...."Rudd is sending out mixed messages to asylum seekers
With four boats full of people smuggler cargo arriving in just three days last week, as a nation we’re beyond pretending there isn’t a problem.
Although obvious to most people, Rudd’s dismantling of the pacific solution and promise to fasttrack asylum seeker applications has sparked a massive increase in the number of arrivals here – yet he insists his actions weren’t the catalyst.
We offer welfare, housing, the ability to live comfortably without being literate or speaking a word of English, free healthcare and once you’ve set yourself up here you can then work on getting the rest of your family here.
If the government announced it was going to speed up boat people processing why wouldn’t you want to come to Australia by a boat? Last I checked illiterate people who couldn’t speak english didn’t rank too high on our legal immigration queues.
Although Labor aren’t directly admitting their limp policies are the problem, they’ve started to realise something has to be done.
Unfortunately this something has come in the way of street theatre, advertising banners and church notices.
…I wish I was kidding.
To deliver his message of deterrence to the people of Sri Lanka Rudd has hired Saatchi and Saatchi, a worldwide advertising agency.
Saatchi & Saatchi’s Ronald Peiris, the creative genius behind the anti-immigration message, said the campaign would use “street drama” to take its message directly to the people.
To put this latest initiative into context, how many people stopped eating meat when those young nubile girls decided to strip down and label their body parts in black texta last year?
And how exactly do you portray an anti-immigration message through street theatre?
‘Gather around folks, it’s time to watch our interpretative dance of what will happen when you come to Australia illegally.’
Yeah I’m sure that’s going to work wonders.
“A lot of rumours are being spread that people can make it,” Mr Peiris said.
“What we want to tell the people is that what you hear is not what really happens.”
After Rudd opening the flood gates in August 2008, Australia saw 161 boatpeople arrive by the end of the year. Prior to August, there had been 0 arrivals for 2008.
Word didn’t take long to get out and so far we’ve seen just under 1600 boat people jump the queue for 2009, and we’ve still got two and a half months to go. That’s a 993% increase.
Out of the 1873 boat people who have arrived under Labor, Kevin Rudd has thus far rejected just 2. Or in other words, come to Australia illegally and you have a 99.9% chance of being given a visa, keys to a new house and centrelink customer reference number.
This statistical fact seemingly flies in the face of Mr. Peiris’ comments that “The idea is to say that irregular migration will get you nowhere.”
Further questions are raised about the effectiveness of the campaign when it’s been revealed that in Indonesia, the proportionate amount of asylum seekers registered is just 53 Sri Lankans, compared to 1371 Afghans.
I don’t imagine the people smuggling non-registered ratios are much different. Shouldn’t we be taking our anti-immigration interpretative dance roadshow to Afghanistan?
The Indonesian report is important because it’s where most of the people claiming asylum set sail from.
“Asylum seeker” Sabzali Salman tendered a report to the Darwin magistrates court recently highlighting just how effective the people smugglers have become.
I heard that Australia would accept refugees and were sympathetic to refugees. Ayoub also told me this.
Ayoub told me that he was acting as the middle man for the people smuggler, as I would not be meeting him. I was told that the US$6000 would go to Sayed Ali for him to make arrangements for my travel to Australia.
Salman’s report is a real eye opener and again contradicts the Labor governments claims. Salman states that after leaving Indonesia, the total time spent on a boat getting to Australia was just five days.
Meanwhile the Australian government’s strategy is to ‘inform potential irregular migrants of the realities, risks and consequences of irregular migration, in particular the dangers associated with long sea voyages”.
A 99.9% mathematical success rate and a 5 day boat voyage doesn’t seem like a danger to me. In return for free money, housing and food it’s quite clear that the Australian taxpayer is getting the raw end of the stick here.
What is clear here is that the Australian government are clearly incompetent in dealing with the problem.
Ineffective campaigns, such as street theatre are being used in countries representing a minority of the nationalities of boat people that arrive here. Further more the message these campaigns are trying to get across are misleading, if not a downright lie when compared to what is actually going on here.
On one hand we spend up on anti-immigration advertising campaigns and then with the other hand we’re fast tracking applications and handing out protection visas like they were candy.
We might not need to go back to something as drastic as the Pacific Solution, but clearly this haphazard approach isn’t going to make a dent on the problem.
People smugglers aren’t stupid and they know how to get their message across to their customers, until we acknowledge that and start effectively dealing with it the Australia’s boat people problem isn’t going to go away.
I just wish somebody would tell Kevin Rudd that.
October 8th, 2009 at 4:00 pm Mike(Quote)
Interesting points, what do you think of the base problem then.
Do you think that Asylum should be granted to these people? If not then do you think the rules are too lax?
October 8th, 2009 at 5:03 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Of course not. Infact I think it’s ridiculous we’re calling illegal immigrants ‘economic immigrants’ now. Economic immigrants are people who come here legally and have been screened and are able to contribute to the economy.
Illiterate queue jumpers should just be instantly deported. If they want to fly to Indonesia that’s their asylum right there.
I think they are at the moment. We’re caught trying to process illegals as quickly as possible due to Christmas Island’s finite space.
Because of this I think we’re just fast tracking anyone who comes here and so long as they don’t have a Bin Laden keyring on we’ll let them in.
If you don’t have paperwork, you refuse to co-operate so that your identity can be established or you admit to jumping on a plane to Indonesia from wherever we should just instantly deport you.
If they won’t tell us where they’re from so we can deport them, then just tow them back out to sea and point some navy artillery at them.
Given we don’t share any adjacent land with any other country and we’re not remotely near any war zones; like Howard said, Australian’s should be dictating how and why people come to Australia, not Indonesian people smugglers.
October 10th, 2009 at 3:59 pm RH(Quote)
I’m not stating my opinion here one way or the other, but you have to understand that asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants. There’s nothing illegal in arriving in Australia without a visa and seeking asylum. People smuggling is illegal, but seeking asylum is not. They only become illegal immigrants if they are found to not be genuine refugees and refuse to leave.
October 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Let’s face it, people with thousands to spend on people smugglers aren’t asylum seekers, they’re just trying to buy a ticket onto the Australian welfare gravy train.
Everyone is an ‘asylum seeker’ because that’s what the smugglers tell them to say. If they tell us the truth, we send them back.
We should be sending a hell of a lot more then two back but we just bend over and take it as gospel when people lie to us.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:06 pm Disgruntled(Quote)
As a person who has worked with genuine refugees who don’t have a country to go back to, I think that we need to make the distinction between them and the trash, either from abroad or Aussie grown.