Kevin Rudd Shows The World How Racist Australians Want Him To Be

Hey Kevin Rudd, thanks for the free topical news story. I was just wondering what the next big controversial thing would be that Intentious would cover, and you’ve really been timely on your delivery. Barely a month into your Second Coming, and Australia’s Prime Minister really appears to be “doing stuff”, as one insider puts it:

The nearest I’ve come to hear somebody admit what goes on in Australia was at an agency trade press briefing about four years ago where a creative complained that what he felt should be a digital campaign targeting youth binge drinking was booked for expensive TV advertising where kids would be likely to be watching because of “political pressure for Rudd to be seen to be doing stuff”

Source: The government’s boat visa ads are targeting voters, not asylum seekers | Mumbrella 

Today the Australian Labor government Department of Immigration has caused international outrage after publishing gloating pictures showing asylum seekers looking distraught at being turned away from the country. (Source: 81-iranians-get-the-new-message-you-will-not-settle-in-australia | IMMI.gov.au)

The pictures show actual people who were on the first boat – carrying 81 mostly Iranian nationals – learning that the second missing asylum seeker boat had been found on its way to Christmas Island, an island belonging to Australia and the most common destination for asylum seekers due to its proximity to Indonesia.

Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government Tweets Discriminating Insensitive Photo Shocking The World | Intentious

The UK’s Huffington Post reports:

One press release, titled ’81 Iranians get the new message’ featured pictures of a woman sitting on the floor with her head in her hands.

It comes after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that any asylum seekers arriving by boat would be turned away and sent to Papua New Guinea.

Rudd claimed the move was aimed at preventing the number of ‘boat people’ killed trying to sail to Australia.

The Australian Green party’s immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young told the Sydney Morning Herald: “Today’s vulgar display from the Department of Immigration … truly is a move dredged up from the bottom of the barrel.

“It is shameful that this government is exploiting people’s private despair for cheap political gain.”

 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for implementing some sort of deterrence against people risking their lives to come here by boat openly when instead they should actually go through a safer, and legal application process.

But for me, this tweet crosses the line.

The most effective “deterrence to come here by boat” is encouragement and a accessibility for people to apply to come here by legal means, and a much, much more well staffed, well resourced application response process.

People who apply the “preferred, correct” way aren’t seen as a threat for some reason. The stigma which distrusting people feel towards refugees is lifted when they aren’t perceived as “cheating the system”.

Right now, the overwhelming sense from Australians, Brits, Americans, is that if you’re coming here illegally, it must mean you have something to hide. You’re not “genuine” enough to go through the normal application process, so you’ve tried to smuggle your way in.

The truth is in fact the opposite: those with the most nationalistic, extreme, patriotic views are the ones more likely to stay in their country and fight for it, not flee it.

People the world over still all think their countries are being overrun and invaded by refugees.

Here’s some British people commenting publicly on Australia’s tweet over at the Huffington Post coverage:

In recent years, refugee numbers have sky-rocketed to historical high proportions.

In fact, did you know that the number of people who have arrived in Australia by boat since the global financial crisis over the past 5 years (2008 – 2013) is approaching the population of the suburb of Noosa, Queensland?

45,000 people, a number which is three times the total number of refugee arrivals over the preceding 18 years.

45,000 people is an average of about 24 people a day over five years.

It will come as no surprise that the opposing political party, the Australian Liberal party have been advertising the shit out of this fact so that ordinary folk think “oh god… that’s a big number. We’ve gotta do something!” But let’s take a second to dissect this.

How big is big?

First of all, roughly speaking, there are about 800 births every day in Australia. So, roughly speaking, the number of refugees arriving by boat account for 3% of the nations’ population of 22 million people.

We’re talking about only three percent of people when asylum arrivals are at its highest ever level.

Globally speaking, it’s problem that we have large numbers of refugees, yes. But it’s a problem for the whole world.

The increased number of arrivals Australia is seeing is not unique by any measure.

Consider the below map, which shows the path most asylum seekers follow when they leave their country.

For 81 Iranian nationals to travel to Australia they need to get out of Iran and sail thousands of kilometres to India, Sri Lanka or Indonesia, before hopping on another boat to the Cocos or Christmas Islands.

This is months of dangerous travel and what this tells me is that this path is more attractive, more accessible, than simply applying for asylum at an embassy.

A lot of things have happened since the global financial crisis of 2008. We’ve had the Arab Spring for one, many countries erupting in civil war, huge humanitarian displacement.

Is it any surprise that people want to leave Syria, Iran, Afghanistan? Given their current situations I bet you’d flee too.

The unignorable reality is that there actually are a lot of legitimate refugees now.

Adding to this, just about every wealthy nation has decreased the amount of foreign aid they give war torn and poor, poverty stricken countries, exacerbating the problem because there is now less financial aid going into helping to solve humanitarian problems in their own countries.

Meanwhile, smuggling networks have been built up and revitalised with bigger networks, better knowledge and experience.

“They have got better at what they do.” says Sebastian Baumeister from the UNODC:

People smugglers charge between $7,000 and $20,000 to get people to Australia by boat.

“It’s very big business,” 

“If you would calculate this by an average of $14,000 you come up with a quite high amount (about $350 million).”

He says people smuggling is a high-profit, low-risk business, which has easily adapted to recent changes in government policy.

“I don’t believe that you can fully stop boat arrivals coming from Indonesia to Australia,” Mr Baumeister says.

“The challenge is to get the organisers, but most of them are in the countries of origin and transit, and it’s very difficult to get hold of them.

Source: Can either side of politics stop the asylum boats? | ABC.net.au

I am sure nobody wants to see ransom/blood money lining the pockets of people smugglers. Instead, we can beat them at their own game by encouraging asylum seekers to apply via the normal methods of … actual application.

Image Sourced from News.com.au

The final point I’m going to make about today’s tweet, I alluded to at the beginning of this piece.

Kevin Rudd’s Labor government wants to appear to be “doing stuff” about asylum seekers to appease the masses of voters.

This tweet isn’t actually going to be read by asylum seekers. Just like their ridiculous full-page spread advertisement (below) isn’t going to be read by asylum seekers.

The last time I checked, poverty-stricken Indonesians don’t buy the Sydney Morning Herald with their morning coffees.

Rudd’s Labor Government Stupid Asylum Seeker Ad in the Herald Sun That No Asylum Seeker Will Actually Read

Yeah, because people in Iran/Indonesia can call an Australian 1300 number and would just go to australia.gov.au/novisa for all their information.

The bottom line is, this is all just advertising to Australians, wasting taxpayer money on a “three-percent” non-issue, blowing it out of proportion like both sides of government do every year.

Even if we let every single refugee arrival into the country without processing them, it’s 3% of a nation who is already critically underpopulated to the extent that we’re going to be putting up entire cities of useless elderly people and watching our economy completely collapse in another 40 years.

I’m over it.