Peter O'Neill has blood on his hands over Manus
By GAVERA GAVERA Jr
“Hitler designed the Auschwitz Gas Chambers for the Jews: Peter O'Neill created Manus for innocent refugees” “They should all be charged and tried for crimes against humanity.”
Peter O'Neill deliberately breached the PNG Constitution and the UN Refugee Convention to enter into Agreement to ship Australian bound refugees to PNG two years ago. The Manus detention centre set up was to facilitate Australia’s political solution aimed at stemming the flow of refugees, asylum seekers or boat people into Australia. Manus to this day remains an illegal set up, for an illegal purpose.
Peter O'Neill only acceded to Julia Gillard’s ‘unlawful’ political request for Manus to be a refugee processing centre as a return favour to her for granting O'Neill premature political recognition of his (otherwise illegitimate) government when O'Neill threw out an ill (but legitimately elected) Prime Minister Somare still
on legitimate official sick leave, convalescing in a Singapore hospital.
O'Neill could not refuse Gillard, as she had provided him the scarce element of legitimacy he needed to govern, even whilst the supreme Court was still deliberating on the question of whether there was a vacancy in the Office of Prime Minister on the 2nd of August 2011 or not.
AUSTRALIA & O'NEILL BREACHED INTERNATIONAL LAW.
The Manus processing centre is a closed jail like centre where there is heavily armed security, and is out of bounds to the public and the media. It is a strictly controlled environment where the Refugees are not allowed to mingle with locals. They cannot leave the site. No locals are allowed in. It is a prison-like environment wherein detainees are not allowed access to normal creature comforts of normal life. There is a very strong fence that cannot be assailed and armed guards are posted everywhere. Australian Federal Police, Australian security contractors, and local security contractors maintain an overriding presence on the Manus facility.
No one,including lawyers, are allowed access to any Refugee under the Bi-lateral arrangements between Australia and PNG. No media is allowed in, and the use of mobile phones and access to them is greatly restricted. The use of cameras and the Internet are also restricted. The detainees are not allowed to speak of their conditions to the outside world. Contact with outside world is greatly restricted to those detained at the risk of them forfeiting their right to early processing. By bi-lateral Agreement those detained are purportedly made subject to Australian law only-not PNG law.
The refugees’ living conditions are woeful. They live in canvas tents of several men to a tent in a hot tropical environment with no air-conditioning or privacy. They were brought to Manus two years ago, and two years on they still have not been processed under international law. The build up of frustration boiled over 2
months ago with the murder by Australian contracted security guards of two male refugees. After initial outcry, the Australian government has moved to cover up and swept the murders under the carpet, as if these lives do not matter at all.
The initial economic reasons why the Manus Island was first offered by the Manus Provincial Government and the leaders of Manus have been largely ignored by Peter O'Neill and Julia Gillard. The promise of extraordinary favor by Australia on Manus in the form of extraordinary economic largess's was the
perfect bait for cargo-cult prone Manusians.
The reality is most of the contractors and suppliers of food and consumables are companies out of Australia, so there is very little tangible economic benefit back to PNG or the Manusians for this exercise.
Both Australia and PNG are signatories to the UN Convention & Protocols Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention)1951 & 1967 Protocol (“Refugee Convention”) which clearly outlines that a signatory government like Australia cannot expel or transport refugees back to their country of origin or to a third location like Manus or Nauru, unless there is a guarantee that these countries will not mistreat, oppress , persecute them, and that their human rights will be protected (Articles 32 &33).
This obligation on Australia was not discharged at all.
What has happened in Manus over the last two years, and what is going on presently, is clearly evidential of the fact that Manus was not properly planned, and the human lives on Manus are being so terribly mistreated to the point of even death.
Recently, one of the bravest and better Judges of the National Court took on himself to commission an inquiry into human rights breaches, if any, in Manus. Attempts were made by the Australian government and the Attorney General to stop him from merely doing his job as mandated by law. It is amazing to see the extents to which the Australian government is prepared to go to stop scrutiny of its actions.
Every decent Australian and every decent Papua New Guinean should rightfully be ashamed of what their countries have become. Even the Attorney General of PNG has lost his compass bearings in so far as human rights are concerned. If being the Attorney General of PNG is not about upholding the Constitution and
protecting human rights, then the Attorney General is in the wrong job, he should become a pig farmer.
Unfortunately we will never get to the truth because even the refugees who spoke out to the National Court Judge would have done so guardedly, and have been clearly censored, and they would have been very fearful of oppression and discrimination for their Applications for entry into Australia. The Judge has to assume all evidence given is tainted with coercion and undue influence. The truth is too dark, and far worse than they could tell. A lot rides on this Judge’s report.
Until PNG can give a guarantee that the human rights of the refugees will be guaranteed and protected ( which it is in no position to do) and until Australia can satisfy itself that the rights of the refugees will be protected and that they would not be oppressed in any way, Australia is obliged by the Refugee Convention not to expel or transport them at all from Australia, but to process them on Australian soil. In this sense, two years on, Australia stands in breach of the UN Refugee Convention.
Irrespective of whether a person’s status as a refugee has been determined (under the Convention) or not, the processing of boat people who enter Australia or apprehended by Australian authorities, must principally be done in Australia and on Australian soil, under the Convention, and they can only be transported out under fairly limited circumstances.
The legal onus is on Australia to satisfy itself objectively beyond any doubt the guarantee of the rights of the refugees as human beings where they are transported to. In the case of Manus, Australia knew that by design there was no way the human rights of the refugees would be protected. It is no surprise that two years on we find Australia has failed to deliver on human rights stakes. It in fact set up a bi-lateral regime to rob and deny the refugees of their human rights. Every Refugee it sends to Manus, and every Refugee that remains on Manus today, is a testament to Australia’s human rights crimes. What is more, it is testament to Australia being a lawless regime in the Pacific.
Manus processing center is actually a jail for innocent people whose only crime has been to search for a better life for themselves, and in some cases, escape from death and persecution for their political or religious beliefs. Article 31 of the Refugee Convention states that no refugee can be penalized for illegal entry of a country’s territory if they are fleeing from persecution.
Australia also wrote the rules (by drafting the bi-lateral Agreement) that deem the detention centre as part of Australia where Australian law applies, to deliberately circumvent the jurisdiction of the PNG Courts. Australia is simply playing two jurisdictions to circumvent its own obligations, and Peter O'Neill should have sought better advice for the sake of PNG’s own sovereign rights and obligations under the UN Convention, instead of selling us out.
All these designs, whilst didn’t work for the single brave National Court Judge, are capricious and oppressive arrangements created by Australia to deliberately entrap the detainees in a legal, political and media vacuum, an d play two jurisdictions against each other, so that it can do whatsoever it pleases to these human lives, away from the scrutiny of any media, and away from the scrutiny of the Australian courts and the Australian legal system.
The Refugee Convention is very clear and specific in Article 16 about Refugees access to lawyers and the Courts as a matter of human right.
It is all very well for Tony Abbott to claim Australian Law applies in Manus to the processing of these people, but what good is that when under the bi-lateral arrangements PNG Immigration Department (stacked with Ausaid Advisors) cannot grant visas to Australian lawyers or Australian Media teams who want to travel to Manus and speak to the Refugees and highlight their present suffering.
In any case, even if they were to be granted visas to travel, what good is that when an independent Australian armed Security Company (a captive service provider of the Federal Government) running the facility prohibits any outsider access to the inmates?
Lawyers and Journalists from both Australia and PNG cannot access any inmate to meet and observe their condition or interview them. Without contact with refugees granting instructions to lawyers, it has been designed to prevent any scrutiny by both Australian and PNG Courts of what is actually going on in Manus concerning the lives of these refugees.
The Manus processing centre has been deliberately set up to frustrate the rule of law and the clear dictates of international law which was designed to protect vulnerable people like these boat-people who are at the mercy of a country that sees them as nothing but in terms of troublemakers, illegal immigrants, cue jumpers, human garbage, and such other derogatory terms.
All these rules and oppressive arrangements have been well thought through and planned by Canberra, written into the bi-lateral Agreement that Gillard obtained O'Neill to sign.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Australia not only is in breach of international law and in particular Article 33 of the Refugee Convention in exporting refugees to a detention centre that deprives refugees of their rights, but Australia is the worst offender in deliberately designing these people’s misery. Hitler designed gas chambers for the Jewish Refugees in WWII. Today we see Australia has designed detention Centres in the Pacific. Peter O'Neill signed the Manus“deal”. O'Neill has blood on his hands.
Julia Gillard, Peter O'Neill, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott should all be held responsible for their part in these crimes against humanity. They should all be charged under the UN Convention and tried for crimes against humanity. Better still they should all be charged for human rights abuses in breach of the PNG Constitution, and tried as criminals for Constitutional Crimes.
The latter would take a simple complaint laid against each person with the PNG Police and the AFP in Port Moresby. The AFP should be able to handle a complaint like this, as they are here to promote and uphold the rule of law.
The other avenue is The Hague. A complaint should be filed at the Hague by a suitable Party against these persons for their crimes against humanity. The Bilateral Agreement speaks for itself as to how evil the minds who concocted and maintain such apparatus.
For a long time the Australian government has been looking to curb or discourage boat people flooding its shores by deliberately employing cruel and inhuman treatment of asylum seekers, boat people or refugees. Australia’s record in refugee treatment is not pretty. In some cases children and babies have been held in
captivity in jail like conditions in Australia for years without any consideration for their humanity. Families have been rendered asunder, and in almost all cases lives have been destroyed. Many people held in captivity in jail like conditions in Australia have been left with permanent psychological scarring. Others have gone on hunger strike, committed suicide, or even sown up their lips to demonstrate that they are a people without a voice discarded as garbage by the Australian Federal Government and its leadership.
Who c an ever forget, how over Christmas in 2011, we watched in horror as the remains of a boat carrying over 300 men women and children, smashed mercilessly against the rocks on Christmas Island, were gathered up piece by piece and limb by limb by the Australian Navy.
Australia has a duty of care to ensure the safety of people who are otherwise in peril at sea generally, and especially to boat people who are refugees fleeing persecution.
The Refugee Convention is very clear that it is not a crime for human beings, people of one country to leave their country and go seek a better life in another country if they suffer persecution in the original country on grounds of race, religion or political belief. As a matter of fact it is a fundamental human right to live in peace in a safe and secure environment, and the Convention provides for and gives effect to this right and the sacred sanctity of human life and the inherent dignity of every person.
As civilized peoples of the 21st Century, we should all join hands with the rest of the international community and condemn human rights abuses across the globe, and especially as it occurs in our own backyard. We must be ever so vigilant to ensure what has happened to the Jews, and the indigenous peoples of Australia, never ever happens again to us, the West Papuans or any other group o f people in our neighborhood.
AUSTRALIAN IMMIGRATION POLICY FAILURE.
What is currently going on is symptomatic of Australia still caught up in the White Australia Policy and unable to make a meaningful transition into the 21st Century. It is symbiotic of a bureaucracy in Canberra set in insular paradigms of the past caught up in clever legalities and not caring about the reality of human suffering. Canberra is in fact suffering from Immigration (Refugee) policy failure. It does not possess the moral suasion or courage to come up with a more liberal and workable policy. The root of this failure lies deep in its own origin as a penal colony.
It has over the years done everything under the sun to persecute, desecrate and demonize asylum seekers, refugees and boat people. Yet when it comes down to it, Australia is a country of boat people. White Australia is a country of boat people and their descendants. What gives Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, and their Cabinets any more right to Australia than those latterly arrivals on Aborigines soil?
It is only a matter of timing, but that is all. White Australia is on no more legal, ethical or moral high ground, to claim exclusivity to Terra Australis than these latterly arrivals.
The UN Refugee Convention is the brainchild of better Australians like Dr Clive Evatt who participated after WW2 at the UN in designing it so that no country will ever again persecute or kill human beings on the basis of their race, religion colour and political belief in the manner the Jews were persecuted. It behoves latter Australian leaders to follow on the high road that this Rhodes Scholar in Clive Evatt has set, to emulate the spirit of human fellowship for the highest sanctity of all human life wherever occurring, and particularly those vulnerable and in greater need.
This also behoves Australia to adopt a position, a moral and legal position, that is concomitant with a full understanding and appreciation of the surrounding circumstances causing plight of people around the globe; and in this sense Australia’s own hegemonic part in the invasion of other countries and causing demographic, political, religious and economic instability in certain parts.
Australian Leaders equally fail to see the full benefits of a healthy Immigration Policy that treats people with dignity. Their Immigration policy is ridden by every political jockey as if to ensure the next load of boat people do no t get in at all was a virtue worthy of the highest political goal score and inverse personal credibility, be it government or opposition. The fact that Australia does not have an open quota system, prescribed open criteria, and aggressive selective migration policy, allows for some people to capitalize on it to set up money making operations to do boat runs with people who would otherwise be decent and skilled human beings in any society. Australia’s own policy failure is just as culpable for lives lost at sea and the abuses of human rights, as those who are blamed for economic gain in transportation.
The front page right hand column of The Australian News Paper, recently, (prior to the Manus Agreement with PNG), announced the Australian Government’s own internal studies reveal that it will need 800,000 new skilled workers in 5 years’ time! It expressed grave concerns for the Australian economy that it would not be in a position to meet this demand. How poetically paradoxical was this page as it also had right across the top in bold the headline “Labor Floats Nauru Solution”.
Now, even if every able bodied Australian female, and every hot blooded beer swirling meat pie eating fly swatting footy crazy Aussie male, started fornicating non-stop for the next 6 months, they still will not produce half of the 800,000 skilled workers needed in 3 years’ time to meet the demand forecast-ed.
That is one reason why, Australian Migration Policy as closed discriminatory and insular as it is, driven by a psyche of isolation and out-dated and phobias, need to be stood on its head and overhauled to meet the challenges of the next century, or Australia will surely suffer being left behind as a land of red
necks and human rights bigots.
For now the blood of the two dead refugees is clearly on the hands of Peter O'Neill. He bears full responsibility in this country for all human rights abuses on Manus.
Peter O'Neill deliberately breached the PNG Constitution and the UN Refugee Convention to enter into Agreement to ship Australian bound refugees to PNG two years ago. The Manus detention centre set up was to facilitate Australia’s political solution aimed at stemming the flow of refugees, asylum seekers or boat people into Australia. Manus to this day remains an illegal set up, for an illegal purpose.
Peter O'Neill only acceded to Julia Gillard’s ‘unlawful’ political request for Manus to be a refugee processing centre as a return favour to her for granting O'Neill premature political recognition of his (otherwise illegitimate) government when O'Neill threw out an ill (but legitimately elected) Prime Minister Somare still
on legitimate official sick leave, convalescing in a Singapore hospital.
O'Neill could not refuse Gillard, as she had provided him the scarce element of legitimacy he needed to govern, even whilst the supreme Court was still deliberating on the question of whether there was a vacancy in the Office of Prime Minister on the 2nd of August 2011 or not.
AUSTRALIA & O'NEILL BREACHED INTERNATIONAL LAW.
The Manus processing centre is a closed jail like centre where there is heavily armed security, and is out of bounds to the public and the media. It is a strictly controlled environment where the Refugees are not allowed to mingle with locals. They cannot leave the site. No locals are allowed in. It is a prison-like environment wherein detainees are not allowed access to normal creature comforts of normal life. There is a very strong fence that cannot be assailed and armed guards are posted everywhere. Australian Federal Police, Australian security contractors, and local security contractors maintain an overriding presence on the Manus facility.
No one,including lawyers, are allowed access to any Refugee under the Bi-lateral arrangements between Australia and PNG. No media is allowed in, and the use of mobile phones and access to them is greatly restricted. The use of cameras and the Internet are also restricted. The detainees are not allowed to speak of their conditions to the outside world. Contact with outside world is greatly restricted to those detained at the risk of them forfeiting their right to early processing. By bi-lateral Agreement those detained are purportedly made subject to Australian law only-not PNG law.
The refugees’ living conditions are woeful. They live in canvas tents of several men to a tent in a hot tropical environment with no air-conditioning or privacy. They were brought to Manus two years ago, and two years on they still have not been processed under international law. The build up of frustration boiled over 2
months ago with the murder by Australian contracted security guards of two male refugees. After initial outcry, the Australian government has moved to cover up and swept the murders under the carpet, as if these lives do not matter at all.
The initial economic reasons why the Manus Island was first offered by the Manus Provincial Government and the leaders of Manus have been largely ignored by Peter O'Neill and Julia Gillard. The promise of extraordinary favor by Australia on Manus in the form of extraordinary economic largess's was the
perfect bait for cargo-cult prone Manusians.
The reality is most of the contractors and suppliers of food and consumables are companies out of Australia, so there is very little tangible economic benefit back to PNG or the Manusians for this exercise.
Both Australia and PNG are signatories to the UN Convention & Protocols Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention)1951 & 1967 Protocol (“Refugee Convention”) which clearly outlines that a signatory government like Australia cannot expel or transport refugees back to their country of origin or to a third location like Manus or Nauru, unless there is a guarantee that these countries will not mistreat, oppress , persecute them, and that their human rights will be protected (Articles 32 &33).
This obligation on Australia was not discharged at all.
What has happened in Manus over the last two years, and what is going on presently, is clearly evidential of the fact that Manus was not properly planned, and the human lives on Manus are being so terribly mistreated to the point of even death.
Recently, one of the bravest and better Judges of the National Court took on himself to commission an inquiry into human rights breaches, if any, in Manus. Attempts were made by the Australian government and the Attorney General to stop him from merely doing his job as mandated by law. It is amazing to see the extents to which the Australian government is prepared to go to stop scrutiny of its actions.
Every decent Australian and every decent Papua New Guinean should rightfully be ashamed of what their countries have become. Even the Attorney General of PNG has lost his compass bearings in so far as human rights are concerned. If being the Attorney General of PNG is not about upholding the Constitution and
protecting human rights, then the Attorney General is in the wrong job, he should become a pig farmer.
Unfortunately we will never get to the truth because even the refugees who spoke out to the National Court Judge would have done so guardedly, and have been clearly censored, and they would have been very fearful of oppression and discrimination for their Applications for entry into Australia. The Judge has to assume all evidence given is tainted with coercion and undue influence. The truth is too dark, and far worse than they could tell. A lot rides on this Judge’s report.
Until PNG can give a guarantee that the human rights of the refugees will be guaranteed and protected ( which it is in no position to do) and until Australia can satisfy itself that the rights of the refugees will be protected and that they would not be oppressed in any way, Australia is obliged by the Refugee Convention not to expel or transport them at all from Australia, but to process them on Australian soil. In this sense, two years on, Australia stands in breach of the UN Refugee Convention.
Irrespective of whether a person’s status as a refugee has been determined (under the Convention) or not, the processing of boat people who enter Australia or apprehended by Australian authorities, must principally be done in Australia and on Australian soil, under the Convention, and they can only be transported out under fairly limited circumstances.
The legal onus is on Australia to satisfy itself objectively beyond any doubt the guarantee of the rights of the refugees as human beings where they are transported to. In the case of Manus, Australia knew that by design there was no way the human rights of the refugees would be protected. It is no surprise that two years on we find Australia has failed to deliver on human rights stakes. It in fact set up a bi-lateral regime to rob and deny the refugees of their human rights. Every Refugee it sends to Manus, and every Refugee that remains on Manus today, is a testament to Australia’s human rights crimes. What is more, it is testament to Australia being a lawless regime in the Pacific.
Manus processing center is actually a jail for innocent people whose only crime has been to search for a better life for themselves, and in some cases, escape from death and persecution for their political or religious beliefs. Article 31 of the Refugee Convention states that no refugee can be penalized for illegal entry of a country’s territory if they are fleeing from persecution.
Australia also wrote the rules (by drafting the bi-lateral Agreement) that deem the detention centre as part of Australia where Australian law applies, to deliberately circumvent the jurisdiction of the PNG Courts. Australia is simply playing two jurisdictions to circumvent its own obligations, and Peter O'Neill should have sought better advice for the sake of PNG’s own sovereign rights and obligations under the UN Convention, instead of selling us out.
All these designs, whilst didn’t work for the single brave National Court Judge, are capricious and oppressive arrangements created by Australia to deliberately entrap the detainees in a legal, political and media vacuum, an d play two jurisdictions against each other, so that it can do whatsoever it pleases to these human lives, away from the scrutiny of any media, and away from the scrutiny of the Australian courts and the Australian legal system.
The Refugee Convention is very clear and specific in Article 16 about Refugees access to lawyers and the Courts as a matter of human right.
It is all very well for Tony Abbott to claim Australian Law applies in Manus to the processing of these people, but what good is that when under the bi-lateral arrangements PNG Immigration Department (stacked with Ausaid Advisors) cannot grant visas to Australian lawyers or Australian Media teams who want to travel to Manus and speak to the Refugees and highlight their present suffering.
In any case, even if they were to be granted visas to travel, what good is that when an independent Australian armed Security Company (a captive service provider of the Federal Government) running the facility prohibits any outsider access to the inmates?
Lawyers and Journalists from both Australia and PNG cannot access any inmate to meet and observe their condition or interview them. Without contact with refugees granting instructions to lawyers, it has been designed to prevent any scrutiny by both Australian and PNG Courts of what is actually going on in Manus concerning the lives of these refugees.
The Manus processing centre has been deliberately set up to frustrate the rule of law and the clear dictates of international law which was designed to protect vulnerable people like these boat-people who are at the mercy of a country that sees them as nothing but in terms of troublemakers, illegal immigrants, cue jumpers, human garbage, and such other derogatory terms.
All these rules and oppressive arrangements have been well thought through and planned by Canberra, written into the bi-lateral Agreement that Gillard obtained O'Neill to sign.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Australia not only is in breach of international law and in particular Article 33 of the Refugee Convention in exporting refugees to a detention centre that deprives refugees of their rights, but Australia is the worst offender in deliberately designing these people’s misery. Hitler designed gas chambers for the Jewish Refugees in WWII. Today we see Australia has designed detention Centres in the Pacific. Peter O'Neill signed the Manus“deal”. O'Neill has blood on his hands.
Julia Gillard, Peter O'Neill, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott should all be held responsible for their part in these crimes against humanity. They should all be charged under the UN Convention and tried for crimes against humanity. Better still they should all be charged for human rights abuses in breach of the PNG Constitution, and tried as criminals for Constitutional Crimes.
The latter would take a simple complaint laid against each person with the PNG Police and the AFP in Port Moresby. The AFP should be able to handle a complaint like this, as they are here to promote and uphold the rule of law.
The other avenue is The Hague. A complaint should be filed at the Hague by a suitable Party against these persons for their crimes against humanity. The Bilateral Agreement speaks for itself as to how evil the minds who concocted and maintain such apparatus.
For a long time the Australian government has been looking to curb or discourage boat people flooding its shores by deliberately employing cruel and inhuman treatment of asylum seekers, boat people or refugees. Australia’s record in refugee treatment is not pretty. In some cases children and babies have been held in
captivity in jail like conditions in Australia for years without any consideration for their humanity. Families have been rendered asunder, and in almost all cases lives have been destroyed. Many people held in captivity in jail like conditions in Australia have been left with permanent psychological scarring. Others have gone on hunger strike, committed suicide, or even sown up their lips to demonstrate that they are a people without a voice discarded as garbage by the Australian Federal Government and its leadership.
Who c an ever forget, how over Christmas in 2011, we watched in horror as the remains of a boat carrying over 300 men women and children, smashed mercilessly against the rocks on Christmas Island, were gathered up piece by piece and limb by limb by the Australian Navy.
Australia has a duty of care to ensure the safety of people who are otherwise in peril at sea generally, and especially to boat people who are refugees fleeing persecution.
The Refugee Convention is very clear that it is not a crime for human beings, people of one country to leave their country and go seek a better life in another country if they suffer persecution in the original country on grounds of race, religion or political belief. As a matter of fact it is a fundamental human right to live in peace in a safe and secure environment, and the Convention provides for and gives effect to this right and the sacred sanctity of human life and the inherent dignity of every person.
As civilized peoples of the 21st Century, we should all join hands with the rest of the international community and condemn human rights abuses across the globe, and especially as it occurs in our own backyard. We must be ever so vigilant to ensure what has happened to the Jews, and the indigenous peoples of Australia, never ever happens again to us, the West Papuans or any other group o f people in our neighborhood.
AUSTRALIAN IMMIGRATION POLICY FAILURE.
What is currently going on is symptomatic of Australia still caught up in the White Australia Policy and unable to make a meaningful transition into the 21st Century. It is symbiotic of a bureaucracy in Canberra set in insular paradigms of the past caught up in clever legalities and not caring about the reality of human suffering. Canberra is in fact suffering from Immigration (Refugee) policy failure. It does not possess the moral suasion or courage to come up with a more liberal and workable policy. The root of this failure lies deep in its own origin as a penal colony.
It has over the years done everything under the sun to persecute, desecrate and demonize asylum seekers, refugees and boat people. Yet when it comes down to it, Australia is a country of boat people. White Australia is a country of boat people and their descendants. What gives Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, and their Cabinets any more right to Australia than those latterly arrivals on Aborigines soil?
It is only a matter of timing, but that is all. White Australia is on no more legal, ethical or moral high ground, to claim exclusivity to Terra Australis than these latterly arrivals.
The UN Refugee Convention is the brainchild of better Australians like Dr Clive Evatt who participated after WW2 at the UN in designing it so that no country will ever again persecute or kill human beings on the basis of their race, religion colour and political belief in the manner the Jews were persecuted. It behoves latter Australian leaders to follow on the high road that this Rhodes Scholar in Clive Evatt has set, to emulate the spirit of human fellowship for the highest sanctity of all human life wherever occurring, and particularly those vulnerable and in greater need.
This also behoves Australia to adopt a position, a moral and legal position, that is concomitant with a full understanding and appreciation of the surrounding circumstances causing plight of people around the globe; and in this sense Australia’s own hegemonic part in the invasion of other countries and causing demographic, political, religious and economic instability in certain parts.
Australian Leaders equally fail to see the full benefits of a healthy Immigration Policy that treats people with dignity. Their Immigration policy is ridden by every political jockey as if to ensure the next load of boat people do no t get in at all was a virtue worthy of the highest political goal score and inverse personal credibility, be it government or opposition. The fact that Australia does not have an open quota system, prescribed open criteria, and aggressive selective migration policy, allows for some people to capitalize on it to set up money making operations to do boat runs with people who would otherwise be decent and skilled human beings in any society. Australia’s own policy failure is just as culpable for lives lost at sea and the abuses of human rights, as those who are blamed for economic gain in transportation.
The front page right hand column of The Australian News Paper, recently, (prior to the Manus Agreement with PNG), announced the Australian Government’s own internal studies reveal that it will need 800,000 new skilled workers in 5 years’ time! It expressed grave concerns for the Australian economy that it would not be in a position to meet this demand. How poetically paradoxical was this page as it also had right across the top in bold the headline “Labor Floats Nauru Solution”.
Now, even if every able bodied Australian female, and every hot blooded beer swirling meat pie eating fly swatting footy crazy Aussie male, started fornicating non-stop for the next 6 months, they still will not produce half of the 800,000 skilled workers needed in 3 years’ time to meet the demand forecast-ed.
That is one reason why, Australian Migration Policy as closed discriminatory and insular as it is, driven by a psyche of isolation and out-dated and phobias, need to be stood on its head and overhauled to meet the challenges of the next century, or Australia will surely suffer being left behind as a land of red
necks and human rights bigots.
For now the blood of the two dead refugees is clearly on the hands of Peter O'Neill. He bears full responsibility in this country for all human rights abuses on Manus.
