Powerless to stop an invasion of boat people
Piers Akerman
Daily Telegraph
Thursday, September 16, 2010
IN three swift years, the Rudd-Gillard Labor Government has destroyed Australia’s border security and reduced the asylum seeker issue to a deadly farce.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd was responsible for putting people smugglers back in business when he oversaw a comprehensive relaxation of border controls in 2008.
The welcome sign for asylum seekers was well and truly written to order by current Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Now, the secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC), Andrew Metcalfe, has been forced to write to his colleagues in other areas of the public service begging for assistance to help DIAC meet an “urgent and increasing demand for staff” to cope with the ever-increasing flow of new arrivals.
They are, Metcalfe writes, rapidly “approaching the point where we will not be able to meet the demand”.
While Rudd - in his new incarnation as Foreign Minister - jets off to grandstand in New York with the global United Nations panjandrums whose company he prefers, negotiations with East Timor over a possible asylum processing centre have been left to the Government’s newly-minted Immigration Minister Chris Bowen.
Only days into his new job, Bowen has essentially acknowledged that offshore processing is on the cards.
Though Labor would rather choke than pronounce the words “Pacific Solution”, the Papua New Guinea Government is already discussing the reopening of its Manus Island detention centre - oops, better call that an “asylum seeker processing centre” - and letters have been flying between Michael Sapan, Governor of Manus Province, and PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare. Sapan has been arguing, quite reasonably, that the Lobrum asylum processing centre could be reopened and that it would be an economic boon to a severely financially stressed area of the country.
He evens dares to mention the Pacific Solution.
In the area of border protection, as in so many others, Labor has proven itself to be the party of gross mismanagement.
As shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison said yesterday, the level of seaborne arrivals currently in detention because of Labor’s discriminatory asylum freeze, and the extended taxpayer-funded appeals processes, have both contributed to a record detention population of more than 5000 people.
The numbers are staggering.
In September, Australia’s detention population included 4527 people who had arrived illegally by boat.
This compares to just four people in November, 2007. Under Labor, the number of those held in detention centres has increased by - wait for it - 113,075 per cent. So much for Rudd’s pre-election boast that he would turn them back.
My Daily Telegraph colleague Simon Benson revealed that of 6310 asylum seekers arriving in Australia in the past two years, only 75 have been rejected and returned to their country of origin.
The cost to the nation of Labor’s utterly shambolic approach to border security is now running into billions.
It’s also eating into other areas of critical importance to Australia. As Australia’s Chief of Defence Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said earlier this week, key defence assets are so overstretched dealing with the incessant influx of boat people that day-to-day operations are being compromised.
The constant demand for air surveillance aircraft and patrol boats “means you sometimes can’t do other things”, Houston has admitted.
West Australia has become a dumping ground for asylum seekers. Labor has now admitted that it is expanding facilities at the remote Curtin air base to house boat people, and other possible sites at Laverton and Northam are being explored.
Local communities, such as the one at isolated Leonora, east of Perth, are finding that the boom which was promised as an accompaniment to its detention centre, has not eventuated.
Instead of local stores reaping the benefits, supplies are shipped from major operators in Perth. Resentment is growing as residents see detainees access benefits which the locals cannot afford, including fresh produce.
Liberal MP Don Randall, whose Canning electorate is home to a high percentage of immigrants, said there was a perception that the newly-arrived refugees were receiving better access to education and health facilities than long-established migrants.
“What do you tell a war widow who can’t get help with housing while recent arrivals are placed at the top of the list because of some obligation to a UN treaty?” he asked.
Meanwhile, at the modern District Court in the centre of Perth, four Indonesian crewmen who brought a boatload of Afghan asylum seekers to Ashmore Reef in June, 2009, are in the middle of trial which is set to run from two to three weeks.
Lorens Lapikana, Anto, Samsul Bahar, Anwah Abdullah, each with his own taxpayer-provided barrister and each with his own taxpayer-funded translator, have been appearing daily to listen as tapes and transcripts from their recorded interviews with DIAC officials on Christmas Island last July are played to a judge and jury. Two of the men had claimed to be aged under 15 but X-rays were taken of their wrists and a radiologist has testified that their probable ages were greater than 19, enabling them to be tried as adults. Though a number of Indonesians have been sent home without charge, probably to relieve overcrowding in the already stretched West Australian prison system, the jurors may decide to add these to the 48 currently serving sentences.
The cost of keeping them in jail serving sentences or among the 74 currently on remand, runs to millions each year.
Despite the claims that more illegal arrivals come to Australia by air, these crewmen are a reminder that boats have brought more people in than all the airlines in the past 11 months. According to Morrison, between July 1, 2009, and June 11, 2010, there were 5233 asylum seekers who arrived illegally by boat and just 541 asylum seekers who arrived illegally by plane (i.e. without visa documentation).
“This means almost 10 times as many illegal arrivals came by boat than by plane under Labor’s failed border protection policies,” he said.
“The vast majority of people who arrive by plane and subsequently make an asylum claim do so with a valid visa and full documentation, enabling their claims to be properly tested. The Government’s figures show that 5105 people who arrived by plane during this same period and subsequently sought asylum, arrived with valid documentation.”
Labor is in denial on its failure on border protection, despite the overwhelming evidence of policy collapse.
Its strategy was farcical and has proved to be, as forecast, unworkable. This is a crisis, a crisis of Labor’s own making. And it will not be solved while the Gillard Government continues to close its eyes to this fiasco.
Anyone who honestly believes that the Australian Labor Party’s facilitation of Islamic Colonization of Australia aka. Border Protection, is anything BUT a joint Criminal Enterprise with their Islamic / UN Partners in Crime, is more than a little too laidback.
Hundreds of thousands of Australian’s and Australian Families are sleeping outdoors,in Sydney’s all our other capital cities shop doorways, in cars, under bridges and in public parks or anywhere else they and their children can find shelter,the Rudd / Gillard Government elected in 2007 insists it has done all that is possible to remedy this appalling third world situation.
Yet Male Muslim Illegal Entrants, and a minority of Females and children,are been housed, fed and clothed, accommodated in Motels, given FREE Medical,Pharmacutical, Dental, internet access,cable TV,”culturally sensitive food” education, life long social security, subsidized public transport and anything else they demand of their new found Kaffir benefactors.
The cost of Labors Islamic Colonization by Stealth Policy is estimated at $80,000 per head per month so far 6000 plus, mainly Muslim Males have been imported into Australia as a result of the Rudd Gillard Governments “Border Protection Policy”
Australia’s newly appointed “Idiot in Search of a UN Village in residence” former Australian PM , Lu Kewen aka. Kevin 07, has just handed over another $40 million to our self declared Muslim enemies in Pakistan, whilst on another of his “ Dhimmi Lick Spittle world tours” attempting to buy his way into the office of UN Secretary General.
No $40 Million for Australia’s mentally ill and homeless,our Service Personnel or their Wives and children killed or injured by Muslims overseas, but no shortage of money and RED Carpet facilitation and fast track residence for those who say they are sworn to DESTROY us, to the tune of just under a BILLION Australian Dollars a YEAR Paid for by those the Australian Labor Party,the LEFT, HATES the most,the average working Australian family and all they aspire to and expect ANY Australian Government to ensure is its #1 priority, the Australian way of Life, not the Muslim way of life not the MULTICULTURAL , United Nations way of Life, the Australian Way of Life.
Australians Know who is Paying you Lu Kewen / Madame Gillard, but come clean and tell us who you and you and your fellow Comrades are WORKING FOR.
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