PNG DEAL another RUDD FRAUD and CON

[nero_bolt]

Kevin Rudd makes a big claim about his deal with PNG:

From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be sent to Manus and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea for assessment of their refugee status.

But the published agreement does not guarantee at all what Rudd claims.

The deal is for just 12 months:

The deal does not oblige PNG to take all boat people sent from Australia. It makes such people only “liable” to being sent:

Australia under this arrangement will not send women and children to PNG for some time. Kevin Rudd e...

The intention here though, is that we will now bring the quality of those places back up to standard for the processing centre. So that, where at the moment, we will not be transferring women and children immediately across to Manus Island...

PNG’s Prime Minister does not commit himself to taking unlimited numbers any time soon:

We will take as much as we can on the capacities that we have on the ground… You can’t just simply estimate a number.

Construction of the Manus detention centre announced last year is still six months away, with room f...

PNG even suggests there will be a “cap” on the number of people it will take:

PNG Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato told The Australian the arrangement was open-ended but he also signalled the potential to put “brakes” on its scope over time. “We are not putting any cap on any numbers at this stage because it is too early and we want to work through jointly to establish at what point in time what brakes Australia will put on and what brakes PNG will put on,” Mr Pato said.

The deal does not oblige PNG to resettle any boat people found not to be refugees:

If PNG won’t resettle non-refugees, Australia may have to take them back - or find them some other h...

LABOR is racing to close a gap in its new border protection regime as Papua New Guinea ... says that it will not resettle asylum-seekers who are refused refugee status…

PNG made it clear over the weekend that it was willing to resettle asylum-seekers who were given refugee status but would not do so for those who fail that test, keeping them in detention if no other countries agreed to accept them… Immigration Minister Tony Burke last night told The Australian that the provision did not mean people who failed to gain asylum on Manus Island would be sent back to detention centres in Australia.

Michael Smith notes that the deal is actually an “arrangement”, and not an agreement or a treaty:

To quote our DFAT publication, an Arrangement is used where ”the parties do not intend to create, of their own force, legal rights or obligations, or a legal rel.... Such instruments, whether in the name of the government or agencies, are termed “arrangements of less than treaty status’’.

The High Court might be interested in this aspect when judging whether Australia has indeed fulfilled its responsibility towards asylum seekers who have applied for our protection.

UPDATE

Further, the deal seems to offer life-time support from Australia for any refugees resettled in PNG under this arrangement, which could prove attractive:

Here is how Kevin Rudd described that last obligation:

...the Australian Government, in support of the PNG Government, will provide comprehensive settlement services to ensure that these refugees can live safely and with security and in time, prosperity, within PNG.

[nero_bolt]

Kevvie the conman caught out on PNG “arrangement”

ON FRIDAY, Kevvie from Brizzie began his announcement of the phony PNG deal by saying: “I want to level with the nation” – but that was complete nonsense.

He said he an “arrangement” with PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill but we only learnt yesterday what sort of an “arrangement” it is.

For all the claims that Kevvie made, the deal might as well be a flower arrangement.

It’s all poppycock.

As Opposition leader Tony Abbott said after he was finally able to obtain a copy of cobbled together humbug, Kevvie is “essentially misleading the Australian people”.

“This is not a solution to our problem, Abbott said. “This is not a policy to stop the boats.

“This is simply a pre-election fix. This is simply something that is held together with Blu-Tak and sticky tape to last until the election, if possible.”

Just as all intelligent Australians who have worked out just how insubstantial Kevvie is were thinking.

Kevvie has done it again.

For a failed former Prime Minister and failed former Foreign Minister to be chosen to lead the Labor Party says a lot about how far that party has fallen.

The deal is not open-ended as Kevvie said, only Australian funding for the deal is open-ended.

It won’t stop the boats and it won’t stop illegal arrivals from coming to Australia.

Kevvie has been lying again.

The PNG Prime Minister has made it clear that the number of people his country would accept was governed by the capacity of its facility on Manus Island.

That’s the only detention camp the nation has.

It has a a current capacity of about 300 – approximately one week’s arrivals.

The Papuans themselves have already made it clear they are deeply unhappy at the prospect of boatloads of Muslims arriving and being forced into their communities. They are currently debating a Bill which would bar non-Christians from permanent settlement.

When they look across the Torres Strait and see the angst that 50,000 uninvited guests can cause, they are understandably fraught about the destabilising effect such numbers would have on their nation.

Kevvie hasn’t solved any problems in his life, he has only created them.

His two-page “arrangement” with PNG is a scandalous recipe for national mayhem.

If $60 million damage can be done by a handful of inmates of a camp on Nauru, just imagine the damage that could be caused in an urban environment by a significant number of determined illegal arrivals?

Kevvie the conman has struck again.

This thing is crumbling before our eyes –only the ABC and the Fairfax media think it is brilliant.

Which really says it all.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/kevvie_the_co...

[polksaladallie]

Michael Smith?  Now there's someone to listen to.   

[azureline**]

I have not looked at this proposal as yet.... but it has a lot of people very worked up.....

[nero_bolt]

KEVIN Rudd's "export asylum seeker deal" has been exposed as half-finished with only a fraction of the asylum seekers on the first boat headed straight for our northern neighbour.

And there's no guarantee that those who are eligible - will remain there.

Just 35 single Iranian men could be sent within weeks as families on the boat carrying 83 passengers are set to remain in Australian detention centres, possibly for months.

The revelation comes amid warnings the government could face detention riots in Australia mirroring the fiery Nauru uprising.

An asylum boat is expected to arrive on Monday with any families on board to remain in Australian detention centres, including overcrowded Christmas Island facilities, until the Manus Island camp is improved.

A $130 million permanent camp for 600 is due to be finished early next year with Labor prepared to reject previous government health advice which prevented children aged under seven being sent to Manus Island because they could not be adequately immunised against tropical diseases.

The government's agreement with PNG also shows there is no written guarantee of the government's pledge that all asylum seekers sent to PNG will remain there with no written ban prevent people returning to Australia.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/special-features/no-guarantee-on-kevin-rudd8217s-asylum-seeker-de...

Spoiler

Detention facilities in Papua New Guinea will be swamped within days if the Rudd government's hardline new asylum seeker policy fails to quickly stem the arrival of 3000 people to Australia by boat each month.

The arrival of 837 asylum seekers in the past week alone - bringing the total this year to more than 15,000 - is set against a capacity for only 300 on Manus Island.

The government has admitted asylum seekers will be held in Australia for the time being as it races to expand PNG facilities and bring them up to United Nations-mandated standards for health and education provision.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/its-crunch-time-for-rudd-2013...

Mr Rudd's plan was doing exactly that, he argued, because it was taking people seeking asylum and ''dumping them into the hellhole of PNG''.

''[It is] in my view both an illegal penalty and a discriminatory penalty which puts Australia in breach of the convention.''

And children's rights organisation Plan International warned of ''great division'' if resettled refugees' conditions were markedly better than those of PNG people.

Australia's travel advisory warns of poor health facilities, cholera, malaria, high HIV/AIDS infection rates, high levels of serious crime including rape, and laws against adultery and homosexuality.

The deal between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his PNG counterpart Peter O'Neill says both countries ''take seriously their obligations for the welfare and safety'' of people transferred.

Ben Saul, a professor of international law at the University of Sydney, said it was hard to see how PNG would give refugees decent housing, education, healthcare and employment given the difficulties its people had securing such rights.

''PNG's one of the poorest countries in the world. It can't provide basic rights for its own people so do we really think PNG is going to prioritise making these rights for refugees over their own citizens?''

Professor Saul said the cost of the plan would be ''astronomical'' and the logistics difficult.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/its-crunch-time-for-rudd-2013...

[acacia_pycnantha]

Cruel but fair?

Sure took the wind out of Mr Abbot's salis, though

It's a political response geared with an eye on the coming election.

They're all sneaky bustards and not to be trusted to lie straight in bed, and yet we continue to vote for them.

Vote: None of the above.

[windrake]

Exposed as a political con to dupe the people into voting labor. Nothing has changed except for the faces, they are liars, will lie to get in, lie about everything. I'm sick of them.

[acacia_pycnantha]

So, just the same as the LNP and their running dogs.

[spotweldersfriend]

Tow the boats back. Just a con job to get people to vote for the Tea Party.

[acacia_pycnantha]

Tow the boats back. Like that was ever going to be a possibility. We don't exist in a vacuum here in the deep south. But the tow the boats back policy is bound to suck in more than a few of the politically niave, bless them all.