Profiteering from people smuggling

Kevin Rudd announced today that any asylum seekers arriving in Australia without a visa will be sent to Papua New Guinea for assessment and resettlement from abc news. This is a huge coup for Kevin and Labor and will likely go a long way to preventing the people smuggling business going on in the waters to the north of our nation. This is good news for a political party and a prime minister wanting to be re-elected in the coming months. So, who now is it that will be profiteering from people smuggling? Kevin perhaps? the ALP?

Am I being too cynical?

I don't like us abdicating our responsibility to refugees and sending them elsewhere and I don't like us disempowering vulnerable people and telling them where we think they should live. But I also actually don't mind the whole concept as an attempt to prevent further drownings from happening at sea but it has to coincide with other announcements. The further financial assistance to PNG, that's fine. The proposed increase to our intake of immigrants, that's fine too. What concerns me, no, what leaves me feeling ashamed and angry is who we have turned our back on.

What if you are fleeing a country, a country that wont say 'sure, here's your visa'? How does a person who has had to flee their country without being able to get a visa reasonably apply for asylum in Australia? Our policy as it is now says that you cannot come here and we will ship you off to somewhere else. Can they apply somewhere? And if they can, will they be allowed to resettle sometime in their lifetime? If there was a place refugees could go to, even without a visa, that would see them assessed and resettled within a very reasonable ammount of time then I would consider perhaps supporting our new deal with PNG. As it is there is no such place, no wonder people get so desperate as to risk their lives. I am not happy.

Where is the Kevin Rudd that pleaded with the government when he was ousted as PM that they should continue to be compassionate towards refugees and not sell out their humanity to satisfy the selfish bigotry of way too many fellow Australians (I might be indulging a bit in what he actually said). This political football of vulnerable people who are hardly capable of invading us to take over, hence are not a border control issue has just gone on and on in absurdity for too long. And now Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr can add their names to the list of those who should have restless nights.

I prefer what Julian Burnside had to say the other day, he had facts, he had truth and he had the guts to say it as it is from the age. And I wonder where our leaders are that will take on xenophobic Australia and will deliver us a new vision worth belonging to?