Morrison's comments insensitive - it's never the right time

Scott Morrison spoke his mind and said what many other people are thinking about Australian taxpayers footing the bill for funerals and the attendance of relatives of the dead from interstate to attend the funerals in Sydney of illegal immigrants who died in a failed attempt to reach Christmas Island.

If we waited for the right time nothing would be said.

Ask someone who has waited for the right time to leave a bad relationship when "the right time" was. The usual answer is "Five years before I left". I think the same applies when we are talking of Government policy particularly that causing loss of life and waste of money.

Four Corners heads up!

Four Corners tonight looks at people smugglers.

From the shorts it should be interesting.

Reporter: Sarah Ferguson
Broadcast: 29/07/2010

It's one of the biggest issues in the election campaign. While Australia spends millions of dollars to stop the flow of asylum seeker boats, its efforts are constantly undermined by criminals and corrupt military and government officials. These operators have worked in secret... until now.

Four Corners has caught them on camera.

Most asylum seekers are terrified to take on the people smugglers. Reporter Sarah Ferguson meets one who is not. This asylum seeker is determined to expose the people smugglers who use refugees as "commodities". In a series of hidden camera stings, the smugglers and their accomplices are filmed talking about boats, bribes and Australian border security.

Site link here.

The Front Line - people smugglers

60 Minutes expose of what the military do in the illegal immigrant saga.

Have a read - I'm not sure, watching it on video, whether the "desperation" of the people is to excuse their behaviour and their foolish, dangerous attempts to get to Australia, "land of milk and welfare". As long as the Australian Government welcomes these people and processes their applications quickly they'll continue to arrive at an increasing rate.

Some people say that there aren't many of them. Well, they cost a fortune for the Australian Governmnet to process, and therefore the Australian taxpayers are supporting them - what about Australians who need support?

Some people say that they are desperate. That doesn't excuse that they have arrived here without papers, illegally destroying their identification, illegally attempting to enter Australia - they have no visa.

Read the transcript or watch the video.

Breaking news, another boat of suspected refugees

Intercepted by the RAN.

What a surprise.

Not terrorists - but we'll blow ourselves up if we don't get our way

Sure they're desperate. Desperate to jump the queue.

From thisevening's PM program:

MARK COLVIN: There's obviously political sensitivity too, isn't there, because the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam are regarded in many parts of the world as a terrorist organisation and so there would be great reluctance to associate themselves with that group in any way.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Yeah that's right, and in fact one of the repeated things they said is "we are not terrorists" and they seem to waiver between making these sort of threats of violence of blowing themselves up, to then sort of tempering that when they realise that makes them sound rather unsavoury and so they're trying to sort of deliver a softer line, saying that we want international assistance.

What they really don't want is to go through the normal process. They're fully aware that if they get off the boat and end up in an immigration detention centre they will be there for up to 10 years. That's what happens. They've got 16 million asylum seekers around the world, that's the queue that they're trying to jump, it's a long one and that's something that they're trying to avoid through this sort of desperate performance they have on the boat at the moment.

More here.

Another snippet I heard was this, regarding the war of words between Rudd and Turnbull regarding rewarding illegal entry by permitting the entrants to stay.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Neither the Opposition Leader nor the current immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone have publicly embraced the idea.

They say the focus should be on the Government.

SHARMAN STONE: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course. We are developing policy but the issue right now is what is this Labor Government doing, what is its policy, what are its strategies because the Australian community doesn't care about what an opposition's strategy might be or could be at the next election. They want to know what is happening right now as the numbers on Christmas Island groan to maximum capacity.

More here.

Way to spread the blame

Redirect the blame to the rescuers, say they did the wrong thing.

AFGHAN refugees struggling in the ocean in the aftermath of an explosion aboard their vessel off Ashmore reef in April this year were allegedly kicked and fended off by Australian Defence Force members as they tried to climb aboard inflatable rescue boats.

Of course. It was all the fault of the Defence members.

WTF? They can sue the Australian government!

Surely this can't be right!

Government may be liable for boat blast compensation.

A human rights lawyer says the Federal Government could be liable to pay compensation to the families of those killed and injured after the Ashmore Reef asylum boat explosion.

The blast killed three of the 47 Afghans and two crew on board and the Defence Department says two others listed as missing are presumed dead.

Forty-one boat blast survivors remain in three hospitals.

You have got to be bloody joking! Read on:

But Greg Barnes from human rights group Rights Australia says because the boat, known as SIEV 36, had been taken into custody it may emerge the Navy had a duty of care to the asylum seekers.

Mr Barnes says there could be grounds for compensation.

"One of those could be that the Navy didn't exercise its duty of care sufficiently or was negligent in the way it dealt with the asylum seekers who were in very dangerous waters," he said.

"But it does depend on there being a duty of care and two, it does depend on whether reasonable steps have been taken by the Navy to secure the safety of asylum seekers."

Keep reading.

You have got to be bloody kidding me!

Illegal immigrants letter in the Aus today. (now with link)

THE amount of media coverage given to a few hundred asylum-seekers travelling by boat to our shores in recent months is disproportionate to its real impact on Australia—which is negligible. Speculation about the causes of the tragic explosion aboard an asylum-seeker boat last Thursday exists solely because the facts may provide further opportunity for these desperate folk to be vilified.

What a land we live in, where a handful of sad refugees become innocent political footballs. Shame on the politicians, the press and the paranoid xenophobes amongst us.

Tony Wellington Tinbeerwah, Qld

I don't believe this person. (Link to the Aus letters regarding the boat people.)

Firstly, these illegal immigrants will cost a bomb, er, shitload of money. Forget the fact that some were prepared to take the risk of spreading petrol around the boat which could ignite and harm or kill people (they're not great thinkers, are they?), to blackmail to get their way - what kind of petulant childish behaviour is that, for that's what it is, throwing a tantrum. The cost is in the holding of them in detention, which I think is necessary (sorry mole!), and in the many court challenges which will be mounted against Australia to fight for their refugee status - all this is funded by the taxpayer.

Secondly, Australia knows nothing of these people, only what they tell authorities. What if they are not "of good character"*

*and I'd honestly have my doubts about that seeing the circumstances of their arrival and hearing that at least one had lived for some years in Indonesia and another had already been refused admission to Australia as a refugee.

Update:
The letters section in today's Aus has a letter berating "Liberal policy to demonise asylum seekers".

ABC Local Brisbane 612 last night

Travelling home from work last night I heard the Sunday evening programme.

O'Loughlin hosted the programme and I think he tried to be balanced.

First I heard Lynda Stoner talking about how bad zoos are, and how animals should run free. She said that the animals in the zoo (Taronga Park Zoo) were all obviously distressed as they were displaying the signs; elephants moving from foot to foot and swaying, giraffes doing something else, tiger pacing.... I guess she must know animal psychology because, you know, they're so much like humans. Then he spoke with a representative from the zoo. She defended the zoo and captive animals. She also pointed out that the foot to foot/side to side behaviours of the elephants was quite natural in the wild, and that the giraffes are quite happy as nothing they do is abnormal in the wild. She said that she was glad that the tiger was noticed. He is stressed. The tigress is in oestrus and they've kept him away from her so this is why he is stressed; and this would be stress he might experience in the wild, too.

Next up was a chap from some Australian University (I can't remember, and can't find a link to the programme, may have been Adelaide), who is supposed to be a language specialist. They talked about the use of certain language. How derogatory it is to call "boat people" boat people. He spoke of how the language has morphed with assylum seekers and where he believed it came from.

So, now we must be careful what we call these people who arrive in Australia illegally with no paperwork to identify them or where they have originally come from. We don't want to be hurting their feelings.

Interesting that refugees became reffos because people became tired of them and wanted to give them a derogatory name. That last one points the "language specialist" out as a bit of a dope. Aussies always shorten names and give nicknames. I suppose nicknaming someone with the surname Sheridan "Sherro", or someone with the first name John "Johno", etcetera, is derogatory, too?

I'm pretty sure that the words "illegal immigrant" never passed the lips of either. There was no touching on any of the illegal part of the whole thing.

The language specialist voiced his opinion and view that these boat people were very brave to have come from where they have to risk their lives on these boats to get to Australia. What he and many others don't seem to comprehend is that they haven't come from their country of origin to Australia by boat. They left their country of origin, probably with visas to Indonesia or Malaysia and have stayed there for a while (some several years). They've had identifying documents and passports. However, when they come to Australia they destroy their identifying paperwork in the hope that tracking down who they are will be too hard for Australian authorities and they will somehow be able to stay.

Did I read that one of the most recent boat people had already applied for assylum in Australia and had been refused as he was not a refugee?

Turnbull skitches AM host, Tony Eastley

And goes for the throat when speaking of the fiery boat incident.

Eastley keeps interrupting him to make points that it's not the ALP/Rudd's fault that more refugees are coming, and that the injured are not in hospital yet and the opposition/Turnbull are politicising the incident.

Turnbull replies that Eastley is the one politicising it.

Should be here about 9am. I might talk about it later.

Oh, and the gem of the radio interviewers was the fool who asked a representative from the hospital I think,(paraphrased) "When you say that there was a fracture to the upper limb, could you tell us exactly which part of the body that is?"