Why no outcry over Kevin Rudd's 'Indonesian Solution'?
The premise of John Howard’s ‘Pacific Solution’ was simple:
Throw money at our neighbouring countries and get them to hold asylum seekers offshore until they had been processed.
For Australia this meant seeing somewhat of a return on our aid which some of these countries relied on to survive and for Australian’s it meant the end of shenanigans such as sewing your lips shut or hunger striking for media attention.
For asylum seekers it meant a thorough background check which could take months depending on how uncooperative you wished to be and if you were patient and let the system do its thing, a temporary visa to enter Australia until whatever crap was going on in your own country wrapped up.
For the most part the Pacific Solution worked. Sure numbers were high for it’s first few years but soon enough people smugglers found it hard to sell mandatory detention to their customers and the flood of boats deteriorated into a trickle.
Despite working however, the Pacific Solution provided Howard’s critics with ammunition for years. There were protests, debates and article after article criticising the policy as being too harsh and inhumane.
Labor themselves had a field day and Kevin Rudd even made it an election promise to dismantle the program should he be elected.
Well, here we are just under two years into Rudd’s reign and we’re starting to see what happens when you implement an open door border protection policy. With our one offshore processing facility at Christmas Island bursting at the seams, Rudd has turned to Indonesia for support and seemed destined to begin his own ‘Indonesian Solution’.
Strangely enough, it’s all quiet on the protest front.
Although Rudd claims we’ve been in partnership with Indonesia for a while now over boat people, the first anyone heard about it was after Rudd called up Indonesia and begged them to intercept an Australia bound boat of 250 Tamils. The arrival of which would have pushed Christmas Island beyond its limits.
Currently the only public policy we have to deal with the inevitable choking of Christmas Island is to steal housing from Aboriginals to cope with the arrivals.
After begging Indonesia to intercept the 250+ strong Tamil boat however, over the last few days there’s been a notable shift in policy to incorporate Indonesia as a pre-emptive interception unit to stop boats before they reach Australian waters.
Sound familiar?
Infact so desperate is Rudd to implement a solution that he’s flying over to Indonesia today to have crisis talks on how to deal with boat people. Although not a certainty, I’m pretty sure we’re going to be hearing about a ‘landmark agreement’ between Indonesian and Australia over the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
Detaining asylum seekers in Indonesia however is not without its own problems.
Currently the Christmas Island detention centre costs Australian taxpayers $80,000 a day (or $29 million a year) on top of the $22 million the Rudd government spent on it over the past 12 months.
Additionally we pay Indonesia $20 million dollars annually to deal with people smugglers (and prior to intercepting the latest Tamil boat, who knows what they were doing with this money), and finally it’s been reported that in today’s Indonesian meeting Rudd will pledge even more money in exchange for co-operation in detaining asylum seekers.
Comparatively the Pacific Solution cost taxpayers just $15.5 million in the year 2003-2004.
Then there’s the fact Indonesia isn’t a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention which essentially means they can do whatever the hell they want to asylum seekers. Currently I believe this is lock them up and throw away the key.
And then there’s the asylum seekers themselves. As the group of 250+ Tamil asylum seekers have demonstrated, they simply don’t want to be detained in Indonesia. There aren’t any Centrelink offices and welfare is practically non-existent.
The hypocrisy between Labor and the Liberals here is overwhelming. After years of criticism and the disarming of our most successful border protection policy to date, it appears Rudd is going about re-instating it but in a much more sneaky way.
What’s more those that heavily criticised Howard over using other nations to detain our asylum seekers are strangely silent as Rudd sets about establishing the Pacific Solution 2.0.
Personally I’m of the opinion that people shouldn’t be let into this country until they’ve had rigorous background checks, no matter how long this takes. I don’t really care if it’s done onshore or offshore but I’d rather our local bleeding heart population didn’t have direct access to the holding facility.
If we’re unable to accurately process someone due to them being unco-operative or being unable to find evidence backing their claims, this should go against them and diminish the chances of them being accepted.
Whether we employ the Indonesians to do all this or not I really don’t care, so long as it gets done. The Pacific Solution worked and if Rudd can get Indonesia to do the grunt work then more power to him.
I just wish the left in this country weren’t in such denial over what he’s setting out to do. Do they really think Indonesia is going to give any more of a crap about asylum seekers and provide them with hotel accommodation + foxtel and listen to their whining just because we throw some money at them?
Please.
October 20th, 2009 at 8:55 am Citizen-D(Quote)
Welcome to the Rudd government – spend an entire election campaign decrying the previous governments initiatives that had us as a country in a very strong position, then realise they were right and worked, and now spend three times as much money to re-invent the wheel but claim credit for it with no guarantee of results.
October 30th, 2009 at 8:58 am Bushrat(Quote)
Simple solution from the Bushrat:
Plan A: Intercept boat people. Offer and provide medical checks, food, water and fuel. Turn boat around and tell them to return to where they came.
Plan B: The same as plan “A” excepting that if they refuse to go back or try to again sail in, take them on board. Sink boat. Load them onto a Customs vessel, and physically return them to whence they came!
Firstly, it would be cheaper, secondly it would be more humane than putting them in camps, thirdly, they would get home and tell all thier mates what happens when you try to enter Australia unlawfully. They would lose a bundle and the word would spread, making this method a less attractive option.
I have nothing against genuine refugees coming to this country, and am happy to share this land with them, provided they go through proper channels.
Maybe a more pro-active and efficient use of our Embassies overseas and faster processing would help these people to apply and come here in a fairer, safer and more orderly manner?
October 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
This will help to a certain extent however it doesn’t address the fact that we don’t need illiterate no-skills people here.
As such the intake numbers for these people through official channels is quite low and as such we see them jumping on boats trying to force their way in.
At some point we’ve just got to say no, and Rudd doesn’t seem to know how.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:21 pm James(Quote)
You should realise that a lot of them, if sent back to where they came from, would be going back to a camp so it wouldn’t be more humane, and the slums and refugee camps that I’ve seen oversease are far far worse than any camp/immigration centre that we have in Australia, and the centres in Indonesia (based on what I’ve heard about them.)
The Greens and a few others complain that the centres in Indonesia wouldn’t even pass the standards of an Australian prison, like that’s a bad thing when compared to living in a refugee camp/ slum made from bamboo poles and holed layers of tarpaulin built on bare soil with 3 or 4 toilets per 100 people that some of them would’ve been living in before hand.
A lot of backpacker accommodation and cheap hotels that we travellers choose and pay to stay in while backpacking in some countries wouldn’t even go close to meeting the standards for an Australian prison, and I’m sure refugees wouldn’t knock back a bed in an old hotel/backpackers if they were given the opportunity –
And the idea of being able to live somewhere that was up to the same standards of an Aus prison would be like 5 star accommodation to them when compared to refugee camps, so I’m sure they can put up with the 3 or 4 stars of an Indonesian centre – if not… Complain to the Indonesian government to contribute some funding to jack it up to 5 stars, not Australia.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:22 pm Bushrat(Quote)
You are quite correct James. Everything you say is right. The only problem with it all is that we do not have the resources, financial, or support wise to cope with these people, a great many of them do and will “fall through the cracks”.
I am led to believe that if accepted as a refugee, they get a fairly substantial allowance until they are released into the community. Then its off to Centrelink, and in many cases, put with other folk from the same geographical area into public housing. In the area I live in, we have a growing number of people from Somalia. Most are quite pleasent people, but many of the young are running around in groups – not showing much sign of integrating at all. Smile and nod to these people, and half the time they give you a hostile stare and lift the lip in a sneer. Sorry, but I dont like it, especially since my tax dollars are going towards paying for the importation of troubled individuals who are going to have a large number of “problem people” amongst them.
Don’t we have enough friggin trouble already? I think we need to be mindful of the two old sayings, “Charity begins at home” and “Clean up your own backyard”.
In a perfect world of course, there would be no wars, civil strife, or religious bullshit of any persuasion, and everyone would have a nice house, a job, and be safe.
Its not a perfect world however, and whichever way you look at it, this is going to one day soon come back and bite us on our collective arses!
October 31st, 2009 at 5:32 am James(Quote)
Bushrat, I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said, I was just pointing out about camps.
It would be great if we had endless money and could look after more refugees, but we don’t. Unfortunately I think the perception overseas is that money grows on trees in Australia, and that combined with our low population in relation to space means we can house a lot more refugees.
What alot of people overseas don’t seem to get is that a massive chunk of Australia is uninhabitable desert, and the fact that we have a low population means that we have less people to pay the bills to support refugees.
October 31st, 2009 at 5:12 pm Bushrat(Quote)
Yes mate, I agree completely, and the reasons we are in this situation are many. For example, after WW2, we were offered a four lane highway, right around the coastline of Australia, from Sydney to Sydney, at NO COST! The US wanted to build it so that they would not have a flood of servicemen going back to the States and looking for work at the same time. All they wanted was to collect the tolls for the next 20 or so years to cover the costs. Guess what our government said? Yep, “Ah no! WE will build it and then WE get to collect the tolls” – 50 + years later we are still waiting for it, and many of our interstate highways are killing fields for the unfortunate motorists. Same as the dams that were proposed for the Murray and other major river systems to take advantage of the northern summer rain – never happened, now it never will. Too many “dreamie Greenies” who worry about frogs and lizards, and we are left with exactly what you say – uninhabitable desert!
I do agree with you about the camps, I really do, and for many people that very word has sinister overtones, but what can we do? As you rightly state, we are NOT a rich country in cash terms, and simply cant afford to look after our born-here population, let alone queue jumping refugees, no matter how much sympathy we feel for them.
I reckon that between the posters on this site, we could probably run this damn country pretty well, dont ya think?
October 31st, 2009 at 10:01 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Today we just dropped another $40 million the Christmas Island facility so it might as well. Currently Christmas Island costs us $80,000 a day to run, I imagine with double the capacity we’d be looking at roughly $160,000 a day.
The stupid thing is the only reason we haven’t just bent over for that 78 mob sitting on the Viking is because Christmas island is just too full. If we had the space we’d have already brought them down which is a disgrace seeing as they were caught in Indonesia’s watch zone (and we did the Indonesian’s a favour picking them up).
This is one point which I think is commonly overlooked. Sure we have room on the coasts and people always go on about our percentage of asylum seekers vs the world movement of people.
The counter to this is Australia has bugger all population. Sure the US and Europe get a lot more refugees but Australia only has a population of 20 something million! The mining boom is only going to get us so far, when that’s over do we really want thousands of illeterate asylum dole bludgers mooching off public housing?
November 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm Bushrat(Quote)
Too right! I think its about time that we hardened up more than a little, not only with asylum seekers, but with our own Governments, and the rest of the globalised world as a whole.
The reality is that we as a population dont have the collective guts to force the change. Pauline Hanson tried it and the “system” dealt with her well and truly didnt it? Her biggest crime was that she did not have a goood command of the English language, and even though the things she said struck a chord with many Australians, (regardless of ethnic background), she was vilified as a rascist, and eventually jailed.
The only future I see for Australia if common sense does not arrive quickly, is that of an outpost state under the direct influence and control of south east Asia, – probably China.
Sad really, as we have led the way in many things over the years, and have a lot of good people here, but what the way forward is now, I honestly dont know.