I'm sick of my country

[Aractus]

You have the temerity to say this and still hold up Australia as a bastion of multi-cultural inclusivity? Don't misunderstand me. I think the case you're making has merit to a certain extent, but don't have us believe that Australia is heaven on Earth for asylum seekers. Your reply also comes across as justifying Operation Sovereign Borders because it's for the asylum seeker's own good.

That's not at all what I argued. I didn't defend one inch of the policy. I pointed out its problems. The Australian Government is considering sending Muslim refugees to be settled in places like Canada and New Zealand - all purely because there's no where "regional" for them to settle, and they want to keep up the policy.

Now with this said, if you don't know how the people-smuggler's network operates I suggest you look into it. There was an excellent 4-corners documentary done not so long ago:

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2...257490.htm

The only part of the chain that Australia has jurisdiction over is the final phase where people are sent on fishing boats to Australia. Oh, and if you don't know what happens beforehand, I'll break it down:

1. People buy their way out of refugee camps by paying people smugglers.
2. They are then held in other camps for months or years by the people smugglers whilst their families are extorted for more money. Women are raped, men women and children are killed or die while in these camps if their relatives don't pay up they don't live to see the next part.
3. They're sent on boats to Australia.

That is oversimplified, but that's how it works. This is from 35-minutes into the "Journey into Hell" documentary (transcript on the same page linked to above):

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Some were kept here and tortured for two years, while families sent small amounts to keep them alive. If the payments stopped, they were killed.


BURAQ (translation): Hanging. They kill them by hanging. We had to carry those bodies to the grave and bury them. We could not talk about that to anyone. If we did we were beaten.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Women faced extra horrors here.

BURAQ (translation): My sisters: though they were not my real sisters, we were from the same area.

The smugglers would humiliate and rape them in the camp. The Thais and Rohingyans, both bosses and workers, would rape our women.

I saw six women die. Three of them were raped. They survived two days following the rape, then they died. Three others couldn't pay the money: that's why they were killed.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Even children were not spared the depravities of the traffickers.

BURAQ (translation): There were two little children who came here with their mother. They would always scream and cry for food. Scream and cry for their mother.

You know what they did to those boys? They chopped their hands off and sent them off to beg. I never saw them again.

MARK DAVIS: Why did they cut the hand off a child?

BURAQ (translation): To have them beg in the street, so they could pay back what their parents owed. While begging these children would have to pretend, to get sympathy, as if their parents had died and they needed money for the funeral and to bury their bodies.

MARK DAVIS: How old was the child?

BURAQ (translation): One of the children was eight and the other one was almost 10.

So as you can see something needs to be done to stop the chain, and the reality is that offshore processing is the only thing so far to have worked to do this. Again, that doesn't justify it at all, and as I said that's no defence of the policy.

What possesses a family to board a vessel that can hardly be considered seaworthy for an opportunity at a life better than oppression and destitution from which they came? This doesn't consider the danger of their overland journey to the shores of Indonesia. Towing them back to Indonesia rather than allowing them to land on Australian shores means that the Australian government and military is endangering them further than allowing them to land on Australian shores. Not even considering the dashed hopes with which they made the journey, isn't it reasonable by your definition to consider Australia the more abusive torturer?

Again, view the documentary above. They don't get to Indonesia by pure chance, they get smuggled there in the first place. That's why there are two competing agendas: 1. prevent the abhorrent smuggling practice; 2. process refugees.

[abaris]

We cut the corner of getting a rightwing populist as head of state. By a hairs breadth. Only 31.000 votes decided the election in favor of the moderate. Again, a very reputable candidate, and, as opposed to his opponent, not a Jesus freak, but a realist.

But it goes to show again that the less educated, the less chances people have to lead a decent life, the more they fall for the populist pite pipers. And the more religious they are, the more they fall for the religious lip service.

The cities voted for the moderate, the countryside voted for the populist. It's 50/50 now. 50 in favor of rightwing populism, 50 in favor of liberalism.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36362505

[Minimalist]

Congratulations, Ab.  I hope we end up as fortunate.

[dom.donald]

Australia is 'looking to send refugees to New Zealand'?

Um..

I think NZ only accepts about 5 people a year doesn't it, and then they get shipped to Invercargill. I have 3 spare rooms in my house.

[Aractus]

The other thing I should note is despite how awful the current policy is (my preferred option would be to do away with mandatory detention altogether because it's way too expensive, it's fine to keep offshore processing but without the detention), there are some positives to it. PNG made domestic violence illegal in preparation for the detention of asylum seekers - that's a huge positive. Now people who are victims of domestic violence have a legal avenue for help - before that do you what their options were? Flee to Australia as a refugee - that's about it, and only about 20-30 people a year or so did that. And just recently further legislation has passed decriminalising homosexuality, rape, and criminalising marital rape . Again these laws are a direct result of them processing Australian refugees - so they would still have needed to be passed even if they had a processing centre there without the mandatory detention.