The latest weekly Roy Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 61-39, although its primary vote is down 1.5 per cent to 51.5 per cent while the Coalition is unchanged on 33.5 per cent. The slack has been taken up by Family First and independent/others.
Elsewhere:
• The Central Midlands & Coastal Advocate reports that Liberal Kalgoorlie MP Barry Haase has been making himself known in the areas of O’Connor which will be in the new seat of Durack under the radically redrawn boundaries. Despite being 75 years old, Wilson Tuckey has reportedly been taking an interest in the city of Kalgoorlie, which along with the southern coast from Albany to Esperance and areas of the South West will constitute the redrawn O’Connor.
• Liberal National Party candidate Andrea Caltabiano is launching a challenge against her 74-vote defeat by Labor’s Steve Kilburn in Chatsworth at the March 21 Queensland election. Claimed irregularities include double voting, particularly by candidates who lodged absent votes, and voters being wrongly removed from the roll.
• The Australasian Study of Parliament Group Queensland Chapter is holding a “behind the scenes review of the Queensland 2009 State Election” at the George Street parliamentary annexe from 6pm on Monday, Apirl 27. Star attractions are Antony Green, Treasurer Andrew Fraser, Keating government Attorney-General Michael Lavarch and Lawrence Springborg’s former chief-of-staff Paul Turner. RSVP by Monday to Erin Pasley, who can be reached at Erin-DOT-Paisley-AT-parliament-DOT-qld-DOT-gov-DOT-AU or on 3406 7931.
• No, I haven’t forgotten the May 2 Tasmanian Legislative Council elections – I will have a post up when I get time. In the meantime, Antony Green outlines the candidates.
NOTE: I am leaving open the previous thread for those who wish to continue the discussion, if that’s the right word, about asylum seekers, indigenous affairs, racism and the rest. This thread is for pretty much anything else.
1044 & 1049
Would be helpful in examining the crime scene though. I understand the boat sank.
fwiw, I though that Fran was less obnoxious than usual, though not particularly proficient. Perhaps because she is part of the hammock faction, and not particularly fond of Allbull.
How sad that he thinks his tank at Sea World is the “real world.”
Those interested in renewable energy projects, especially geothermal can see the latest Geodynamics update here:
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090416/pdf/31h2vhmq0js68x.pdf
I see Mr Hankey has found a new job working for the Indonesian Election Commission
http://tnp.kpu.go.id/tab2009/index/31.html
(see top right corner)
Has anyone else noticed the Herald Sun’s latest readers poll? Of course this could very well be hijacked or they have the numbers reversed (which has happened before) but the question was “Should these boat people be allowed to stay in Australia?”
4129 responded. Yes – 89.9% No – 10.1%.
I must admit it wouldn’t have surprised me if the numbers had been the other way around.
Even HS readers might baulk at deporting seriously ill burns patients. It may be that this issue no longer has the bite it had at the time of Tampa, but if we do get a flood of boat arrivals it could easily flare up again.
It is getting lots of coverage in the NT paper as you might expect (not much else to talk about except Crocs). Pretty much scatter gun reporting to fill in pages. Very little nuanced stuff.
I think the bigger issue may by what to do with all the boat people eventually created by global warming and the economic breakdown in some places due to it. Then again it might be Australians as the boat people trying to sneak into Indonesia.
not when we farewell off a boat load of liberal party members in exchange- not all, just the born to rule types
I predicted this a while back but Andrew Bolt has outdone himself. This is the headline of one of his blogs. Sadly, he shows how poor his grasp of the language is by spelling Jeckyll incorrectly. For shame. 🙁
[Dr Jeckyl and Mr Rudd]
[I think the bigger issue may by what to do with all the boat people eventually created by global warming and the economic breakdown in some places due to it.]
We did touch on this yesterday. It’s going to be a very big issue. We will have to start by rewriting the 1951 refugee convention. If it’s not rewritten, Australia will have to withdraw from it. It was designed to deal with situations like Nazi Germany, not the large-scale movement of poor people for essentially economic reasons. A situation in which anyone who can reach Australian territory can claim to be a refugee in the terms of the convention will not be sustainable, politically or economically. The developed world will simply have to pull up the drawbridge – as they’ve already done in the Mediterranean, whatever the convention says.
Ahh the syphilitic delirium lashing out spreading to Australia from the Republicans and their hard core supporters.
They push themselves further extremes when one extreme doesn’t work. Next you will see them in the gutter foaming at the mouth raving about Rudd.
Why won’t they face the obvious? The Rudd government has done OK, done what was needed when it was needed and the Opposition have been seriously off track and have talent issues.
If Turnbull lets himself be lead by this toxic crowd it will be down a dirty cynical path that will ruin any shred of respectability he has left.
Here’s a clever map thingy for catastrophy planning. You can zoom in and out and adjust the sea level to see what areas will be flooded at what sea level.
http://flood.firetree.net/
My house will be fine but may need a boat to get to work.
[We will have to start by rewriting the 1951 refugee convention.]
What does the convention say about countries that have flooding to their food supply and houses? I didn’t think that was a reason for accepting someone.
[I didn’t think that was a reason for accepting someone.]
Of course not, but they will all claim that they are being persecuted because they are Hindus / Muslims / Hazaras / black / white / women / gay / disabled etc etc. Our “refugee advocate” friends will be busy coaching them on what to say, and the tribunals and courts will be so clogged up it will be easier to let them all stay.
Totally agree with Adam 1066.
Anyone arriving by boat has by default paid a people smuggler and is queue jumping. They are trying to force our hand due to the refugee convention.
The best thing to do is to show them how tough we are by bringing back the TPV or the Pacific Solution.
I still don’t understand how 90% of Tampa refugees were accepted as genuine. Howard was not just soft but pissweak when it really mattered. How our Govt and Public Service can be so easily conned is still beyond me and represent a security threat to this country! If we had public servants like Adam, GP and Glen, none of them would have been accepted, ever.
Adam
You could argue that Australia’s very healthy contribution to global warming would mean that we have a moral obligation to do our bit if tens of millions of people are displaced by rising seas. It could be a huge issue in about 20 years time.
[Anyone arriving by boat has by default paid a people smuggler]
Almost always, yes. I suppose they could buy their own boats in Indonesia, but I haven’t heard of any such cases.
[ and is queue jumping.]
By definition, yes.
[ They are trying to force our hand due to the refugee convention.]
I doubt many of them are consciously doing that. They are aware that what they are doing is illegal. The smugglers are just trying to make money.
[The best thing to do is to show them how tough we are by bringing back the TPV or the Pacific Solution.]
No, that doesn’t follow. The best thing is to work with the Indonesians to prevent boat departures (which we are doing, but it’s a long road), to intercept all boats as they enter Australian waters (which we are pretty good at), and to process all asylum claims under UN rules at Xmas Island (which is what we are doing).
[I still don’t understand how 90% of Tampa refugees were accepted as genuine. ]
Because in the long run it was just too hard to go through the administrative, legal and political processes of deporting them, in the face of concerted resistance from the refugee industry and their many friends in the media.
[You could argue that Australia’s very healthy contribution to global warming would mean that we have a moral obligation to do our bit if tens of millions of people are displaced by rising seas.]
You could, but I doubt you would get very far. If things do get to that stage, we will be in a much harsher political environment, and it will be every country for itself. I hope we don’t get to that stage, which is why *we need a global agreement on climate change.*
I think teh real solution regarding “economic” refugees (and far cheaper too) is to improve conditions in the poor countries that first receive them. I recall that in about 2004 Iran has some 2 million Afghan refugees but they had little money to care for them and relations with the west meant they got little support as well. Iran didn’t ask for them adn didn’t create teh Taliban problem in Afghanistan either. There will always be a few attempting the illegal route but I think we (i.e. all wealthy nations) do have a moral obligation to assist coutnries that currently house large numbers of refugees. This problem also illustrates the folly of proping up dictators like Musharaf until they reduce their countries to places people want to escape from. Pakistan was a comparatively developed country a few decades years ago. Now its a disaster.
The legal definition of refugee is a bit semantic IMO. Persecuted or not, if someone can’t make enough money or food to surive in a country you can’t blame them for trying to move elsewhere.
Dio 1068
Good point; ethically the argument is undeniable, however unpopular. New Zealand has already agreed to take imigrants from some threatened Pacific Islands. But 60 million Bangladeshis living less than 2 metres above sea level adn surrounded by hostile neighbours will be the big issue.
Socrates, totally agree with the first paragraph. In regard to the second para, I don’t *blame* anyone for wanting to come to Australia. I think we ought to take as many regugees as our economic and environmental circumstances permit – which unfortunately at the moment is probably not many more than the 13,500pa we are currently taking. But when they seek to do so in ways which are both illegal and dangerous, we have a right to stop them.
Yes it’s nice of NZ to offer to resettle Tuvalu (pop 12,000). If we have a 5m rise in sea levels, we will be talking 10s of millions. I’m afraid my view is that if that happens the international order will break down and most of them will die. That’s the view of James Lovelock and others who agree with him.
Diogenes may well have made predictions in the past about Bolt (@1060)…
[I predicted this a while back but Andrew Bolt has outdone himself. This is the headline of one of his blogs. Sadly, he shows how poor his grasp of the language is by spelling Jeckyll incorrectly. For shame. 🙁
Dr Jeckyl and Mr Rudd]
… but I have a standard operating principle about ever criticising anyone else’s spelling: Dont’ do it.
I call it Bushfire’s Law:
“Whenever you criticise anybody else’s spelling, the words which you use to criticise said spelling will themselves contain an incorrect spelling, usually an incorrect spelling of the very word you are criticising the other bloke for not being able to spell.”
It’s J-E-K-Y-L-L
No “c”.
Note: I apologize in advance for any misspellings in the above criticism of Diogenes’ criticism of Bolt’s misspelling.
Adam 1069
It is good to see we agree on all points except TPV and Pacific Solution
I’d be pretty sure that if Oz wanted to spend say $1B to ease it’s conscience about global warming refugees that we would be better off spending the money on an under-developed country that will help settle refugees with economic assistance than spending $1B on settling them here. I don’t know how many countries would put their hand up to take refugees even with financial enducements.
We might do better spending our billion bucks bribing members of the US Congress to get them to pass a decent CPRS bill.
BB
How embarrassment. 😳
Adam
Can you explain why you continue to use the term “illegal” ? What country were these asylum seekers supposed to seek refugee status in?
Adam
From memory, I don’t think US politicians are allowed to accept donation from overseas citizens or companies. But it would certainly be the best $1B we ever spent.
Should sea levels rise 5 meters or more, Australia will have a disastrous internal problem on it’s hands without worrying about what may be coming over the horizon from elsewhere. Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth will be completely disfunctional, with critical infrastructure utterly ruined and our economic basis under critical threat. Adams statement that each nation will have to look after it’s own could well be amended to each person/family looking after it’s own. Where will the dispossed of the capital cities go? Will they be accepted without violence from their fellow Australians? It may well be that even within Australia the dog-eat-dog rules of people movements over the ages will reemerge, and our concept of orderly migration go right out the window.
[Because in the long run it was just too hard to go through the administrative, legal and political processes of deporting them, in the face of concerted resistance from the refugee industry and their many friends in the media.]
Are you sure? Nearly all of them were assessed and found to be refugees. Hence they are now living here as refugees, and I suspect many of them are now Australian citizens.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Immigration/Most-Nauru-refugees-to-be-resettled/2004/05/23/1085250860544.html
[Most Afghan asylum seekers on Nauru recently granted refugee status were likely to be resettled in Australia, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said today.
In the past fortnight, the Federal Government has decided to grant refugee status to 92 Afghanis detained on the Pacific island nation, while 11 applications were refused.]
So after all that rubbish about how people aboard Tampa would “never step foot in Australia”, after all that nonsense and the border protection bills 2001, MOST of them were found to be genuine refugees, and they now live here. 150 of them live in New Zealand.
Dio and Adam
Agree with both your comments. I am not seriously suggesting we could or should resettle millions more people here; my point was just what Dio said – that we ought to do something to help.
Pyne says the BSDs should be chucked out.
[SENIOR Opposition frontbencher Chris Pyne has lashed out at a group of Liberal MPs he says are undermining the position of the party’s deputy leader Julie Bishop.
Mr Pyne, who was last week named as being one of the group known as the “Big Swinging Dicks”, said the unnamed MPs should “get out”, adding they were not doing anyone any good.
The Coalition education spokesman and manager of Opposition business said he fully supported Ms Bishop.
“We know who they are in the Liberal Party,” Mr Pyne told ABC Radio.
“They’re not very good at hiding their tracks, they are destructive and negative forces and those people should get out because they’re not doing anybody any good.”]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25358562-12377,00.html
Diogenes, I used the word “bribe” advisedly.
I have beena way a few days so apology if this has already been discusesd, btu I was really pleased to see it. The US EPA has ruled that CO2 is a polluting gas, opening the way for regulations to be passed to limit it. This wil greatly increase Obama’s negotiating position to get an ETS up in the USA. There is a useful discussion of the implications at John Quiggan’s blog.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/04/19/good-news-from-the-epa/
I am pleased they are moving. I was just talking ot an engineer who works in a large Qld power station (coal fired) on Friday and as he said “clean coal is a non-project”. They know they can’t do it, even if it was affordable, which it isn’t. The carbon capture would be expensive and difficult; the sequestration itself is so far impossible on an industrial scale.
So we are still on course to displace a lot of those Pacific Islanders and Bangladeshis, to say nothing of those who live on canal estates.
[“We know who they are in the Liberal Party,” Mr Pyne told ABC Radio.
“They’re not very good at hiding their tracks,]
Tony Abbott and Peter Duton.
ShowsOn, there’s no necessary contradiction. A sympathetic court will find anyone from a country like Afghanistan with a reasonably convincing tale of woe to be a genuine refugee, particularly when the alternative is more endless litigation. How does the state disprove these stories? That’s why the refugee convention is outdated and needs to be rewritten.
[Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, one of the Government’s sharpest minds, published a predictably thoughtful essay on the global financial crisis on a Fairfax blog last week. It shows up his boss’s effort. By and large it prefers fact and reason to polemic and hyperbole.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25356921-5013871,00.html
Does anyone have the link to this essay?
so after a week, we finally have an opposition polocy- bring TPVs back. With Turnbull peddling the line that its THIS change which has caused the boats to increase. Well, he might be wrong, and the public may not believe him, but at least he’s cobbled together an alternative, even if it is just go back to what Howard did
SO
[Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton.]
No way!! I thought the attack was from Bishop’s left not her right.
1090
try his website.
http://www.lindsaytanner.com.au/
RU #1080, read the 1951 convention
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/o_c_ref.htm
It says nothing about the process by which a person shall be deemed to be a refugee or not so deemed. It says nothing about how a person shall apply to be a refugee, or where they can, should or must apply from. It does not say that any country is obliged to allow any person onto its territory. The convention was written in the presumption that it would be self-evident who was a refugee, because they had fled across a border in fear of their lives, as the German Jews did in 1933-39. We now live in a world where it is *not* self-evident who is a refugee. That’s why the convention is so inadequate.
I didn’t know it was possible to be to Julie Bishop’s right.
Interesting exercise in ‘compare and contrast’:
the reaction of US pundits to the release of the torture memos
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/19/pundits-whitewash-torture_n_188756.html
with the reaction in Australia to the Government caution in releasing details of the boat explosion.
[“Some things in life need to be mysterious,” said Noonan, adding, “Sometimes you need to just keep walking.” ]
Really?
Seems like Malcolm’s been flip-flopping on TPVs along with everything else
[But Immigration Minister Chris Evans has accused the Opposition of flip-flopping on the issue.
“They were opposed to them about nine months ago, then in favour of them a few months ago, then against them, now they think they’re a good idea,” he told Fairfax radio.
Mr Evans says TPVs did not discourage people smugglers.
“It didn’t actually deter people, it just made them suffer. I think they were largely discredited long before the end of the Howard government,” he said.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/20/2547408.htm?section=justin
[so after a week, we finally have an opposition polocy- bring TPVs back. With Turnbull peddling the line that its THIS change which has caused the boats to increase. Well, he might be wrong, and the public may not believe him, but at least he’s cobbled together an alternative, even if it is just go back to what Howard did]
Well…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/20/2547408.htm
[Immigration Minister Chris Evans has accused the Opposition of flip-flopping on the issue.
“They were opposed to them about nine months ago, then in favour of them a few months ago, then against them, now they think they’re a good idea,” he told Fairfax radio.]
vera – snap!
Adam
What about the 1967 Protocols ? Why are they “illegal” ? 🙂