What a piece of utter and complete drivel, sadly typical of the arrant nonsense we hear every time the poisoned (by the poison dwarf) issue of asylum seekers rears its ugly head. We don’t have a refugee problem, we have a leadership problem. And it is disgusting to watch.

Firstly though, let’s dismiss the ridiculous notion that this is a ‘by-election disaster.’ For anyone. Sure, the ALP did ok, but it was hardly a ringing endorsment. The Libs declined the opportunity to participate and so also to be judged. As for the Greens, well apparently it’s a ‘disaster’ to not quite win a super-safe ALP seat they’ve held for a century! Despite comfortably winning the popular vote, only to be defeated by the preferences of a motley collection of minor candidates not even their mates voted for and frivolous gimmick groups like the Sex Party.

Actually no, that is being far too easy on them. For some reason you want to promote this industry lobby group, because that’s what it really is, a lobby group for the porn industry. That’s the first time I’ve heard the dirty mac brigade described as the ‘racy edge of cool.’ The fact that such a party garnered so much of the vote is surely a damning indictment of our political system, and demonstrates the disengagement many people clearly feel with it. If this trend continues, expect to see many such ‘parties’ in the future. The Tobacco Party maybe. The Beer Party. The Bank Party. The Mining Party… oh, wait, has that one already happened? If not, expect Clive Palmer to start it shortly.

Now, Michael Danby, my local member. He used to be sane once you know. Might I just remind him, and everyone else, that “their self-indulgent and viciously ideological position on asylum seekers, that is costing lives,” this radical, left-wing, idealistic, unrealistic policy is in fact the policy of those well-known Marxist revolutionaries Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke. And, incidentally, the policy supported by a clear majority of Australians. But let’s pretend that opinion poll doesn’t exist, shall we? Much easier for the major parties to blow the racist dogwhistle if we all ignore that.

In fact this insane Fraser policy is doing so much damage to the Greens that the two major parties lost 5% of the primary vote between them according to yesterday’s Newspoll. Catastrophic!

The Libs are always telling us they had a policy that worked in the past, so we should go back to it. Well, I suppose that’s fair enough, that is a conservative position (although if you continue to hold a conservative position long enough after the zeitgheist has moved on, it ceases to be conservative and becomes reactionary, but never mind). But if we’re going to look to the past for policies that worked, then we have to acknowledge that Fraser’s policy also worked. Under both his and Howard’s policies most of the refugees were found to be genuine and ended up in Australia. However, under the Howard policy many of them also ended up deeply traumatised, under Fraser’s they didn’t. On any logical, reasonable assessment of the facts Fraser’s policy wins, it also has the advantage of meeting our obligations under the refugee convention (the one we helped draft), so why not go back to that?

NB: I mentioned before that we don’t have a refugee problem. We don’t. Ask Italy. Ask Greece. Ask France or Britain. Other western countries are laughing at us, getting all hot and bothered about our relatively tiny numbers. We really should shut up before they get annoyed and insist we take some of theirs. We don’t have an illigal immigration problem or a border security problem either. Ask the US. They have 11 million illegal immigrants they can’t deport because their economy would collapse. And that’s illegal immigrants, people who sneaked accross their border and DID NOT claim asylum (which is, of course, perfectly legal). We have around 50,000, mostly English backpackers overstaying on tourist visas.

We seriously need to get a grip, process the refugees in Indonesia and Malaysia, as was done under Fraser, and give them a safe means of getting here. This will destroy the “people smugglers’ business model.” Then just bring them here, shut up about it, stop whinging and HTFU Australia!!!!!

The Democrats were out of favour because the old members like Don Chipp died out. Cheryl Kernots defection to the ALP was the beginning of the end too. By then the Democrats were infected with many Green thinking members too.

Meg Lees was OK.

Christine Milne has a hard act to follow with Bob Browns departure

The Greens voted the only way they could, to uphold the frigging law.

The liberal and labor parties wanted to break more laws than we have all had hot breakfasts and they are condemned by morons like Dangy and Morrison.

The media are equally cretinous because they all think there is some stalemate in refugee law when there is not.

It is illegal to shove away asylum seekers once they arrive here, which part of that don’t the cretins understand?

Britain, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and Norway have all tried to do it like we have and like us their own courts have said it is illegal.

The premise of the lib/lab position is that people still HAVE TO SAIL HERE, then get dumped elsewhere.

And the moron media think the Greens are in the wrong?

Then Scott the moron Morrison claims the Greens are perverting the law – it was the Liberal party under Robert Menzies who helped to write the frigging law 30 years before the Greens even existed.
Doc Evatt of the ALP helped to write the universal declaration of human rights in 1948 which became:

the legally binding humanitarian treaty called the refugee convention.

Fraser did the ICCPR, ALP the convention against torture and all forms of discrimination.

It was Gough Whitlam who ratified the refugee protocol of 1967 in 1973, it was Bob Hawke who ratified the rights of the child, in fact every human rights instrument we have ratified and agreed to abide by has been co-authored by the ALP or liberal party when in government.

It was Hawke who enshrined the refugee convention into law, it was Whitlam who ratified the safety of lives at sea convention and so on.

It is too much to ask that the bastards uphold those laws.

The Greens open door support for people smugglers was a major factor in their defeat at Saturdays Melbourne by-election. Their polcicy does not help genuine refugees in need, to the contrary it promotes people smugglers and thoses who seek to secure priority over others who are left languishing in UN refugee camps who can not afford to pay smugglers ransom

Smugglers cove, you are really, really stupid. there are no smugglers doing anything, there are asylum seekers coming and asking for our protection under the law and they are real refugees.

Those who claim that real refugees are those who wait for some mythical beast to invite them here should find out what the law is before putting up the usual moronic argument because refugees overseas have zero right to be allowed to come here, they are part of a voluntary scheme that is outside all and every human rights treaty we have ratified and resettlement is nothing to do with anything at all.

Those who arrive here and ask, no matter how they do it or who they pay, are the only ones we have an obligation to.

The rest is unmitigated lies and the open door policy is the refugee convention which forbids any signatory nation from shutting their borders so dry up you imbeciles.

The language of smugglers ransom? What is that? Who is being ransomed you jackass? The refugees are not being smuggled anywhere against their wills and they never have been.

The refugees are the ones who make the choices, not the taxi drivers.

how you people come up with such crap is beyond me but it seems some are not able to learn facts or be educated on even the most basic of levels.

One thing that Labor and Greens have in common is that their female politicians sure are ugly. Milne looks like a dried up old prune.

Marilyn, what I dont get is that they are not refugees,only interested in getting our handouts for life and you claim that they are refugees who can lieve there families behind quite safely and for all we know are nothing but trouble makers and mybe even members of the taliban. In my Book they should be send back to where they come from and not be given any help, having the Money to come here in the first place. They should be feed at there own cost before shipping them back, or Watermelon Party Members offer to house and feed them at there cost.

Rome under Caligula would have nothing on Austalia contolled by the Greens

What does having money have to do with anything?

Migrants have to have money, students, tourists, all have to have money.

The billions who don’t have money have to holiday on the local beach or B & B down the coast but we don’t blame the ones rich enough to migrate here or be tourists because the rest can’t.

It is a good thing for people to pay their own way in life I would have thought instead of sitting around sponging off the state like the refugees in camps do.

And where was the ALP’s Primary vote today? 2% off the lowest ever for the ‘Pardy’!!!!! The Greens are sitting fairly stable if you compare them to the ALP. Hee hee it is too funny, the ALP Caucus after the next election could be held in a matchbox.

The Greens are made up of oou-of-touch bleeding hearts who have a strange view of the world but little “life experience”. They have time and time again demonstrated appaling judgement, disloyalty, and self serving ways which are not about a better Australia. They are the filth of politics, even worse than the Nationals, and that’s a hard act to beat. All parties should preference the Greens LAST, every election, until they’re wiped out like the vermon they are. Oh, and would some soap, deoderant, shampoo, toothpase and mouthwash hurt?

Re TheBabelFish ‘processing in Indonesia & Malaysia’ is offshore processing or regional processing which the Greens have been campaigning against. They have been saying they want onshore processing!

”
One thing that Labor and Greens have in common is that their female politicians sure are ugly. Milne looks like a dried up old prune.

Posted by Moi | July 24, 2012, 19:08 ”

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I guess you haven’t cast a critical eye over Sophie and Bronwyn lately then.

No LNP preferences???
I’m screwed!!

@Sandy Whitmore – What people generally mean when they use the term ‘offshore processing,’ is taking people who have already arrived in Australia (and yes, despite Liberal legal fantasies, Christmas Island is part of Australia) and sending them away somewhere else to be processed. This is not what I’m proposing. What I’m saying is process them BEFORE they get to the stage of getting on a boat. Fund the UNHCR to do the processing and then supply transport for those assessed as genuine. This can, and has been described as ‘regional processing,’ and I have no problem with that term, although I prefer my own, the ‘Fairstar Solution.’ I’ve been listening carefully to what the Greens have been saying, and they have clearly stated that they would also support such a proposal. But no-one (apart from me obviously) has put forward a credible ‘regional’ policy.

However, it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if they didn’t support it. I do not speak for the Greens. What I’m saying is that MY solution is the only acceptable one. It is the most humane, the most efficient and by far the cheapest. To be fair, it is really Gough Whitlam’s, Malcolm Fraser’s, Bob Hawke’s and mine, which is why I didn’t take all the credit.

Thank you for questioning what I said in a civilized and reasonable manner. Your post was in stark contrast to some of the others here, which chose to attack female politicians on the basis of their appearance, or to make ridiculous and meaningless statements like ‘refugees are not refugees’ (???) rather than address anything I said. Sad to say, I fear it is them, rather than you and I, who typify the standard of political debate in this country at the moment.

It is not legal to process anyone off shore, the only reason we want to do that is to deny them any legal rights or any protection.

If every country did that no refugee would ever be protected anywhere.

@Marilyn – Just to be clear, you are correct to say that sending anyone offshore for processing is a breach if our obligations under the refugee convention. However, should we choose to offer processing to refugees BEFORE they get here, as was done in the past, there is no legal impediment to that.

Inherent in the Greens position is that a certain number of deaths at sea are acceptable to preserve the notion that anyone may enter a country and claim asylum. This is what I cannot understand, it is so short sighted. I cannot swallow the idea that nothing should be done to prevent people from taking to sea in unsuitable vessels.

The Greens I have heard speak about this talk in terms of the asylum seekers having a right to make this choice, but it isn’t a choice at all, they cannot simply hire better vessels, the people prepared to captain the vessels are themselves desperate and ill resourced. You either make it legal again in which case you will simply expand the market so that at the bottom end there will still be overloaded and unsafe vessels catering to people who do not have the means to pay the highest price or you adopt Fraser’s approach, there are no other choices. I suppose you could maintain some kind of utilitarian position which says that a hundred or more deaths a year is an acceptable price to pay but that is getting on for 5-10% of the total number of people who end up claiming asylum after arriving here by boat. I personally don’t believe that is acceptable, and if we were to be faced again with a crisis like that caused by the Vietnam war when more than a hundred thousand people perished at sea after attempting to flee, the idea of deaths at sea being an acceptable cost becomes not merely unpalatable, but utterly indefensible, a reprehensible shirking of responsibility.

We must establish some kind of framework for processing applications from South East Asia. I thought it particularly telling that virtually no public comment was made about increasing the total intake of refugees when Bowen proposed an increase to 20 thousand. The number we accept is more important than the delicate sensibility of Ms Hanson Young, though you wouldn’t know it from the coverage.

dream on Chris, Labor almost lost a seat it has held forever by the skin of their teeth. They just beat an ‘extremist minority (lol)’ party who, according to vexnews is dying…lolollol. If this is indeed true Vexnews, then this says more about the stench of Labor than the Greens.

by the way, seems since the Bolta stopped publishing comments, they have all invaded this website..lol.

also, refugees coming to Australia are NOT ILLEGAL! Get it through your thick skulls.

Bolt has few little personal problems with the Mrs.

why does anybody ever listen to the Greens – they always overhype their chances of electoral success – and always fall short.

the real wm, my mistake I clearly hallucinated all of those “people smuggling” laws, that is what I was referring to, not the act of seeking asylum, you fool.

I suspect “Sancho” is referring to a couple of Chinese students we had handing out at my booth on polling day. Yes, attractive young females both – but Sancho’s sexism beggars belief from one supposedly of the left. Any attractive woman is de facto soliciting – have I got that right? And I suppose if they’d been sexually harassed, well they’d just be “asking for it” then?
I can report that while both have what you’d call a “developing” understanding of State and Australian politics, both expressed a strong interest in becoming more involved – and Sancho, I guess you’ve made their decision of which political party would be best to pursue that through so much easier.

Good to see so many Greens members responding to this vile attack on our collective.

ALP has no hope when it’s leaders are all right wingers.

Little Paulie better hurry up and get open slather development in the Green Wedge as Big Mamma has favors to pay for and those chaps with the $$$ are getting rather pushy. They even interrupted my morning visit to my upgraded outhouse.