New Arrivals Come With Hope This Time

Her Majesty's Opposition will be off and running today following the interview on Radio National this morning.
Please read: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/24/2551337.htm and comment.

They are already using the interview to accuse the Rudd Government. Of course they are overlooking the bleeding obvious. The Howard government policy of interception of boats by the Navy and towing them back to Indonesia is responsible for the legacy cases and for their subsequent setting out on dangerous journeys to Australia.

The Iraqi man interviewed has been in Indonesia for 10 years care of The Howard Plan which was to get the Navy to push the boats back. Howard policy — no solution after that — just pushed them back and paid IOM millions of dollars to warehouse these people like washing machines!

These people have been recognised by UNHCR as The Real McCoy; yes, accredited refugees; so lets move to the next argument.

After we pushed them back to Indonesia — a struggling economy with 238,000,000 people of their own, on 6,000 inhabited islands — what then?

OK. We — i.e. Australia — paid to feed and water them and provide shelter. But as a 15 yr old Iraqi girl said to me; "We are not cattle. We are human. We need more in the life than food and shelter!"

The problem in Indonesia is that these people are not allowed to work, the children have no access to education, so there is no future. There are Iraqi and Afghan teenagers in Indonesia who have missed 8 to 10 years of schooling. Mind you, they have taught each other languages and computer skills — and these kids come from a time and place when they had never seen a computer! Imagine what they could do with formal education!

The bottom line is that Howard's Human Warehousing policy presents the current government with boats. I will be fair and say not all boats are from Legacy cases, but some are, and this man is saying truthfully what is happening in Indonesia.

The solution in place at the moment is to round up all the men, separate them from their wives and children and put them in detention in centres all over Indonesia- Macassar, Jakarta and Pantiank. These guys will soon disappear there.

The real solution is resettlement.

Pamela Curr
Campaign Co-ordinator
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre