Call a ROYAL COMMISSION on boat people, NOW!
Yesterday Tony Abbott called our attention to the national
boat people emergency. Kevin Rudd was
equally alarming when he spoke about evil people smugglers. Every day more Muslim ‘boat people’ swamp
Australia’s borders.
Kevin Rudd has promised that no refugees who arrive by boat
will settle in Australia – these people will be sent to PNG. Put simply, this will not work. There are too
many problems to list! First and foremost,
do we really think that an influx of boat people to horde PNG will lead to anything
but social incohesion and enclaves in what was otherwise a good Christian
society? How is inviting a potential terrorist around to dinner helping a
friend? Next is the issue of money – why
should we give people in PNG money for ‘foreign aid’ as a kickback? This is nothing short of corruption. Then there’s the issue of the handshake agreement
between Australia and PNG. If this doesn’t
stop the boats, do we really think PNG will be taking the hundreds of people
who arrive on our shores each and every single day because we have a handshake
agreement? And even now the PNG opposition leader complains that the agreement
had not been made in parliament. Which
brings me to Tony Abbott’s ‘solution.’
Tony Abbott has two plans – he always planned to turn the
boats around, but now adds that he will put a 3 star military officer at the
head of the operation. Tony,
what difference will a 3 star officer make?
You turn a boat around, they go back to Indonesia and then they
get on another boat. This doesn’t stop
the boats – it just makes people smugglers richer! It won’t work and it will anger Indonesia. Next he uses our money to build a new
building for bureaucrats and puts a military officer in charge. Abbott’s tough talk boils down to giving
people smugglers a second windfall when boats are turned back and an
administrative reshuffle. And now it
turns out that the military aren’t too keen on the idea. They don’t want to be used as props in an
election campaign and who could blame them?
They also don’t want to be pulled into a civil operation, and they don’t
want to have to report to some Minister of Immigration. Since when has the Minister for Immigration
had power over the military? Let’s put it plain, immigration, even of
boat people, is not a military matter.
They might be throwing out their passports, but that’s not a declaration
of war.
Both of them are all talk.
Neither of their solutions will work.
What we need is a Royal Commission.
And we need it right NOW. Nothing
else will do. Until we see a Royal
Commission, we know that both parties are all tough talk – they only care about
votes, not about boats.
