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.

[spotweldersfriend]

Sorry mods.That's his name.Ok -Richard.Better?

[i-need-a-martini]

No way! Seriously? You're not allowed to say **bleep** Cheney? Lol.

[i-need-a-martini]

Does that mean I can call someone a **bleep** head and it will get beeped out so there is no slap??

[donnashuggy]

It is weird because you can say **bleep** now, well I did once and it wasn't converted to bleep

[polksaladallie]

Julie Bishop caught out lying again.  She really is dangerous and in the wrong portfolio.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-24/png-pm-warns-coalition-to-stop-misrepresenting-aid-deal/484155...

[spotweldersfriend]

She probably got a lot of practice defending the asbestos moguls

[monman12]

SWF: "She probably got a lot of practice defending the asbestos moguls"

I just wish some could get a little practice in understanding  the  Law Society protocols/ethics apropos civil litigation and representation/instructions.

Bishop was one of the lawyers acting as  instructing solicitors for CSR,  not the litigator!

Whatever happened to the chortling of a few weeks ago, everything is retreating back  to the:  "attack is the best defence" line, a few weeks will tell though.

nɥºɾ

[spotweldersfriend]

I stand corrected

[lakeland27]

---

@monman12 wrote:

SWF: "She probably got a lot of practice defending the asbestos moguls"

I just wish some could get a little practice in understanding  the  Law Society protocols/ethics apropos civil litigation and representation/instructions.

Bishop was one of the lawyers acting as  instructing solicitors for CSR,  not the litigator!

Whatever happened to the chortling of a few weeks ago, everything is retreating back  to the:  "attack is the best defence" line, a few weeks will tell though.

nɥºɾ

---

 listen john, the country is now ruled by the murdoch kangaroo court, therefore,.. as the mmedia set the pace.. its fair to ignore slight technicalities as they do when its to ones advantage .. Ms bishop worked for the firm, she contributed to the outcome ? guilty.. andrew and piers would say guilty.. jones would yell 'she did it' if ms bishop was on the other team. is it fair ? or is she the victim of a misogynist attack ? 

[nero_bolt]

Piers Akerman –,Thursday, July, 25, 2013,(7:57pm)

IT is just a week since Kevin Rudd revealed his phony Regional Resettlement Arrangement with Papua New Guinea and like all the remedial programs he has previously rolled-out to deal with his other failed policies, this too, is destructing.

In the past week alone, at least eight illegal boats, with at least 651 passengers have arrived and at least nine people have drowned with dozens still missing, including 30 children.

(Addition its now 11 BOATS  Four boatloads of asylum-seekers carrying 296 people have reached Christmas Island since Wednesday night, taking the total to 816 people from 11 boats in seven days. Two more boats )

Not only has Rudd failed to stop the boats, he has also managed to undermine the long-standing relationship between Australia and our nearest neighbour and largest foreign aid recipient. Yesterday, Prime Minister Rudd acknowledged some of the difficulties without admitting that he was solely responsible for the crisis.

“If it was easy, we’d walk away and it would all sort itself out by tomorrow lunchtime,” he said. “There will be difficulties along the way, bumps in the road - I’d rather level with the Australian people."Kevvie, you are the nation’s biggest road hump.

Over the past few days, I’ve spoken about Rudd’s latest disaster with numerous people in PNG, academics, lawyers, business leaders and politicians, including Dr Allan Marat, a former deputy prime minister and acting governor-general and former minister for justice and former attorney-general.

(Disclosure: I was born in Wewak though I disappoint my callers because I do not attempt, as Rudd did, to speak pidgin.)

Marat says the policy represents an Australian policy shift (rather than a regional co-operative move) assisted by the government of PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and his deputy, Leo Dion, designed to fix Rudd’s domestic political problems relating to asylum-seekers BUT it adds more problems to PNG’s “already burgeoning social, economic, and political problems that Australia will not solve with its political bribery.”

“The RRA was never meant for the benefit of PNG but for the relief of Australia from its own political mess,” he says.

“PNG’s ‘assistance’ to its friend Australia amounts to a misdirected and misapplied political mandates by O’Neill and his cabinet ministers

."The most glaring problem is that there is no land for the proposed resettled refugees. Ninety seven per cent of land in PNG is subject to customary ownership and large tracts are tied up in never-ending land disputes.

There is no “no-man’s land” available. Even finding housing for public servants is a major problem and uncontrolled migration from rural areas into urban centres like Lae and Port Moresby bring housing difficulties and increase the already high levels of unemployment.

Population pressure is increasing the demand on an already struggling economy wracked by uncontrolled corruption and economic mismanagement. Youth issues pose a real problem with critical levels of youth unemployment, teenage pregnancies and the number of single parent families on the rise with no government welfare support programs.

The prospect of many thousands of Muslims arriving in PNG through the Rudd-designed program alarms the locals who feel Christianity - which is recognised in the preamble to the PNG Constitution - will be threatened.

“Australia will force Muslims to enter PNG,” Marat says. “Anti-Western Muslim militants always claim that an overseas attack on any Muslim is an attack on every Muslim; yet the same extremists are not calling on their fellow citizens to demonstrate practical aid to the asylum-seekers who are in strife.”

Marat says the arrangement represented neo-colonialism or re-colonisation by Australia.

He says some believe both PMs (PNG and Australian) are “good at making public announcements but are hopeless at actually implementing policies”.

“It is said that both PMs are brilliant at ‘low’ politics, but they are hopeless at actually governing - and stopping the boats is a real test of whether or not you can be an adult government and that is a test that the PNC has consistently failed,” he says. “What is PNG’s Government policy that will ensure boat arrivals stop? None!”

Marat says a “failed Australian government policy and its messy consequences are now being dumped onto an already problem-riddled neighbour PNG”. He says the RRA is Australia’s fundamental repudiation of its commitment to protect refugees.

“Australia has bought off O’Neill, and his cabinet ministers, to solve Australia’s most difficult asylum-seekers policy problem,” he says.

Marat predicts there will be a humanitarian crisis in PNG because the nation does not have the capacity and ability at all to process refugees.

“PNG has failed the West Papuan refugees,” he says. “What does PNG hope to do with the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of refugees on their way to Australia and diverted to PNG?

“O’Neill and his ministers should ask Australia to revert back to its turn-back policy for asylum-seekers’ boats where it is safe to do so. Turn back the boat to its port of origin.”

He says it should also reintroduce the Howard government’s border protection policy, including temporary protection visas. This “arrangement” will meet the same fate as Julia Gillard’s East Timor deal, he says. All announcement but no reality.