Refugee and human rights advocate Julian Burnside is no more
impressed by the Government’s latest degradation of our approach to asylum
seekers than I am.
In a post to The
Conversation, 23 November 2012, entitled Bridging visas send refugee policy further down the wrong track
(see here)
he writes (correctly):
Almost everything that has happened in refugee policy over the past 11
years has been informed and supported by dishonest rhetoric. Specifically,
calling boat people “illegals” and “queue-jumpers” is not only false, it is
calculated to prejudice the public against a tiny group of weak, vulnerable
people who deserve our help, not our hatred.
While critical of both sides of politics, he levels his
sharpest criticism at the Coalition:
The poison was started by John Howard, but it is still streaked through
the Coalition rhetoric. Earlier this week Tony Abbott shamelessly referred to
boat-people as “illegals”, and spoke of them entering Australia “illegally”.
Either his policies are founded on a gross misunderstanding of the facts, or he
is being dishonest. With him, it’s hard to tell.
To be clear: it is not illegal to come to Australia without papers and
seek asylum. Boat-people do not commit any offence by their manner of arrival.
Later in the piece:
Boat people do not represent a failure of border control. Around 4
million people cross our borders with permission each year (mostly for tourism,
business or study). If 20,000 boat people get here this year without authority,
it will mean that border control is successful 99.5% of the time.
It takes a special form of deceit to reframe this as a “failure of
border control”. Let me make my meaning clear: members of the Coalition who
criticise boat arrivals as a failure of border control are either dishonest or
so utterly uninformed that they should not speak publicly on the subject.
Read the piece in full here.
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