 20000 in 2013, about 50k dollars per person)

That's 320000 refugees in 8 years with few people in detention. few accusations of sexual abuse and mental illness under our care. And few people dying at sea if at all in our territorial waters.

If they had used the money to support refugee hosting countries like turkey and Jordan it would have helped millions of refugees.

hopefully labor has learnt their lesson although that is yet to be seen.

 

[Gough]

So it's all about money, and hanging s**t on the ALP now? I thought you were worried about people getting on boats, and dying at sea, which is still happening.

 

[midorigreenwood]

So it's all about money, and hanging s**t on the ALP now? I thought you were worried about people getting on boats, and dying at sea, which is still happening.

medHurst brought up the ten million per person cost of the Cambodia deal so I was just countering that.

And it's not hanging s**t. I vote Labor and everyone should be angry at the epic waste of money in tinkering with policy unnecessarily in the same way that howard era middle class welfare has led to a structural deficit.

 

[romeohwho]

'European' Australia is 200 years old and is very different now from how it was here in 1788. In another 200 years this country will be very different again. Things are not set in stone, everything changes and that includes the population and the people who make that up. Get used to it, you can't hold onto preconceptions of what you think we are. But you can make choices about behaviour.

 

[midorigreenwood]

http://m.theaustralian.com.au/natio...hingya-indonesia/story-fn59nm2j-1227366019824

Indonesia has told Australia that most of the 7000 boatpeople stranded at sea in the region are not Rohingya asylum-seekers but illegal labourers from Bangladesh.

In a foreign ministers’ meeting in Seoul yesterday, Indonesian officials told Foreign Minister Julie Bishop that only 30 per cent to 40 per cent of those stranded on boats and in camps in the region were Rohingya refugees.

“They (Indonesia) believe there are about 7000 people at sea (and) they think about 30-40 per cent are Rohingya, the rest are Bangladeshi; and they are not, in Indonesia’s words, asylum-seekers, they are not refugees, they are illegal labourers, they’ve been promised or are seeking jobs in Malaysia,” Ms Bishop told The Weekend Australian.

 

[Gough]

Guess that makes it better.

 

[midorigreenwood]

If you need a reason why we shouldn't be encouraging desperate people to get on boats...

http://m.smh.com.au/world/mass-grav...malaysias-forests-report-20150524-gh8exe.html

Malaysian authorities have reportedly discovered 30 mass graves believed to contain the bodies of hundreds of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis near Malaysia's border with Thailand.

The shock find follows the discovery of similar mass graves in Thailand early in May, which prompted Thai authorities to crack down on human trafficking networks.

For years Malaysia has quietly allowed tens of thousands of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis who had been smuggled into the country by human traffickers to work as cheap labour. Many had been held in jungle camps and in boats at sea while traffickers demanded ransoms from their families.

 

[Jiska]

Dymot, have you been emailing SHY?

Publishing his email address on Twitter amounts to a violation of privacy. What a silly and immature thing for her to do.

 

[Bestbird]

If you need a reason why we shouldn't be encouraging desperate people to get on boats...

http://m.smh.com.au/world/mass-grav...malaysias-forests-report-20150524-gh8exe.html

It is easy to say Nope Nope Nope, stop the boats problem solved but the fact is that some refugees have no alternative. You have to be pretty desperate to risk your life and those of your family just to risk it

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...atment-of-asylum-seekers-20150527-ghaij7.html

As the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar told the Council in March, Rohingya people in [displacement] camps have told her that they had only two options: 'stay and die' or 'leave by boat'," he said.

 

[Gough]

The debate has been very cleverly (not something I say often of this government) shifted. Instead of focusing on the plight of refugees, what we can do to help, and trying to understand why they are are fleeing their homelands, all of the debate revolves people smuggling, and the so called illegal status of the refugees. We have been so conditioned to not even see these people as people, they were referred to as "stock" in Senate estimates, that any thoughts of their ordeal are sent to the back of queue by many when discussing the issue.

 

[Todman]

The debate has been very cleverly (not something I say often of this government) shifted. Instead of focusing on the plight of refugees, what we can do to help, and trying to understand why they are are fleeing their homelands.

If we invade their homelands and stop the factors forcing these people to flee.........

 

[midorigreenwood]

It is easy to say Nope Nope Nope, stop the boats problem solved but the fact is that some refugees have no alternative. You have to be pretty desperate to risk your life and those of your family just to risk it

Again, another person with a fundamental misunderstanding about the problem at hand

Historically there has been several routes which Rohingya irregular migrants have used in South East Asia whether its to seek asylum or economic migration.

The most popular are/were:

1) Burma to Bangladesh - basically walking across the border. Population about several hundred thousand asylum seekers/refugees

2) Burma to Malaysia - by boat to Thailand then by boat or by land across the border to West Malaysia.
Population in the tens of thousands (registered by UNHCR) to over 100k (unregistered or unaccounted)

3) Burma to Australia - get to Indonesia by whatever means and then by boat to Australian territory.

Route 1 and 2 are decades old. I read in a malaysian newspaper about a Rohingya who had been living as an undocumented migrant for about 30 years and while having etched a reasonable living selling food as a hawker, he lamented for the future of his children in the country with no status (no easy access to healthcare or education).

Route 3 to Australia on the other hand is very new. In 2011 there were fewer than 50 rohingya asylum seekers documented at the UNHCR office in Indonesia. In 2013 that had rose to about 800. Due to the costs, these are most likely people who have lived for years in Malaysia as informal workers and understandably grown tired of their situation.

We may have slammed the door on route 3 (several years old) but route 2 existed before the Tampa and will continue long after the PNG solution and "turn back the boats". Therefore the current humanitarian crisis is largely immaterial to Australia's border protection policy so blaming Tony Abbott is missing the point.

As for what Australia should do?

I've already outlined my position in

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threa...ght-outta-mind.1033285/page-388#post-38636103

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threa...ght-outta-mind.1033285/page-387#post-38554297