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We stop taking it, at last

January 17, 2014 8:50 AM / 56 Comments on We stop taking it, at last

We are beginning to see the strength  of the government’s resolve to end the  flow of illegal immigrants coming via Indonesia and I for one can’t help but applaud the effectiveness of the strategy. Naturally the  Indonesian  government are not happy but frankly they are just going to have to cop it sweet because quite laudably the Abbott Government are not going to be bullied the way that Labor was bullied and just tug our forelocks as we do as they wish.

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Australia is under no obligation to accept undocumented economic migrants as these men so clearly are, What amazes me is that these men are all Bangladeshis, who in heavens name are they claiming to be oppressed by? This has to be a case of well done to the Royal Australian Navy, well done to the minister Scott Morrison, and well done to the Abbott government for keeping their promise to turn back the boats when it is safe to do so. Its interesting to read the comments attached to may source piece in the Fairfax press where they seem to me to be running very strongly in support of the government actions. The “open borders” shrills are increasingly  pissing into the wind on this issue and the Australian people are quite rightly less than impressed by their blathering anymore.

As for Indonesia well what can they do? Whine and complain?  For too long they have tried to shirk the responsibility that they have for the foreign nationals that they allow into their country in transit to illegal entry into our territory and  they scream blue murder when we quite rightly jail their nationals for braking our laws. I think that they may well be tightening the visa-less entry for their fellow Muslim Bangladeshis  in the near future just as they have for Iranians.  What it boils down to is respect, Indonesia has for years failed to respect our right to control our borders and allowed all and sundry to transit their territory to facilitate the people smuggling trade, now they can’t get away with it.

Cheers Comrades

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Royal Australian Navy Taxi service now off-line

November 28, 2013 7:02 AM

Well if there is an upside to the Indonesian hissy-fit of Labor authorising phone tapping its this instruction to the Australian navy to stay out of Indonesia’s search and rescue zone. Frankly even when we have kissed and made up with SBY I think that the current restriction on our navy’s operations should continue for several very sound reasons.

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Firstly it will be a mighty powerful disincentive to people who have may be seduced by the people smugglers to buy one of their poisoned tickets because as it stands the so called asylum seekers have been relying on our Navy being a virtual taxi service.
Secondly for a nation of islands it seems ridiculous that Indonesia can not provide adequate rescue capabilities in its own waters and its just not our job to provide an eternal back up service to take up their slack.
Thirdly we keep being told that the constant rescue operations are wearing out both our personnel and our hardware at a prodigious rate keeping our assets out of Indonesian waters will allow proper maintenance to be done and personnel to recharge their batteries.
Fourthly it will help the budget bottom line.

Now of course I expect the usual suspects to scream blue murder if a boat full of asylum seekers founders but in that unhappy event it will be the fault of Indonesia if any lives are lost but some how I don’t think it will come to that as long as the water-borne mendicants get the message that our taxi service is no longer an option.

Cheers Comrades

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More Labor sins haunting the Abbott Government

November 20, 2013 9:14 AM / 22 Comments on More Labor sins haunting the Abbott Government

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The current crisis, courtesy of The Guardian newspaper and its source Edward Snowden, has brought out of the woodwork all sorts of advice to the new federal government. One of the more bizarre ideas came from former foreign minister Bob Carr. He suggested Julie Bishop should fly to Jakarta and apologise to the Indonesians. I hope she doesn’t. That’s an absurd suggestion. It would undermine once and for all the age-old policy of neither confirm nor deny. And if The Guardian publishes another allegation, does she apologise again? Or if the allegation is serious, but false, how does she start explaining why she won’t apologise? You see the point. The Carr formula is a formula that could unravel our intelligence capabilities. As Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten should dissociate himself from this nonsense. Instead, he seemed yesterday to endorse it.

What is more, neither Bishop nor Tony Abbott was in government at the time of the alleged phone interception. The prime minister was then Kevin Rudd and the foreign and defence ministers were Stephen Smith and John Faulkner, respectively. So if there was any apologising to do, they should do it. For the reasons I’ve mentioned they shouldn’t apologise. They should do nothing.

The Snowden affair is arguably the most serious breach of security in history. It’s certainly a sad indictment of America’s capacity to hang on to its own secrets as well as those of its allies. All this comes so soon after the huge WikiLeaks embarrassment. But it says something about the ideological disposition of the left-wing Guardian that it has shamelessly dribbled out this material to maximise the pain and embarrassment to the Western alliance. That may suit The Guardian but the cost to the national interests of Western countries will be very high. As John Sawers, the head of MI6, told a parliamentary committee last week: “Our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee, al-Qa’ida is lapping it up.” Perhaps Snowden could now tell us about the intelligence capabilities of his hosts, the Russians.

Alexander Downer was foreign minister from 1996 to 2007.

The anguished cries form the usual suspects insisting that Tony Abbott should “apologise” are about as sensible as they are sincere. Clearly its not really about  our relationship with Indonesia as much as its about seeking vindication for their claims that Tony Abbott is not up to the top job of being our PM.  Once again the current government is being saddled with a mess created on Labor’s watch and the chutzpah of leftist minions chiding Tony Abbott for sticking to the long standing convention about neither confirming or denying anything about intelligence gathering is breathtaking in its opportunistic hypocrisy. Frankly if minions of the left are so keen on an apology to Indonesia then they should be seeking one from Kevin Rudd and or the relevant  former ministers from the class of 2009 when the phone tapping is alleged to have occurred.

As Alexander Downer suggests Tony Abbott should stick to his current position and never “apologise” especially as I am rather inclined to think that Indonesia is more than likely to be attempting to do precisely what it complains about to us. Its much ado about nothing  and as much as it may hurt or beef producers were Indonesia to get up on an even higher horse the reality is that they need and want the “aid” we give them so we have no reason at all to bend the knee to their jumped up and arrogant political class.
Cheers Comrades
11472-Stirring-Coffee
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Deal On Boats With Sri Lanka: Greens Should Be Ashamed

November 17, 2013 6:05 AM

This is very good news indeed Comrade Yale, now if only we could do a similar deal with Indonesia we would have the problem nearly solved.

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Grown up thinking about asylum seeker drownings

October 11, 2013 7:43 PM / 7 Comments on Grown up thinking about asylum seeker drownings

Find below a truly great comment by Neil James  on this post at New Matilda I hope that the author does not mind but I was so impressed by his succinct argument that I thought it would be good to share it with the reader’s of the Sandpit

kaniva

The Kaniva Incident

There are surely some questionable assumptions and conceptual mistakes underlying this article.

Asylum and refugee matters remain first and foremost strategic policy issues. They comprise just one part of Australia’s broader and longer-term strategic relationships with neighbouring countries and our broader region collectively. We also need to avoid them becoming a defining or persistent problem in the overall complexity of these strategic relationships.

The potential for regional neighbours to coerce Australia strategically by facilitating illegal immigration or extra-regional refugee flows into Australia must also be avoided. Or indeed the situation whereby Australia has to bribe some countries to reciprocate their wider obligations as friendly neighbours or meet their asylum responsibilities under customary international law.

Day-to-day public discussion of refugee and asylum-seeker matters in Australia is greatly hampered by incorrect assumptions that ignore these foreign and strategic policy implications. Debate is instead dominated by Australia-centric perspectives focused on domestic attitudes and party politics, community compassion, Australian law, or human rights matters only as they apply within Australia.

Most public and party-political argument has consequently tended to revolve ineffectively around the recurrent symptoms of the dilemmas involved, rather than seriously examine or fix their actual strategic, legal and moral causes.

It is simplistic to assume that Australia can just ignore Indonesian sovereignty – or our complex wider relationships with that country – by somehow just shouldering Indonesia aside in its own territorial and geographic waters or in Indonesia’s internationally designated zone of search & rescue responsibility.

Tragic though the circumstances undoubtedly are, the last boat to sink was an Indonesian one, crewed by Indonesians, owned and directed by Indonesian criminals and had illegally left an Indonesian port after bribing corrupt Indonesian officials. It sank 50 metres (yes metres) off an Indonesian beach in Java.

As the article correctly notes, the delays and evasions of responsibility were wholly Indonesian not Australian. They could have done more but apparently chose not to. Their supposed total incapacity to help is simply not true and is no excuse anyway. After all, after so many tragedies just off Indonesia’s coast why cannot they improve their capacity in even the most basic ways?

What we are actually seeing in most cases is deliberate policy choices by Indonesia. Or an unwillingness to tackle the mix of corruption, national embarrassment, anti-Australian racism and political inertia involved. It is not just an incapacity matter even if that was an acceptable excuse which it is not.

Australians concerned over this matter need to hold Indonesia to account, rather than just Australia. They should begin by not blithely accepting every Indonesian official or other prevarication and excuse at face value – just as they would if such ridiculous statements were made by an Australian official. The near-total loss of objectivity in Australia about even the most specious Indonesian claims is a major part of the problem.

Australia has international search & rescue responsibilities for some ten per cent of the Earth’s surface. NZ has another eight per cent. Indonesia’s zone is much, much smaller and its navy actually has more ships. While there are undoubtedly some economic disparity factors involved, the overall problem of Indonesian unwillingness or “incapacity” will never be solved – and people will continue to drown – while Indonesia is never held to account for not meeting its internationally agreed search & rescue responsibilities. Just like every other country.

Now if only our over emotional friends from the left could truly absorb the  content of this argument they might just stop talking rot and understand the true nature of the problem instead of trying to guilt trip every grown up in the country when an asylum seeker drowns.

Cheers Comrades

LifeJackets

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“Asylum seekers” illegal immigrants and personal responsibilty for their fate.

September 29, 2013 7:37 AM / 19 Comments on “Asylum seekers” illegal immigrants and personal responsibilty for their fate.

When it comes to the politics of blame you have to hand it to “Asylum seekers”  illegal immigrants for the utter gall of blaming Australia for their plight.

Residents help survivors of the boat that sank off the coastal village of Cianjur in Java. Photograph: AFP

Residents help survivors of the boat that sank off the coastal village of Cianjur in Java. Photograph: AFP

“I called the Australian embassy; for 24 hours we were calling them. They told us just send us the position on GPS, where are you,” one survivor, Abdullah, a man from Jordan, was reported as saying by Fairfax media. “We did, and they told us, ‘OK, we know … where you are’. And they said, ‘We’ll come for you in two hours’.

“And we wait two hours; we wait 24 hours, and we kept calling them, ‘we don’t have food, we don’t have water for three days, we have children, just rescue us’. And nobody come. Sixty person dead now because of Australian government.”

One of the passengers, a Lebanese man, had reportedly lost his pregnant wife and eight children in the disaster.

Just 25 of those aboard had been rescued before efforts to locate survivors were postponed on Friday evening due to failing light.

It’s believed to be the first fatal attempted asylum-seeker crossing under the Abbott government, and comes after another group of 44 asylum seekers were rescued by an Australian navy vessel in the Sunda Strait on Thursday.

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Just to be clear these people set out from Indonesia in an overloaded crappy boat and it founders in Indonesian waters a long way from either international waters or Australia’s rescue zone and we are to blame for the subsequent drownings? Man oh man the leftist mindset is just utterly fucked. Whatever happened to to taking personal responsibility for the consequences of ones actions?
No one forced them onto the high seas in an unsuitable and unreliable vessel that was their own choice and a very stupid one indeed given the change of government and the change of policy that means that they will never get permanent residency in this country.

Personally I can not for the life of me understand why it is the case that Indonesia does not station more of its own navy assets in the area given the number of “Asylum seekers” illegal emigrants that foolishly go for “pleasure cruises” in this part of their rescue zone. Frankly their failure to do so shows that they are the ones who don’t care. Meanwhile our navy is doing the heavy lifting by pulling the bodies ,alive and dead, from Indonesian waters as the “Asylum seekers” illegal immigrants treat them like some kind of free taxi service.

The solution is simple we should move our navy assets out of the area and make that repositioning so they are well out of range very widely known. If needs be lets give a patrol boat to Indonesia so that they can rescue the idiots who are killing their own children * and then blaming us and then the question of where to take those rescued fools will be moot.

Sigh Comrades

LifeJackets

* how is it that these“Asylum seekers” illegal immigrants can afford to pay people smugglers yet they don’t have the good sense to buy life jackets for their children?

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Its about time Indonesia stepped up to its rescue responsibilities

August 31, 2012 12:11 PM

Its about bloody time that the law of the sea that requires rescued seafarers to be taken to the nearest port is at last being respected when it comes to the so called asylum seekers.

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Once these would be immigrants realise that having the Australian navy on speed dial won’t guarantee them passage here they might just reconsider taking the trip in the first place. The sad thing is that the same message should have been sent  earlier when other boats and their compliments insisted that they had to not only be rescued from their self induced peril but also that they should be taken to Australia even when their peril was almost in sight of Indonesia. This belated change in the destination of rescued asylum seekers also puts paid to the oft repeated claims that Indonesia would not have them back  even when they are obliged to do so by the laws of the sea.

It may even help to stem the tide but one has to ask why did Gillard take so long insist that Indonesia had to step up to accept their rescue responsibilities?

Cheers Comrades

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A short rant about the unrealistic and horribly sanctimonious Greens

August 16, 2012 6:16 AM / 5 Comments on A short rant about the unrealistic and horribly sanctimonious Greens

The Greens have always been a bunch of sanctimonious posturers keen to claim the moral high ground but what I find really offensive in their campaign about asylum seekers is their contention that we are responsible for the safety at sea of anyone who hops on a rickety boat from the moment that they board that vessel in Indonesia.

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Its not only the Greens deserve our admonishment here but also the Gillard government who were hoping that notice of the loss of these people would stay off the radar and the blood would not be perceived to be dripping from Gillard’s hands. To be entirely frank on this occasion I don’t think that its fair for the Greens or any other minions  of the left to lay any blame at the feet of any Australian for the apparent loss of life on this unnamed boat. The people who took to this mode of transport took a gamble and they lost big  time. But if the Greens want to blame anyone where is their criticism of Indonesia? Because its more likely that this boat was lost within their rescue zone and on their watch. Can I dare suggest that the Greens are in fact being rather racist to imply that because we are a first world nation that we have a global responsibility to provide search and rescue services to our near neighbour even though they are a maritime nation with thousands of islands and a navy of their own?

Make no mistake the ocean is big and it can be very difficult indeed to find an intact boat when it is in distress the chances of finding survivors form one that has sunk is orders of magnitude more difficult even if you have some idea of where they sunk . For the likes of Sarah Hansen young and  Christine Milne to dare criticise the Australian navy (even just by implication) for not finding a boat that has not even sent out a distress call is just down right insulting and utterly  reprehensible.

Ah well if there is any good that can come out of this incident its the possibility that more people will see the Greens for the sanctimonious wankers that they so obviously are and as a result their support at the next poll will decline.

Rant over  Comrades

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