Australia's Asylum Seeker Policy is an Appalling Farce

   Imagine if a political party and a few major Australian media outlets chose to tell the story differently!! Imagine if the template for understanding the arrival of leaky boats from Indonesia and beyond was a story about the global and regional issues that led people to flee OR if instead of being camped outside a London Hospital, a journalist went to the places the 'people smugglers' were organising from and unearthed and told their stories and those of the people giving them money....
   Imagine if we identified the story of boat people, through the kind of short piece from the papers a few days back that featured Dr Karl and others. Ahn Doh is a bloke who should have been overrun with media interview requests last week.... 'The Happy Refugee' has a story to share...
   Nobody wants people drowning at sea or flee-ing persecution and violence but the desperation is real and the need for compassion and understanding the issue is actually within the capacity of the average Australian [whatever their background]!!
   So, what of the recently announced Labor Government policy. Kevin Rudd enjoys talking more than me... I'll just pause for effect as my good friends take that onboard... we know this...
   At the moment he has a tattered notepad page in his top pocket, taking the opportunity of change, to 'fix' a list of problems for the government in seeking to be elected in the near future. Surely the kick on effects of the changes to FBT policy are an example of how short sighted this is... whatever you make of the government's policy on asylum seekers, it won't be tested in any meaningful way prior to the next Poll and so it gets to sound tough, with few consequences. Any wonder the stories of life on Manus Island emerge as journalists, activists and others seek to offer scrutiny.
   What if we could just choose that 'stopping the boats' was not the issue? What if we could say to Tony Abbott, you can stop the boats... so what?
   Lastly, even if your issue is not the government policy, my main annoyance is this 'tick it off the list' cynical politicking from Rudd [and Abbott]!! One positive from this may be Gonski... you think PNG are getting a brown paper bag full of money... stay tuned for what really gets the recalcitrant states over the line before Rudd calls a poll for either late August or late September.
You can tell a lot about a country by the way it treats the most vulnerable...