How do you turn boats around?

[donnashuggy]

Will abbott turn boats like this around?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-13/baby-boy-dies-after-boat-capsizes-near-christmas-island/481847...

[spotweldersfriend]

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@cats_back_2013 wrote:

well if it had been turned around in Indonesian waters by the Indonesians then it would not have happened... 

We give the Indonesians boats, money and man power to help prevent this from happening.. 

If it were not for Rudd changing the policy in the first place this would not be happening... and we only hear of a small portion of the boats that go missing... many are not reported... he should be ashamed of himself for instigating this policy failure. 

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And if Bush,Blair and Howard hadn't of invaded these countries. we wouldn't have so many refugees risking their lives to get somewhere safe.

[a_dingo_ate_my_chinwagger]

There seem to have been lots of emotional responses above which is understandable, but the problem needs to be approached with reason.

It's not possible to return asylum seekers to their port of origin if that port (country) refuses to allow them back in.

stop wishing for it; stop demanding it; deal with it using reason and of course, diplomacy.

It is necessary to establish the credentials of people who claim to have lost their documents but must have had some documentation on arrival at their port of departure.

This is also a matter for co-operation between the authorities of the countries involved.

It's a frustrating, emotional issue, but we need to be careful that our response remains in the realm of the reasonable and the humane.

[kilroy_is_here]

Firstly this boat load most comes from countries that have not been invaded by the British ,us or Australia .
To stop the boats you need to make the punishment greater than the rewards .
So no permanent residency , and bring in the death penalty for people smuggling , including boat captains ,make the price of getting here to greater than the rewards of trying, for those responsible for the trafficking

[meh_too]

And how do we convict  the people smugglers when we cant even extradite the suspects, let alone charge them

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/07/11/15/28/decision-day-for-alleged-smuggling-boss

[izabsmiling]

Poddster   : Donna, so if Indinesia and every other country needs papers to gain entry there how come that we dont have the same requirement?

Oh that right we do have that requirement.

My advice is enforce that law

We do don't we ?

We as a Country are signed up to the refugee convention ...part of that is that it is not illegal to seek asylum with or without papers.

It's probably hard for some to imagine that in some places it may not be easy to gain these 'papers' and perhaps not always safe to carry them if one does have them (think people of the Jewish faith in Nazi Germany)

I know that if ever all of my family needed to escape to another Country from Australia ...only my husband has a passport (? out of date) and my adult sons have a tendency to lose their birth certificates (not for sinister reasons )... if there was a war here and the Births,deaths and marriages offices had been bombed ,shut down,wasn't safe for anyone to go to,or the mail system shut down getting another Birth Certificate may not be so easy ....in that case they'd all  have to escape without these 'papers' if things got desperate 

emoticon removed now ?

[izabsmiling]

I put one of these : or these ; after poddster's name and that emoticon posted ?

[***super_nova***]

You cannot put people on the first plane and send them back to Indonesia because you cannot turn away refugees, it would be against international law.  You can only deport them if they fail to qualify as refugees. 

Refugees are a big problem for just about every government in the world, if it was as easy as putting them on planes and sending them somewhere else they would do it. 

And things are only going to get worse as Syrian, Egyptian and the "post Afganistan war" refugees start coming.  But as I already said thousand times, Australia gets only tiny proportion of the world's misplaced people, countries in Europe get 10x more in a month than we get in one year.

.

[i-need-a-martini]

A great majority of refugees do not have passports.

They are persecuted in their own countries so applying for a passport, let alone a visa, is not in the realm of possibility. There are those who have had their houses burnt to the ground - not documents there. Or those that have had to flee their houses without warning - no time to pack your passport in this case.

Once they make it into a camp, those that do have papers get priority and will come in by air.

Those that do not have papers languish in refugee camps around the world for decades. The sea voyage is their only hope.

I read an interesting sentence a while ago that went something like:  Refugees don't choose a country to live in. They are running from, not running to.

[i-need-a-martini]

There was an article in the SMH a few days ago asking the same question as the OP - how does Abbott intend to turn around the boats? He keeps harking back to the 'successful' Howard policy.

But that policy is fraught with danger (Siev anyone?) and the reality is that Howard was only successful in returning 4 out of however many hundred boats he tried to turn around.

So if Howard couldn;t manage it (at a time where we knew less about refugees and it wasn't such a big news event) then how on earth does Abbott think he is going to manage it?

He is an idiot for continuously bleating on about it.

[lurker17260]

I don't pretend to know what the solution to this is, but nor do I believe we being are as "overrun" as some would have us believe.

What I do often contemplate though is the accident of birth that allowed me to be born in this safe, secure part of the world and not have to constantly worry about my families wellbeing or survival.

I worry about the "us and them" mentality that comes into this debate and the sense that some people seem to think they have a given right to a good life here while others don't.  I know I have done and will do what it takes to give my family the best I can and I suspect, if circumstances warranted it, if that meant doing something illegal and dangerous I would still do it.

I supose I just wish we could stop demonising desperate people and try to come at this question from a more compassionate angle.

(and so ends my Sunday morning rave )