Kevin Rudd has sold out to get elected?

[j*oono]

I'm really disappointed.  Now we are not just the lucky country.  We are the up yours country.

Refugees are being turned back to suffer in PNG.   Every election I am so sick of the boat refugees being used.  Every single time since Howard got in with the kids being thrown into the water to drown it's been the most disgusting use of human life to rule a country.

Shame on you Rudd.

[cherry*135]

Option 1:  Current - the last few years when the number of people arrving by boat is increasing by many 1000's every year.

Option 2: IF TA elected as PM. He has a stop the boats slogan, but no firm details on how he is going to do that. Turn them back IF IT IS SAFE to do so... who decides that, what if it is hardly ever safe and just as many arrive as now?

Option 3: Kevin Rudds announcement... send the boat people to PNG. That will keep them out of Australia altogether.

Australia will inc its intake of refugees with visas from 20 000 to 27 000.  Labor has been badly criticised for not doing anything to slow the flow of refugees arriving here.

From those options above, I would choose option 3. The idea is if the refugees realise they are not going to get to Australia but will end up in PNG instead, they will stop trying to head down this way.

PNG has got some wild parts, but it is not all like that is it? Some my of relations lived and worked there in the 80's for a few years and never had any problems. Unless it has deterioated a lot more since then.

[***super_nova***]

---

@am*3 wrote:

PNG has got some wild parts, but it is not all like that is it? Some my of relations lived and worked there in the 80's for a few years and never had any problems. Unless it has deterioated a lot more since then.

---

Papua New Guinea: a country suffering spiralling violence

Australia will send asylum seekers to a country beset by crime and disease, whose children were deemed to be among the world's most vulnerable. 

The Australian government’s controversial deal with Papua New Guinea will see asylum seekers sent to a country struggling to cope with spiralling rates of violence, particularly against women.

The Australian government currently urges travellers to PNG to “exercise extreme caution” due to high levels of serious crime and dangers of violent clashes, ethnic disputes, carjacking, and endemic levels of cholera, high levels of HIV, and malaria.

Papua New Guinea has recently been labelled one of the worst places for gender-based violence in the world. One hospital in the country’s second biggest city, Lae, recently reported that half of all sexual violence victims they saw were children.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/19/papua-new-guinea-spiralling-violence

That is why I do hope that not many people are going to be so desperate as to get on the boat. 

[cherry*135]

That is why I do hope that not many people are going to be so desperate as to get on the boat. 

It makes sense then to have the processing centres in regions/countries which are very unappealing to live in? 

Australia will still accept 27 000 refugees a year.

[spotweldersfriend]

At the very least,those already in concentration camps prior to this announcement should be processed and if deemed to be genuine refugees,allowed to settle on the mainland.

[lakeland27]

 i'm not a big fan of any of these policies, apart from the fact they leave Abbott looking terminally wounded. i don't like the detention centres or the drownings. the coalition policies (as someone said)  are lacking in any real planning as evidenced by the tow-back rubbish.  so i look at it in the context of which is the lesser of 2 evils , the libs have no workable policy in this area or on the domestic front. labor have good domestic policy and an asylum policy that is slightly better. for this reason and environmental reasons i split my vote and vote for the green senate candidate. if you are in the electorate of Senator Hanson Young give her your vote.

[donnashuggy]

Hanson Young is useless in my opinion, she doesn't have  a sense of reality.

It is admirable to care and consider children that are in detention centres, their parents were 'apparently' so desperate that they put them on leaky boats, can anyone imagine doing that? 

[cherry*135]

Yes, I can imagine parents doing that. Ones that are persecuted in their own country and would do anything to get out, anything to give their children a chance of having a better life. They may all be killed if they don't leave their own country anyway.

[donnashuggy]

I can imagine a persecuted person doing it too am.

There will be proof in the pudding if the boats stop coming I guess. I don't believe for a second that the majority of the people that have been coming here via boat are anything of the sort.

[freakiness]

---

@am*3 wrote:

Yes, I can imagine parents doing that. Ones that are persecuted in their own country and would do anything to get out, anything to give their children a chance of having a better life. They may all be killed if they don't leave their own country anyway.

---

Or worse, their children might be stolen and sold as slaves or child fighters.

Yep, I'd take them on a leaky boat rather than that sort of life.

[i-need-a-martini]

---

@donnashuggy wrote:

Hanson Young is useless in my opinion, she doesn't have  a sense of reality.

It is admirable to care and consider children that are in detention centres, their parents were 'apparently' so desperate that they put them on leaky boats, can anyone imagine doing that? 

---

Yes I can imagine it.

Imagine if you were faced with the prospect of your 5 year old child sitting in an Indoesian refugee camp for the next 15-25 years without an education, a job, liberty or medical care.

But I agree about Hanson Young. Actually the Greens have lost the plot since the brilliant Bob Brown left.