Welcome to 3AW. Skip directly to: Search Box, Section Navigation, Content.

3AW - Fairfax Radio Network

Wednesday May 23, 2012

What we're talking about

'Just get here' asylum seekers

Posted by: Derryn Hinch | 6 July, 2010 - 4:17 PM
Pauline Hanson

Let's take Prime Minister Gillard at her word over the boat people. Feel free to say what you feel. It doesn’t make you a racist.

I said yesterday that the PM’s comments in queue-jumpers sounded like she had morphed into John Howard or Tony Abbott with a whiff of Pauline Hanson. And within hours of her prime ministerial edict that people should be released from the restraints of political correctness that other redhead hit the airwaves around the country.

Pauline Hanson says she is in ‘total agreement’ with the PM (I thought she would have said ‘agreeance’).‘That’s what I said in the parliament in 1986 and that’s what I’m saying now. It’s only when you have a true debate and let the people of Australia have a say that we can start to make the right decisions.’

Who would have thought Julia Gillard would be giving oxygen to Hanson. Especially when she savaged her in her own maiden speech in 1998.

Back then Julia Gillard said : ‘What the last red-headed woman who made a first speech in this place will never understand is that the vast majority of migrants come here determined to make a better life for themselves and their kids, and they are prepared to work unbelievably hard to achieve that dream.’

That sentiment doesn’t sit well with the new ‘turn them back’ toughness with a federal election looming.

Today the PM made a strong speech on boat people. She vowed there would be no return to Howard’s Pacific Solution. But then said she was working on a plan to have a refugee centre – a holding cell – on East Timor. So I guess Nauru was bad. East Timor is good. Go figure.

There’s a good example today why people are upset with Rudd-Gillard Government policy – as the boats keep coming.

The Herald Sun has the sympathetic story of one Adnan al Ghazal who fled Iraq in 1999 with his wife and baby. In 12 months they passed through country after country: Jordan, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China and Hong Kong before reaching Melbourne to seek asylum. In his own words ‘a journey of seven countries where I was holding an illegal document and very limited money’.

Now, people like Julian Burnside and Government minister Craig Emerson would take umbrage if you called al Ghazal ‘an illegal migrant’. But he was. He became an illegal queue jumper when he passed through country after country to get here. Because Australia is the soft target ... the preferred destination.

That’s what the people smugglers hold out as a carrot. And remember, last year boat people paid smugglers $25 million to get here. They didn’t pay all that money to get to Cambodia or India or Indonesia.

Footnote:

Much will be made in the debate ahead of the Immigration Minister being able to step in and order the deportation of illegals. Sounds good on paper. Won’t happen. Not while the ATT is around. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Listen to the case of 55-year-old Sadik Selimi – an illiterate farmer from Macedonia. He came here in 1994. Got sprung after paying an Australian woman $25,000 for a sham marriage. He was convicted of 10 offences in 2000. Was refused a protection visa in 2001 and returned to Macedonia. Somehow he got back here but was again rejected in 2007.

Immigration was about to deport him but the ATT has ordered the Minister, Chris Evans, to issue him a visa even though he had engaged in ‘illegal and morally reprehensible conduct’ over a number of years.

The tribunal ruled the offences were not serious enough to warrant a rejection.

See just get here. That’s what the people smugglers tell them. Just get here. They’ll never send you back. Possession is nine tenths of the law.

PM looks to East Timor for solution

Julia Gillard could be set to lead the country today Latika Bourke and Neil Mitchell discuss the asylum seeker policies of both the government and opposition. Neil says Gillard's plan is 'shonky' and needs far more analysis. Leave your feedback in the blog.

Blog comments Your Say

  • Migrants to have a better life here,most definitely.Illegal immigrants,a definite "no".

    John Langborne Thursday 22 July, 2010 - 10:15 AM

  • The colour of her policy is like the actual colour of her hair. Trust me. Unreal and changes everyday. What u see is not what u see. There are more greys and reds and stuff in there. That's why she adopted an in house hairdresser. So don't expect too much. Hairs talk.

    BurnleyT Saturday 10 July, 2010 - 12:27 PM

  • GUsmao says he is sympathetic to the plite of asylum stuff but the financial debate has to be started first. That's Timorese and he is Pathetic.

    Hinley Saturday 10 July, 2010 - 11:58 AM

  • The rights of desperate asylum seekers have been thrown overboard. We do not need to be protected from asylum seekers: they need to be protected from their persecutors. What ever happened to human compassion?

    Anthony B Friday 9 July, 2010 - 12:24 PM

  • Sounds like another half thought up plan that will cost us millions and be a disaster!?

    Ships ahoy Thursday 8 July, 2010 - 9:47 AM

  • Boat people!Read "The Camp of Saints" by Jean Raspail(1975).The story:One million Indians invade supertanker and head for France

    Tom Wednesday 7 July, 2010 - 4:08 PM

Post a comment * Mandatory fields