Glizzard

[mescalito]

Heat on Gillard over Malaysian deal

By Jeremy Thompson

Updated June 3, 2011 11:51:00

Tony Abbott says Julia Gillard has been caught out on the asylum deal (AAP: Alan Porritt)

 

• Video: Malaysia edits rights out of refugee deal (Lateline)
• Video: Children part of refugee swap: Bowen (Lateline)
• Video: David Manne on the Malaysian swap deal (ABC News Breakfast)
• Audio: Leaked documents show Malaysia's hardline stance on refugee deal (AM)
• Related Story: Children part of refugee swap: Bowen
• Related Story: Malaysia playing hardball over refugee swap

Julia Gillard's so-called 'Malaysian Solution' is under attack from both ends of the political spectrum after ABC TV's Lateline program revealed details of the draft agreement last night.

Lateline revealed that draft documents on the deal - where Malaysia would accept 800 Australian asylum seekers in return for Australia taking 4,000 refugees - show Malaysia has removed all references to human rights.

The documents also confirm Malaysia wants a veto over the 800 people Australia sends there, and also wants Australia to cover nearly all the costs.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott accused Ms Gillard of telling "fibs" while Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused Ms Gillard and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen of not telling the truth over the deal.

For his part, Mr Bowen said the Lateline documents were just a draft and said the deal was a work in progress.

"Yet again the Prime Minister has told fibs. She said Malaysia would have no say over who went as part of the 800. Plainly Malaysia will have a veto," Mr Abbott told Channel 9 this morning.

"She also said the human rights of these people would be respected and yet the two words that Malaysia wants to take out of the agreement, two minor little words, [are] 'human rights'."

Mr Bowen says unaccompanied children will be among those sent to Malaysia under the deal, saying "I don't want children getting on boats to come to Australia, thinking or knowing that there is some sort of exemption in place."

Refugee lawyer and advocate David Manne says that means nine unaccompanied children currently on Christmas Island risk being sent to the brutality of Malaysian detention camps.

Mr Manne says the documents reveal how difficult it is going to be to arrive at the stated aim, "proper protection for people expelled from Australia to Malaysia".

"Malaysia is really pushing back very hard. They are really seeking to avoid any clear or concrete commitment to meeting international human rights or refugee standards.

"The draft has no reference to human rights at all, in fact both terms, refugees and asylum seekers, are both absent from the document."

Mr Bowen says the deal should only be judged when it is finalised, but he says he will not put in a clause to exempt unaccompanied children.

"You need to send a strong message," he said.

"I never want to go through, and I don't want our nation to go through, what we went through in December and the months following, burying children as a result of a boat accident.

"And it is inevitable that that will occur again unless we break the people smugglers' business model."

Mr Manne says there are nine unaccompanied children on Christmas Island ready to be shipped off to Malaysia.

"The Minister is the legal guardian of those children under United Nations conventions on the rights of the child and the refugees convention. We must take into account their best interests at all times."

He said Australia would be putting children in harm's way and at risk of brutality: "At what cost are we doing this?" he asked.

Mr Bowen points out the Lateline documents are a draft and the final deal has not been reached.

"The Malaysian government has been very clear [in its] commitment to deal with those people in a way which respects their dignity, which respects human rights standards, and that is why organisations like the UNHCR have been involved in these discussions," he said.

'Simply not the truth'

Senator Hanson-Young says neither Ms Gillard nor Mr Bowen told the truth about the Malaysian deal.

She says that when the deal was announced they promised the asylum seekers "would have their dignity respected and they would be treated with basic human rights as we understand in Australia".

"It seems from these documents that this is simply not the truth."

She says the government appears to be "trashing the values of a fair go for the vulnerable" to achieve "a quick political fix".

"The idea that we can justify violating the rights of children and the protections of children to send a message of being tough - it is very disappointing we are even having this discussion."

She says Australia has an obligation under international and domestic law to protect the right of the asylum seekers and particularly of the unaccompanied children.

And she said if an agreement is finally stuck it needs to be open and fully transparent.

"The minister needs to confirm that whatever agreement is finally reached will be clearly on the public record for all to see, because we can't just take the word of the minister. We can't just take the word of the Malaysian government," she said.

Richard Towle, the regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is working on the refugee swap deal, says the agreement must include specific human rights protections.

"It's incumbent on both parties to the agreement to make sure those children and women and vulnerable torture victims are taken care of appropriately," he told Lateline.

"And it's very important to have a monitoring and an oversight mechanism to ensure they [receive] the kind of protection they need."

But Mr Towle says the deal is still under discussion.

"We hope that the agreement will be judged on its final terms, not according to one piece of a part of a negotiation that has been going on for some months," he said.

"It's no secret we have had some difficulties with part of the process.

"That is why we have come back and said in our view we want to see some good clear protection standards for the people returned."

Tags: immigration, government-and-politics, federal-government, law-crime-and-justice, human-rights, australia, malaysia

First posted June 3, 2011 10:02:00

Who voted her in again?

Fucken Disgusted.

[gogogadget]

i can see the greens are going to get more votes as the world gets more polluted

[Psylo]

.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Psylo Dread

[hutch]

i can see the greens are going to get more votes as the world gets more polluted

 

Well the Greens better do better than this......http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hypocrites/ what a fucking hypocrite this bitch is....Its never about whats good for the people...It's about the politics....and thats why its fucked...where are the people protesting this in the streets....Oh thats right...we don't have a conservative government in at the moment...makes me fucking sick...We need a new political party in this country and the fucking looney Greens are not it....

[incognito]

Mr Bowen says unaccompanied children will be among those sent to Malaysia under

the deal, saying "I don't want children getting on boats to come to Australia,

thinking or knowing that there is some sort of exemption in place."

 

that statement kind of made me ill. looks like a huge passing of the buck to me, the gov just doesnt seem to want (Unskilled) refugees.

Edited June 4, 2011 by incognito

[The Dude]

Crafty little Arabs sending their kids over first as sleeper cells or something. I know their tricks! It's the kids you need to fear the most, their innocence is just a ploy to steal your bodily fluids and make Australia a Muslim country. I'm onto them!

Good on Mr Bowen, we need to send them a message, that although we boast to be the lucky country and a bastion for freedom and human rights, that's actually just bullshit if you're not rich or white. I mean if these people smugglers can move these "illegals" into all these other countries first that just pass the buck, why do we have to be stuck with them?.. What, some sort of humanitarian bullshit? We didn't sign anything! Oh what? We did? Well remember the UN is suddenly deemed irrelevant by any countries breaking its charters.

Humans may have human rights but once you demonise the weakest and defenseless of us to create sub-humans, there's no sub-human rights charter, and we can justify the worst treatment of people sub-humans if we rationalise through fear based irrationality that we can't trust them, or they deserve to be imprisoned indefinitely with no legal recourse, suffering for an assumed eternity for the crime of surviving.

Neo colonials getting upset when their mess gets back to their front step, and instead of coming to the aid of a population dispossessed thanks in no small part to our pro-war-bush-ball-sucking policies, we blame them and vilify them for the misfortune this military industry has delivered them, because they bought it on themselves harbouring terrorists or something right?

Edited June 5, 2011 by The Dude