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Total tool Tony Abbott - and would-be Prime Minister - has yet again demonstrated why he's a loose cannon waiting in the wings to do maximum damage to this little country.
" ... The comment about the sinking of the Italian cruise ship came during an interview yesterday morning on the Adelaide Triple M breakfast show with Ali Carle, Dale Lewis and Warren Tredrea.
At one point during the interview, one of the hosts asked Mr Abbott: "This is just a bit from left field, the captain from the Costa Concordia wants to know if you need any help with your boat policy?"
"Well that was one boat that did get stopped, wasn't it," Mr Abbott replied, to laughter."
In today's papers, continuing his lack of judgment, lack of boundaries, Abbott has declared that, if he becomes Prime Minister, he will instruct the Navy to turn back every boat.
Judgement ...
Fuckwits to the left of us.. Fuckwits to the right! sigh..
ReplyDelete"We'll all be rooned,"
http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/obrienj/poetry/hanrahan.html
I don't mind grim humour (although it is better if it's delivered without laughing). It is always risky but it would have to get a lot blacker than Abbott's jibe to offend me. Jokes can be sheer nasty without being black of course. The worst offence for a joke is not to be at all funny and that's a low threshold. Abbott's comment was hardly Sacha Baron Cohen but it did clear that low bar.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3IMTJjzfo
It seems that Abbott's only possible offence is that there wasn't enough time since the event for some people. A few days from now and the world will be awash with Italian cruise ship and Captain Schettino jokes. It probably has already begun. It took me less than an hour to make up and distribute a dead Osama bin Laden joke. By the next day I had half a dozen out there but by then they were competing with thousands of others.
It's not the joking that concerns, Geoff. Yes, plenty of jokes abounded within a day, about the captain and Italian ships. Others more stupidly used this human-error, human-coward, incident as evidence of human arrogance in the face of nature (huh? so we should never have build ships, right? and this, of all events, is finally evidence that nature is a mightier force than us? Fooking hell, people are forceful twits!)
ReplyDeleteDo the taste test: what if the Prime Minister had made that quip?
Back in the real world, hundreds of people have drowned trying to get to Australia, and it will continue to happen, because of our appalling and appallingly stupid policies for how to manage and process people arriving without a visa by boat.
For sure, the public have to take a lot of blame - they almost goad the parties to implement the worst policies.
But our pollies are supposed to LEAD, not follow.
People will continue to come by boat - not out of desperation, and not because they are genuine refugees (for which there are legitimate paths for seeking asylum in Australia); no, they continue to come because they know they have more than a ninety per cent chance of gaining a permanent visa if they turn up by boat.
It's not as though they're making the attempt in ignorance, or blindly sailing without knowing where they're headed. Hell, most of them land in at least one or two countries - where they could safely seek asylum - before they head to Australia.
No, the whole boat people saga is ugly and has far too long a history to be funny. Suggesting that sinking boats and deaths are a handy solution is poor taste and fails to acknowledge culpability - of our politicians - about a protracted situation that should have been sorted a decade ago. It's unforgivable that our pollies continue to be dumb, on our behalf, and don't have the intelligence or the gumption to change, entirely, how boat arrivals are handled. Their only claim is "my policy is uglier and more punitive and more useless than yours".
No, it's not, alas, a matter for jokes.
I have to say I find no material for humour in the asylum seeker debacle and never have. I don't like the subject. It is clear that the Green's position on this is morally reprehensible but it often is. So is the rest of the gutless and dickhead wing of the left. There's an awful lot of cowardice around and I agree it is a little scary that Abbott's threat to use the navy that way is good politics. You would hope at least he just lost the navy vote.
ReplyDeleteI hate the way the genocidal left (Shepherd, Loewenstein, Rhiannon, etc. etc.) are given a free hand on this and bleed it for what it's worth -- often quite literally.
The boats have to be stopped. That will probably ultimately require a revision of the country's commitment to or at least interpretation of the asylum laws which the genocidal left never tire of pointing out were put in place to prevent a repeat of the treatment of European Jews pre-war. This is not strictly true, not by a long chalk, but it suits the genocidal left's mantra that if it's good enough for the Jews then why isn't it good enough for everyone and most especially why isn't it good enough for the Muslims. It also comes in handy if you are trying to argue there is no need for a state of Israel and never was.
But I have different dragons to slay.
Tim Blair has linked this piece from a Guardian journalist who interviewed an Afghan people smuggler
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/18/afghanistan-people-smugglers-taliban-europe
From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job application letters. Also available, for several hundred dollars more: Taliban death threats, the special chits also known as "night letters" that can be a passport to a new life in the west.
"We can write whatever you need; it depends," said one young clerk. "For example, we will mention you work in a government department, your job title and salary. It will say, 'If you don't leave your job by this date, we will come and kill you or put a bomb in your house'.
...
For a passage to Australia, another popular destination, the smuggler offered an all-expenses-included trip for $11,500. Like others in his trade he recommended Australia, promising it was a soft touch on granting asylum.
"Australia gives citizenship if you have a good story," he said. "I am 100% sure that after spending six months in a [processing centre] in Australia you will get citizenship if you do not lose your temper and have warning documents from the Taliban saying you can't live in Kabul."
e also trains his clients to stick to their story: "They will know you are lying, but as long as you say the same thing whatever they ask you, you will be fine."But the route to Australia is one of the most treacherous. After flying to Malaysia legally, the migrants move across the porous border into Indonesia from where they try to sail to Australia, if they are not caught by the Indonesian authorities and put in grim detention centres where they can remain for years.
...
Read the whole article. Fascinating. I think Abbott might have read it just before he made his use the navy to keep them in Indonesia jibe.
...
I think it's about time we got to the "root cause" of this problem.
ReplyDeleteThe article says that the people pay big fees back in Kabul to take the risk of getting to Australia in leaky dangerous boats manned mainly by duped kids by entering Indonesia illegally after flying from Kabul to Malaysia legally. So using the navy to turn them back to Indonesia will only work if there is evidence the Indonesians are letting them slip through to keep pressure off their detention centres (which wouldn't be so full if there wasn't a fair prospect of getting to Australia).
Maybe the Indonesians could be persuaded to patrol their border with Indonesia better. Perhaps that's the root cause. Or maybe Malaysia could be persuaded to tighten their visa requirements. What's that one about?
"Purpose of visit?"
"In transit. Unlawful entry to Indonesia so as to get to Australia by leaky boat"
[Stamp]
Or maybe they can be stopped from getting on the plane to KL in the first place. Perhaps put it on the airline. There's plenty of ways of pushing around an airline that doesn't toe your line.
Perhaps that's the root cause.
Or perhaps we should look at what it is exactly that drives ordinary people to take extraordinary risks to get out of a country where often they live relatively prosperously but looks like it is about to slip back into the grip of totalitarian Islam at its worst.
What are they fleeing? Surely that's the root cause.
That's it! I've got it!
Israel
The persistently revolting thing about the Greens is that they don't seem to care about those struggling in their own country, nor our country's future (quite contrary to all of their claims), yet any story from anyone who rocks up from another - more exotic - country is their new best friend, deserving of a whole wad of government benefits.
ReplyDeleteThere is NO need to revise the way we interpret any UN conventions; we are only obliged to receive and process asylum seekers, and obliged not to send them back to whence they came. There seems to be a misconception that we're obliged to keep anyone who is determined to be a legitimate refugee - and it's not true. We could simply look after them for a bit and find them another country. New Zealand is in need of people, they keep losing their own to Australia.
The porous borders of other countries are a big worry and a major reason why the boats keep on a-coming. Hardly news though, it hasn't changed for decades. Our Asian neighbours care not one bit how many refugees make a swim for it to our shores - big problem is moved out of their hands. No incentive for change.
The more serious problem though, is that, as you've said, we're a damned soft touch. If 9 per cent, rather than closer to 100 per cent, of boat arrivals sans visa were eventually successful in making a home in Australia the boats would finally stop coming and lives would finally stop being lost.
It's actually that simple, despite my being averse to simple answers for complex matters.
There seems to be a misconception that we're obliged to keep anyone who is determined to be a legitimate refugee - and it's not true. We could simply look after them for a bit and find them another country.
ReplyDeleteThe same attitude taken by any other country on the supposedly overfilled and infamous Oztrail.
The squealing that goes on over this by both parties - and the "Shire set" in Sydney - is putrid.
If either of these fakes of political parties were about in 1946 there'd have been no Snowy Scheme. Forget the Greens (had they existed): the Abbotts, Gillards and their like will have refused the refugees. For that's what they were. It is more correct to call them "Immigrants" nowadays. How many had all their papers from a war torn Europe?
I still remember the camp up the end of our road when I was in single digits. My mother called them "Blights". She could never tell me why and it never stopped her from associating with them. Probably explains my parents' happy acceptance of a Singaporean daughter-in-law I s'pose.
Abbott is an obnoxious arse. Use the navy. Yes, that's what we spend all the money for: seeking out and destroying the odd rickety assylum-seeker boat.
I should be less flip, Father.
ReplyDeleteIrregular maritime arrivals lead to the death of many hundreds of people. That a few thousand get through, for every few hundred deaths, are bad odds and is an inhumane process, period. Australian policies, both sides, have led to this appalling situation.
Nowadays, the boats that come are primarily filled with people who are not refugees, but have learned enough to know how to play Australia's system. Even those assessed as being a threat can't be sent back to their country of origin - many countries refuse to take them back, whether they have destroyed their own papers or not. So, even a potential terrorist gets to stay! It's a worthwhile gamble.
So, by boat, more than 90 per cent chance of staying. If processed off shore, or anywhere else, the average rate of bona fide refugee assessment being made is around 20 to 25 per cent. Fooking amazing that only bona fide refugees turn up to Australia by boat, hey?
We can and should take more refugees, even though more than 90 per cent spend at least the first five years on welfare.
They are NOT immigrants! And should never be confused as such. That's some other program, which is also pretty fucked, but at least a few months doing a cooks or hairdressing course no longer leads to permanent residency.
I don't think Oz interprets the UN provisions incorrectly, nor necessarily correctly - does it even matter when both the Libs and the ALP are so base, so embarrassing in their fight to implement the most repugnant policies to deal with irregular maritime arrivals?
It continues to bemuse me that they never ever have the same fight over the air arrivals.
My use of "immigrants" was to apply to those coming in the desperate days at WWII's end. Many left the mess of central Europe - a good number to run the blockade of Palestine.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't about then but I'd imagine their paperwork and the systems to check such were is some disarray.
Yes I too am bemused at the lack of fight to the bottom over air arrivals.
Perhaps they think people have suffered enough if they have already arrived by cattle class and endured airline food.
ReplyDelete