State of Play on Nauru

(1-1/4 mins) Immigration officials are secretly shifting asylum seeker families from Nauru to Adelaide as part of an operation to remove all children from the island’s regional refugee processing centre. It's about time. This video gives us an insight into the conditions on Nauru that most refugees have had to endure for five years. It shows the perils they face by having no idea what their future holds.The Howard Government quitely returned refugees after it introduced offshore processing in October 2001. Between 2001 and 2008, a total of 1,637 people were detained on Nauru and Manus Island, including 786 Afghans, 684 Iraqis and 88 Sri Lankans. Of these, 1,153 (or 70%) were ultimately resettled to Australia or other countries, 705 of these in Australia. Others were resettled in New Zealand (401), Sweden (21), Canada (16), Denmark (6) and Norway (4), while 483 left “voluntarily” and one person died. It took Kevin Rudd to abolish the Pacific Solution, but Julia Gillard re-introduced the practice to Nauru on 14 September 2012 and to Manus Island on 21 November 2012. It was at this point I resigned my near twenty year membership of the ALP. When Rudd was returned to the Prime Ministership he simply didn't have the guts to cancel the offshore operation so close to the looming election which saw Tony Abbott as Prime Minister reminding us all about the perceived loss of control ofour borders, and a whole bag of dirty tricks aided and abetted by Scott Morrison who famously refused to speak about on-water operations.At the moment, it seems that transferred families ARE being kept together. The government is saying nothing, but it appears higly likely Nauru Airlines planes have been chartered by the Australian government, and Adelaide has been chosen as the destination.“We’ve been getting about this quietly. We haven’t been showboating about it, we haven’t been doing any of those things,’’ Scott Morrison said, reminiscent of what the Howard government had done ten or so years previously.“We have just been getting on and dealing with these issues in the appropriate way in accordance with our policies", said Morrison in that understated smart-alec tone he uses too much.The problem with the policy is, however, despite the ease of transferring refugees to a Pacific country, like throwing out your rubbish, there's never been any solution offered as to what to actually do after the disposal, and they accumulate like unwanted material in a landfill.After the Wentworth by-election it seems the urgency of something this Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government has been putting off since getting elected. Rebekha Sharkie, Kerryn Phelps and even a few Liberal Backbenchers are pushing for a solution behind the scenes.Dismally, due to the rampant racist nature of many Australians, there are votes in being cruel to the most vulnerable of people that pose absolutely no threat to us in any way whatsoever.

Posted by One Term Tories on Wednesday, October 31, 2018