Tuesday 11 June 2013

Malcolm Turnbull and Mark Latham LIED. Shame on both your houses!


Shame Malcolm Turnbull. 

Shame Mark Latham!

On Monday's QandA on ABC 1, Malcolm Turnbull said that under the Prime Minister-ship of John Howard, asylum seekers travelling on boats to Australia stopped.

They didn't.

Mark Latham reiterated Malcolm Turnbull's comment.

Both were wrong and here is a graph of figures taken from the Refugee Council of Australia that proves it. The figures don't lie!

Malcolm also said that turning the boats around worked.

He was wrong again.

The figures show exactly why  the arrival of asylum seekers on boats slowed down.
There is a direct correlation between fewer boat arrivals and circumstances in afflicted countries.

Malcolm feigns humanitarian sympathy for those who drown at sea, for thinly disguised political opportunism.  He is trying to justify his party's xenophobic policy to turn back the boats by lying about his concern for those who die at sea. 

If he truly cared about asylum seekers and their welfare why would he want to enact a double persecution on these people? Regardless, they will continue to come to Australia until the situations in their own countries change. The numbers bear this out!

The Greens have made a number of suggestions to the two old tired, stuck in a rut parties but they have all been rejected. Even the High Commission has agreed with Greens ideas.

The Greens solutions are: http://greens.org.au/policies/care-for-people/immigration-and-refugees

Ideas: Establish Australian refugee processing centres in both Indonessia and Malaysia. Give each asylum seeker a waiting ticket which will take them to Australia within a few days.
Allocate funding saved from dismantling the extremely expensive detention centres in New Guinea, Nauru, Christmas Island and Australia, to staff the centres in Indonesia and Malaysia and for flights to Australia. 

With increased numbers of staff, asylum seekers will be processed and in communities within a number of days thus reducing psychological damage to them and their families. Avoiding the double damage done to asylum seekers will increase their potential to become active and useful members of our Australian society. 
Of course any who are proven not to be genuine will be sent back from whence they come. 

This has more potential to stop people taking that terrible journey by boat than anything the two tired old parties have to offer. Use your brains people!

Shame Malcolm Turnbull. 

Shame Mark Latham!

Here is the graph created by Karen Hansen.

'I have created this image from a graph from the Refugee Council of Australia paper found here : http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/r/isub/2012-13-IntakeSub-stat.pdf

I have included things like government (who the leading parties were at the time of figures) and also world issues and where the refugees came from (background)

You will note that Australian refugee intake PEAKED at 22,545 in 1980-81. (predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese fleeing Communist rule). This was under Liberal government........... but I am NOT suggesting that Liberals can't control the refugee intake ~ I am merely pointing out that the world issues affected the refugees seeking assylum in Australia were dependent upon WORLD issues, not government............... much as the refugees today are fleeing to us not because we have a Labor government, but because they are fleeing their homeland.

This figure of 1980-81 is SUBSTANTIALLY higher than the figure from 2010-11 of 13,799.

Indeed, the past 2 decades, the figure has sat about the 10-14K mark without much change.

Our quota is actually 6,000 but was increased to 13,750 in 2010 to account for Special Humanitarian Program
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/RefugeeResettlement

To note.................. THERE IS NO CRISIS OF BOAT PEOPLE IN THE STATS. 

The current figures are actually the NORM!!!!'




2 comments:

  1. Thanks for that data going back to 1977. It shows how low both major parties have stooped in recent years. Malcolm Fraser, whom I hated through his Prime Ministership, showed more humanitarian credibility on refugees than our current crop of leaders.

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    1. Thanks for that Takver. Trying to spread the news and stop the calamatous result at the next election!!

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