Currying Favour
A bit of background for those who are not aware of the situation.
Around the 11th June a boat carrying some 150 Tamil asylum seekers that left Pondicherry in India bound for Australia was intercepted by an Australian customs vessel. They have been kept at sea for about a month, their exact whereabouts a closely guarded secret by the government.
Meantime , a deal has been reached with the Indian government , after a bit of shuttle diplomacy and "gifts" of a couple of naval vessels to the Sri Lankan Navy , by which the boat people will be off-loaded, probably on the Cocos Islands then transferred to the Curtin detention center in WA ( not an attractive spot in the desert) where they will be interviewed by Indian consular officials. These will decide who to return to India (Indian residents ) and will consider taking Sri Lankan nationals.
There is the ever present risk that those being returned will face prosecution or persecution and despite a High Court challenge, in Australia of the whole governmental detention process, the immigration department under Scott Morrison is pressing ahead with arrangements to return the Tamils to India, which is not party to the Refugee Convention. Australia which has signed the convention seemingly trying to cherry pick its U.N. obligations as well as its legal obligations within Australia. .
The Australian government has been heavily criticised by the U.N. for its hardline, military led border regime
One would imagine that the 150 Tamils would be glad to get off the ship, get their feet on dry land and escape endless evening meals of baked beans on toast, Nor would it be too hard to imagine that dyed in the wool, staunch Liberals would be complaining at the cost of it all , since they have to fork out through the nose when booking a four week Ocean cruise for themselves.
It beggars the question as to where all this money is coming from. Apart from these refugee policies there has been considerable outlays on the MH 370 and MH 17 disasters. Time and time again we have been warned that the economy is in dire straits with cut backs and Scrooge budgets reaching out far into distant time horizons. What gives or are we missing something here?
As a final note a recent poll found 26 % of Australian thought we were too harsh on illegals, some 30% felt our treatment was right and the remaining 44% thought we were not hard enough!
(OMG! To be fair, am not certain of the details of the poll but it was quoted by one of the technical gurus on the ABC's The Drum, a week or so ago). Quite often those who arrived here with the "proper"process are often the most vociferous in voicing their opposition to queue jumpers.
