Seeking asylum is no game

The Opposition has no policies, only a suggestion that an inquiry should be held. But we don’t need an inquiry to tell us that there are intense conflicts around the world. We need politicians with integrity who will present events in their context, with honesty and intelligence about what is in Australia and the world’s best interests.

Australia is not being “flooded” with asylum seekers from the north and the numbers are still nowhere near the thousands who arrived by boat under the Coalition’s watch. In a global context the numbers were insignificant even then. There is no chaos, there is no national emergency as Stone would like us to believe, no one is arriving here unchecked. Refugees arriving by boat or by any other means are only given visas after extensive processing, ID checks, security checks, health checks and the usual banal bureaucracy we all experience.

The Rudd Government’s focus on people smugglers has at least diverted attention away from punishing asylum seekers but this fails to address the problems of refugees in the region. It is a stategy that simply alleviates some of the domestic political pressure and clearly the Rudd Government is not interested in protection needs when it engages in talks with the Sri Lankan Government about people smuggling, especially when many of the refugees coming at the moment are Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka.

Last year Australia accepted more than 170,000 migrants and only 13,500 people with humanitarian concerns. If Barnaby Joyce is so concerned that we might accept a migrant instead of a refugee he might want to argue for more places to be made available for refugees under the Humanitarian program. If Opposition members would only give up the dialogue that exposes their irrelevance they could play a valuable role in focusing attention on the dire humanitarian needs of vulnerable people and give themselves a chance at being taken seriously.