“Stop the boats”.
It was the catch-cry of Coalition MPs every day for three years. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was barely seen in public without promising that his Government would stop the boats. Stop the boats and turn them back where safe to do so.
The current Government’s promise was that their policy would be unshakeable. They would be firm. Decisive. Authoritative. There would be no caveats. No special circumstances. The best way, nay the only way to stop the boats was to intercept them before they reach our shores and tow them back, they insisted.
They would decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come…
But fast forward 7 weeks? Turns out stopping the boats isn’t quite that simple.
Over the weekend, Australia agreed to bring 63 asylum seekers to Christmas Island after a three-day standoff with Indonesia about who would take the desperate people. The asylum seekers were rescued only 80km from Indonesia’s shores and yet the ‘turning the boats back’ promise failed to eventuate.
Want to know more? So do we.
But we’ve got little more to report. Because during the stand-off and in the days following, the Government has been decidedly silent about what’s going on. This comes on top of their earlier decision to cease issuing a press release whenever an unauthorised boat was intercepted and instead hold bi-weekly press conferences where limited information would be released.
Well, fair enough, you might be thinking to yourself. After all, there are a lot of considerations in situations like this and Governments may well NEED to keep some information to themselves for reasons of national security. And besides, the previous Government were in the papers for the WRONG reasons every day, it’s kind of nice having a bit of a break from politics. Right? RIGHT?
Well, take a read of this edited transcript of what went down at the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s press conference last week. It paints a picture of a Government flat out refusing to share any information about what’s going on and the early failure of a policy which was key to their election victory:
Lieutenant General Campbell at the press conferenceQ: What’s become of that boat of asylum seekers?
Campbell: “I will not comment further in relation to on-water matters. Thank you.”
Q: Are they on their way to Christmas island now?
Morrison: “These matters continue to be dealt with in the practice we have been adopting for the last eight weeks under Operation Sovereign Borders and we’ll continue to do it the way we have been doing it.”
Q: Can you comment on reports that the boat is still in trouble?
Morrison: “Well, I just said all the people that were assisted have been accounted for.”
Q: What sort of assistance did you give them?
Morrison: “Well, again, we’re not going to go into the micro detail of these operational matters.”
Q: Can you tell us what assistance that was?
Morrison: “So we can go around this for a lot longer but that is the position.”
There were many reasons that Labor were voted out and the Coalition were successful in the last election. There is no question about that. But surely, surely, it is unquestionable that a major factor in deciding that outcome was the Coalition’s promise that they would stop the boats.
Since coming to Government, they’ve been doing things differently in this policy area. Fair enough, they were elected to do things differently. But they weren’t elected to hide the truth, to try and cover up policy failures and to starve the media – and through the media you, the public – of information.
Australians are rightly asking for answers. And it’s about time the Government started listening.
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Consider this:
More than 32 times the number of asylum seekers arrive in Australia by plane than do by boat.
Australian Government statistics from the first quarter of 2013 showed more than 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrived by boat were found to be genuine refugees.
In comparison, those who arrived by plane - despite being eligible for release into the community and not having to face years of detention on Nauru or Manus Island - were almost twice as likely to be rejected as refugees.
Remind me again why the majority of voters wanted a PM who doesn't believe in foreign aid, humanitarianism,women in parliament (or losing their virginity before marriage) equal rights for the gay community or science? (you know, the small matter of him not believing that global warming is real) What on earth justified that in the minds of the masses I'll never know. It's shameful.
Zoe, many voters and those who voted for Abbott are purely concerned with themselves and their families. Their view end at the front gate. They are easily led by the nose by cynical shock jocks such as Jones and the Bolta who reinforce their fear and bias especially about boat people who all happen to be muslim and not white. This focus on race and religion is pathetic but effective which is why the Liberals have played since Howard. It is all really a matter of education and politics. Until we get people to higher level of understanding of global issues we will get nowhere. The populalist politics that are now so prevalent is a really sad reflection of our society.
I'm not a fan of Abbot or his government but most of what you are saying is wrong.
The government still distributes foreign aid, some of that aid is used for humanitarian purposes, Abbot spends his free time working for humanitarian causes, there are women in parliament and Abbot has made no moves to disallow this, Abbot believes in science enough to support the same green house gas emission reduction target as Labor.
The only thing you got right was his opposition to equal rights for gays. It should be mentioned that Gillard was on his side.
The government has just given $10 million in aid to the Philippines (one of the largest donations to the Philippines during this crisis of any country thus far), and said that they are willing to give more if necessary. Not that I would expect that to be reported on on this site.
Nothing irritates me more than people who dismiss those who vote differently to them as not having a social conscience or not caring about others. People say things like "he's cutting foreign aid!" without acknowledging that the very reason this cut was necessary is because of the crippling debt into which Labor had plummeted the Australian economy. The best way to increase our capacity to give foreign aid in the future is to return the economy to surplus. No matter which government is in power, foreign aid will not be increased while the budget is moving further and further into debt. People like you seem to just look at things from a very short term point of view and feel within their rights to dismiss Liberal voters as selfish because of this view. When, in fact, many Liberal voters just realise that all generosities flow from a stronger economy, and the Labor government had no hope of providing that.
What an absolutely outrageous collection of unfounded generalisations. True to form, sipper.