Thursday 28th of November 2024
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Abbott's new Pacific Solution: 'cruel' treatment for asylum seekers

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

ASYLUM SEEKERS, PACIFIC SOLUTION, TEMPORARY PROTECTION VISAS

Liberal MP Petro Georgiou has slammed Tony Abbott's back-to-the-Howard-era policy on asylum seekers, saying it is "cruel" and "victimises the persecuted".

"It does not have my support," Georgiou said after this morning's release of the new policy by Abbott, Scott Morrison and Philip Ruddock.

Under the policy, the Pacific Solution is set for a return under an Abbott government. But the geography is not quite accurate because the Coalition has refused to identify to which country it will try to send asylum seekers, insisting that it cannot name the target country until it is in government.

Asylum seekers will also again be given temporary protection visas if they arrive illegally, which could be as short as six months. The TPV will have the same punitive restrictions as in the Howard era, including no right to family reunions. The return to TPVs was announced by Malcolm Turnbull in 2009.

TPVs were a notable and well-identified failure under the Howard government. They led to a 50% surge in asylum seekers coming by boat after TPVs were introduced in 1999, as the families of asylum seekers tried to reach Australia to join partners who had already reached Australia but who were not permitted to reunite with their families. TPVs were the reason so many women and children were aboard SIEV X, which sank in October 2001 trying to reach Australia, killing 288 women and children along with 65 men.

The return of the Pacific Solution continues the C0alition's obsession with preventing the 'processing' of asylum seeker claims on mainland Australia, despite it having no impact on the process of determining whether a claim for asylum is valid, and no impact on the legal rights of applicants. The Coalition today argued "offshore processing" deprives people smugglers of a "product to sell", ignoring that 90% of TPV holders under the Howard government were eventually given permanent visas.

Abbott also committed to "turn back the boats"; "where circumstances permit and vessels can be safely secured".

The cost for the new Pacific Solution "will be funded from within the government's existing budget estimates and projections," the Coalition said this morning. The original policy, under which the cost of processing each applicant was about $500,000, was estimated to have cost around $1 billion over five years, adding substantially to the pressure on the Coalition's so-far limited savings initiatives.

I admire the guts of the Rudd Government.

With apologies to the forum readers and administrators, I cannot come to terms with the latest fascist media attack on our elected Federal Government.

While accepting the obvious hypocrisy of the Corporation's Coalition of foreign interests.


Why is it that our government, which was elected by a very significant majority, and has taken over from a Corporation's Coalition (who just about stuffed everything), and has guided our people through a financial trauma of the dimensions of the Great Depression with improvements in employment; and a stable improving economy, is expected to capitulate to the vested interests of wealthy adversaries (miners) and their fellow travelers the Political weapon called the Coalition?

IMHO the media in America, Australia and England, to say the least, are GOVERNED by the media.  And it is so.

The media Mogul Murdoch was even accused recently of deciding that the respective governments of the UK, the US and Australia, do not serve the interests of his various financial empires and he will remove them.  I believe that to be very possible. How does he explain that "democracy"?

In my lifetime I have seen the effects of bigotry in just about every field of human endeavor and in particular the exploitation of democracy by those who can afford to do it.

In the situation now facing the Australian people is that in Parliament, there is a virtual civil war in that the Corporation’s frenzy to remove our elected government has become a battle between the Corporation’s Coalition in Parliament and the Australian Labor Party. A Class war. 

This situation transcends any of my experiences in our country when the enemy has always been identifiable as a force which has demanded our servitude but, never from within our Parliament? Just who elected them?

And the Rudd Labor Government has declared this a National Emergency for the express purpose of being able to put their defence directly to the voting public.  Why?  Because the Coalition of the anti-Australian forces want only their views, true or false, to be made public.

For God’s sake (whoever you deem him to be) this is a straight out clash between an elected government and whether they should be allowed to govern, and the Corporation Coalition giants who want to remove them.

Is it because the Corporation’s Coalition wants to control the government and the only available political gangsters are already rewarded members of that Corporation’s Coalition.  No wonder Malcolm Fraser resigned.

Ever since the Mad Monk took over the Coalition of the indefensible, the Corporation’s media has made Al Capone look like Saint Theresa.  Such is the power of information control – editing – regulating – lying – and of course, making a profit.

After living through so many large and smaller wars, this is the only one that I fear could defeat the Australian people and their love of a fair go.  And the Corporations know it.

But, truth is the first casualty of war.  God Bless Australia and give us at least another term of a truly Australian Government.  NE OUBLIE.