Why Australia should abandon the 1951 UN Refugee Convention...

We live in a dynamic, ever-changing world, so it seems incredibly odd to me that Australia in 2011 is bound by 60 year old UN convention on refugees that was designed to deal with post-World War 2/Cold War Europe. It is absurd - ludicrous even - that the people of Australia must adhere to a policy that was built to solve a problem that existed before many of us were even born. At the heart of my distaste for this convention is how the term 'refugee' is defined, and how this must change to recognise the difficulties governments face now, as opposed to 60 years ago.

The convention defines a 'refugee' as a person who has a "well founded fear of being persecuted" should they be returned to their country of origin. This made sense in Cold War Europe, with the KGB willing to take care of any traitors to the great socialist cause. Those brave few who managed to escape over the Berlin Wall and break free of the Soviet Bloc would have without a doubt faced persecution and death if they had been returned to the Red Side of the Iron Curtain. That is in stark contrast to the so-called 'refugees' that we have piling up on our shores today.

While those fleeing communism faced the very real threat of death upon their return, do those who Bob Brown and Sarah Hanson-Young roll out the red carpet for face their untimely end should the boats be turned around? Of course not! These are not people fleeing death and destruction, these are not wartime refugees, they are economic refugees. It is not push factors leading them to our shores, but pull factors, such as Australia's economy, our work, our opportunities, our indoor plumbing. If these people can afford to spend over AUS$30,000 to a people smuggler in order to jump the queue, for the sole purpose of economic gain, then they are not genuine refugees. They are opportunists taking advantage of an inept government that leaks more than the boats carrying these people here and which fails at everything it attempts. These are people too lazy to work to improve their own country that they travel to, and exploit, ours!

Do these people look like genuine refugees?

Australia must swiftly abandon this 1951 UN convention, an out-dated relic of history, and put the interest of its own people ahead of those who seek to steal our jobs and our opportunities. If we continue down this destructive path that the Greens and Gillard have set us on, whereby any and all have the red carpet rolled out for them at the expense of the Australia tax-payer, we are going to be over-run with every third world opportunist who can point their raft in the direction of Christmas Island and cry persecution. The truly sad thing is that while these leeches con their way into this great nation there are genuine people in need, with the very real threat of death hanging over them, doing the right thing and waiting in the UN Refugee Camps. These true refugees are having their place in our quota stolen by selfish opportunists who are exploiting this stupid, incompetent government.

The ‘Malaysian Solution’: Gillard’s Refuge or Ruin?

The debate occurring in federal politics at the moment is fixed firmly on the Carbon Tax and the economic damage it will wreck on the Australian economy and households. While this is an important debate to be had, it is overtaking and foreshadowing pretty much every other issue in the public discourse. There has been much said in the Australian media about how the government and its chief sales persons, Prime Minister Gillard, need to divert the national conversation away from the poisonous Carbon Tax and begin discussing ‘other things’. Of course the government would want to ‘move forward’ from this toxic tax, but really, what else is there to talk about? A cursory glance over the list of other things which the government has been up to does not provide any bright spots for the PM to seek refuge. Speaking of refuge...

This may come as a shock to some in Australia but, over the past 24 hours there have been two illegal boat entries into our naval territory, with the latest boat carrying somewhere in the order of 60 asylum seekers. Now while the liberal media has done a fairly good job at keeping this under wraps and shielding this incompetent government from this line of attack the asylum seeker debate will surely return as a popular area of discussion in the public forum very shortly, what with the looming ‘Malaysian Solution’ deal nearing finalisation. So what can we look forward to in this Grand Bargain? Well, while there are precious few details out (much like the lead up to the Carbon Tax... is it just me or does this government seem particularly secretive and shifty? Pity they cannot hide their ineptitude!) but what we do know is that we will be offloading 800 asylum seekers in exchange for 4000 refuges. In addition Australia will be footing the bill for the whole affair and, undoubtedly, throwing Malaysia a hefty sum of ‘convincing money’; you know, the type that greases strategic palms...? [wink, wink]



How much longer can we risk having an open, unsecure border?


While we may not know all the details it would be a safe bet to assume that regardless of what the deal looks like the people of Australia will be shafted by this incompetent government. We will foot the bill, we will bear the international condemnation should Malaysia do anything naughty to the asylum seekers we send them (i.e. caning, general assorted beatings, unceremoniously being fired out of a canon into some other country...), and, ultimately, we will still need to deal with the tidal wave of illegal entrants into our territory because this deal will not achieve the government’s objective of stemming the flood of boats washing over our shores.

I question, though, whether this deal will actually go ahead at all. We have already seen the extensive influence that the Greens hold over the Prime Minister (it must be difficult to be a puppet to two masters; i.e. Bob and the Unions), and surely that will extend to this area of policy. Not content with destroying Australia’s economic stability and credentials, Comrade Brown will surely next be ordering his deputy in Gillard to abandon this asylum seeker deal in favour of simply opening the borders to every single person who can jury-rig together a moderately buoyant raft and point themselves in our direction.



"That's it... Dance for the cameras, my pet... Dance!"

“No need for ID papers or a legitimate and orderly assessment process!” Bob Brown will proclaim, his smug grin obvious for all to see as he stand on the dock waving in the illegal boats. “Come on in! It doesn’t matter where you’re from or even whether you are a security risk, just come on down to the People’s Republic of Australia! Be quick, the first five hundred get Centrelink benefits for life... Oh, who am I kidding? Centrelink benefits, for all! Unless of course you’re actually an Australian and have a legitimate claim to assistance... Anyone who questions my glorious edict is a racist, fascist tool of the evil New Ltd. Empire!” All the while Comrade Hanson-Young would stand dutifully by her leader, only speaking up occasionally to state which regional town she aims to bankrupt and destroy next.

For those of you who think that I am being a tad melodramatic and doing nothing more than playing on popular fears in an attempt to whip up contempt for vulnerable refugees, I would counter with this: The Greens have already screwed the taxpayer out of $10 billion for their ‘Green Bank’ to fund their pie-in-the-sky renewable schemes and are currently bullying the government into a soviet-style purge of those in the media who do not tow the party line, wanting all journalists to unquestionably accept their green-propaganda... what next? Is it so hard to believe that their next step, having destroyed the economy and the media, will be to obliterate our border security? This deal will either be vetoed by Brown or will be watered down to such a degree as to rid it of all use as a deterrent.

If only there was a simple solution to this problem... something based in the Pacific, perhaps?