Refugee policy: I’m not feeling good

Equally the LNP proposal for a senior army officer with the rank of Lieutenant General to help co-ordinate policy and operational responses is not a good idea.

Other than themselves and uniform bedazzled politicians, who credits the military with a superior capacity for organisation? Anyone who has been in the military is well aware of the infinite capacity for the military to stuff up.

It is the doctrine of military exceptionalism peddled most recently by retired Major General Jim Molan. It is a doctrine embraced by John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and the Opposition spokesperson on Immigration, Scott Morrison. None of whom have served in the military.

Why have we got to the point of allowing a right wing former general to attempt to dictate policy with respect to asylum seekers?  Jim Molan got it wrong on Afghanistan. This knock it down, smash it up proponent of towing the boats back, shares much in common with Scott Morrison.

There is little support amongst the most senior serving military officers for Molan’s  proposal. The head of the Defence Association, Neil James, can be assumed to be conveying the views of these officers, including the Head of the ADF, General Hurley, when he rejected the proposal.

Morrison leads with his mouth. He believes in Deterrence with a big D, whatever the cost in human suffering. He eschews the big P of the Push factor. He listens only to those who share his own cruel views. His smirking and intemperate public advocacy is doing the LNP more harm than good. He is not converting swinging voters and neither is Abbott who is looking and sounding increasingly defensive.

Former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is right to call for a Royal Commission into the Department of Immigration. Their maladministration of detention centres and their indifference to their shortcomings and failure of duty of care, is as callous as similar failures in the detention system of South African Apartheid. Fraser referred to the detention centres as gulags and he was right.

Morrison says that the revised LNP asylum seeker policy will put the AFP in charge of disruption operations. They are already conducting these operations. What are these policies, how do they go about them and how closely are they working with people smugglers?

No one believes Australian politicians when they say they are concerned about asylum seekers drowning at sea when they are the architects of policies which send asylum seekers mad.

People fleeing oppression is not a problem that can be solved, it can however be managed. Regional processing of asylum seekers on Indonesia, if such an agreement can be hammered out, is a managed response. It is the only response if politicians in this country are serious about preventing people drowning on hazardous boat journeys.