Was asked to participate in a multicultural survey by some nice school kids in Balmain (I visit, don’t live). Well on reflection there were a surprising number of French expats living in Balmain, white not black. In fact Balmain would seriously challenge Adelaide’s place as the whitest place in Australia. But Balmain folk are very in favour of the poor boat people, living somewhere, else of course, in Australia. Balmain is a very good example of a cosmoplitan enclave building a virtual wall around itself to keep out the provincials. Very nice folk but their moral vanity and greed is irritating.

Ros

I have been trying for about 20 years to express the argument you so eloquently put in the above comment. But I have failed miserably. You put me to shame.

What people like Slim do not realise is that we are a more or less populist democracy. Politicians, especially out there in marginal electorate land, must respond to the preferences of their constituents. And their constituents are uneasy about some foreigners cultural practices. And also about asylum seekers, perhaps with good reason, doing end-runs on legal processes.

In short, there is a class issue here.

Most private amenity is upvalued by economies of scale from population density (esp restaraunts and housing and retail trade). People in inner-suburban metro areas get all the benefits of maintaining celebrating diversity and density eg cheap ethnic restaurants, cultural festivals, nicely mannered French back packers etc.

In fact just about any form of public amenity is devalued by population density. People in outer-suburban retro areas have to pay all the costs of diversity and density. Menacing attitudes towards scantily clothed women, drug dealing ethnic gangs and disturbing tribal customs (arranged marriage, cousin marriage, honor killings). Plus all the routine ones like shortage of housing, public hospitals, state schools, public transport, road traffic congestion, crowded green space.

So no wonder rich people like population density and cultural diversity. It makes them richer still and they get to enjoy all the good bits.

Whereas poor people are not so crazy about that idea. It makes them poorer still and they get to suffer all the bad bits.

So really, the Culture War boils down to the Class War after all.

regards

Jack Strocchi

Balmain residents, affluent and proudly left, but I have every confidence that if the state government said we have found a use for Calumn Park, a major refugee re-settlement estate, they would have a thousand reasons and a thousand people to protest that the place should remain a public space for the use of all. Of course how the great unwashed get to use this public space is not clear. Just as Ballast Point Park is going to be limited by access, parking, public transport etc to the good left folk of Balmain. Balmain even gets the police to close off all the roads from early on New Years Eve, have to get resident permit weeks before from Council.

Was asked to participate in a multicultural survey by some nice school kids in Balmain (I visit, don’t live). Well on reflection there were a surprising number of French expats living in Balmain, white not black. In fact Balmain would seriously challenge Adelaide’s place as the whitest place in Australia. But Balmain folk are very in favour of the poor boat people, living somewhere, else of course, in Australia. Balmain is a very good example of a cosmoplitan enclave building a virtual wall around itself to keep out the provincials. Very nice folk but their moral vanity and greed is irritating.

Why does this matter. The UN at least acknowledges that the people movement and asylum claims are not just about conflict ” refugees and internally displaced persons uprooted by conflict and human rights abuse, forced displacement does not take place in isolation from other population flows. Millions of people are compelled to move within or out of their countries by a myriad of factors. Some are driven by poverty, fleeing to survive; others
are drawn to real or perceived opportunities to better their lives away from home” Fair enough but.

But the voices calling for the erosion of national boundaries by making Australia a major pull country for the deprived reject the economic causes of asylum seeking out of hand. Maybe there is an understanding of where this may lead, but the pretense that all will pay the piper for this moral grandiosity is bizarre. The cosmoplitans ghettos will grow, Australian provincials will continue to wear the increasing cost, and if this leads to the partial hollowing out of industrialised nations, the virtual walls will no doubt become actual.

People are more aware of the complexity, I don’t think so. In 1992 there were 18 million refugees (excluding Palestinians) today there are 11 million. At the same time the numbers seeking asylum in the industrialised nations has expanded at the very least by ten times. When Keating brought in his unlimited detention, asylum seeker cases could be decided on a case by case basis. As the numbers grow, and they will, in the higher pull countries the empathy might again be replaced by alarm.

Harry, …..The ‘Pacific Solution’ did not lower the numbers so much as the defeat of the Taliban and apparent onset of more peaceful conditions in Iraq. The Taliban are back and so are small numbers of refugees arriving by boat. Your claim that the government is to ‘blame’ is a mere assertion and nothing you have said alters that. It’s also (‘wrong’, HC) …. to say Rudd is culpable for the deaths and injuries. For a start, the changes enacted were supported by the Coalition, and apparently without much outcry among the populace.

You cast aspersions on ‘boat people’ who have stayed ‘two months in a hotel’, as if to insinuate that they cannot therefore by genuine refugees or asylum seekers. Yet you appear to exonerate the mass of those who have ‘jumped the queues’ on the grounds that they had visas:

‘They were originally admitted to Australia on a legal visa. Quite different issue – visas can be designed or refused with the experience of overstaying kept in mind.’

In other words, it’s OK for them to overstay because they had the means to obtain visas and airline tickets, but not OK for those who might well fear persecution or death but who had the means to stay in an Indonesian hotel. Having the means does not preclude them from having a genuine fear of persecution any more than those who arrive by plane; your ‘logic’ is severely tainted. Cant and self-contradiction!

The use of the perjorative term ‘illegals’ by you and some of your commenters is also wrong; in fact, only if the arrivals were to enter the country and wander there without any processing could they be deemed in any way ‘illegal’. It is only those who fail to gain offical refugee status after the process, whether they arrive by boat or plane, visa or no visa, whose presence may be termed ‘illegal’, in which case they would be deported. It was only a few weeks ago that the tragic murders of several Afghan men who were deported in this way was reported in the papers. The proportion of those who arrive by boat later granted refugee or asylum status is much higher than that amongst the visa holders.

Your use of the term ‘queue jumpers’ is (‘questionable’, HC). Do you apply it to those who jet in with visas? There is no queue; never has been. The truth is that people who use this term don’t want refugees from the so-called ‘queue’ either! I’ve met them; they are seemingly pleasant people, but they will say eventually, if the subject comes up, under their breaths or even out loud so great is their confidence that one will agree with them, ‘We don’t want these people’. They do NOT mean that they don’t want ‘queue jumpers’. I know what you and they mean.

I don’t condone the terrible exploitation of people by the boat owners, and would never seek to encourage people to attempt the dangerous journey to Australia. The government is maintaining strict ‘border control’ and the excision of certain offshore territories. It has made more humane the treatment of arrivals here, particularly of children, and scrapped the ridiculously expensive and inhuman ‘Pacific Solution’. I hope it doesn’t cave in to the latest moral panic and reinstate it; the coalition and the government should adopt a bipartisan approach and not foster a moral panic.

Of more immediate interest is what the Liberals would propose in place of what’s already happening. They are happy to try to score political points and scare the punters but what would they actually do that is different – given that they also signed off on the current regime. I expect we won’t hear much about alternative policy at all, yet their record in government indicates the general direction.

I think the Liberals are underestimating the Australian public’s appetite for a tough on boat people campaign – people are more aware of the complexity of the issue. It wasn’t an electoral winner for the Libs in 07 and I doubt it will be in 09/10. Like all other policy areas, the Libs are divided and confused and people don’t know what they stand for (other than bring back the Howardian era and everything will be good again). They’re still in denial, I’m afraid.

And whether you like it or not it is credible that a considerable percentage are indeed economic refugees, whatever the security situation in there countries of origin. The remittances from Iran and Russia for example have been very important to Afghanistan. Now Pakistan, Iran and Russia are amongst those nations forcing them to leave. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes says that poverty, lack of opportunities, high unemployment, and high birthrates push thousands of young Afghans into making dangerous and sometime fatal journeys to seek jobs and security in other countries.

The 2 million increase in refugees has not been caused by Afghan refugees, (July 2008 the primary reasons for the increase are the continued presence of Afghan refugees plus new Iraqi refugees who have fled to Jordan and Syria). The basis for the rhetoric of Rudd and co about causes is the increase in asylum claims in the industrialised nations as the result of both choice and the escalating push. Plus in our case the increase in pull.

So what is your solution. There are 3 million Afghan refugees around the world, and the push is on. Would you be of the view that if those 3 million can get here they should have the right to stay and assume all of the rights of citizenship. Even if you achieved a borderless world the outcome would be closed better off communites forming within those borderless states. Maybe you think we should take more rather than all. How many, and still what do we do about those delivered here by organised crime, and surely this is a positive feedback scenario. I am sorry for them but I am also very sorry for all of the Afghan women they leave behind to cope alone in anti-women nations like Pakistan and Iran.

Indeed. One would hope for an honest approach to that question by Rudd and co. It would also be bold – they are up against the likes of Andrew Bolt the conservative and tabloid commentariat and talk-back hucksters portraying the issue as threatening to our way life.

There’s a kind of ‘karma’ here. We engage in wars of ‘liberation’ and then we wonder why refugees see us as a desirable place to be. We have the Liberals running around saying it’s Rudd’s fault, and then that it isn’t, or that they blew themselves up. The conservatives are happy to bang a gong when we’re off to war, but fearful of receiving refugees that might result. Can’t have it both ways.

That Australia has increased its pull for unlawful immigrants is supported by the UNHCR report on the increase in CLAIMS for asylum in industrialised countries over the last 2 years and by the UNHCR report to the follow up session on the Bali Forum for senior officers in Brisbane in February. That report also has the following to say

“Preliminary data collected by UNHCR on those registered since mid-2008 indicates that Afghans are increasingly on the move and may comprise the largest group of onward movers. Other groups include onward movers from Myanmar, Iraq and Sri Lanka.”

There are a range of reasons for the increase in asylum seeker arrivals in industrialised countries and their claims as a result, other than the claim by the current government that it is all about increased strife in the source countries. While Australia has increased its pull by its change in policies and actions, a number of other industrialised countries have reduced their pull, (UNHCR). Hence Australia becomes more attractive for the people smugglers. Also there has been an increase in the push of countries such as Pakistan. The asylum seekers themselves the UNHCR report as becoming increasingly frustrated at the conditions in their countries of first asylum. Australia now offers access to good welfare and the opportunity to work with its PPV, plus of course family reunion. And Organised Crime is becoming increasingly sophisticated and efficient in its operations, people smuggling is a rapidly growing and extremely lucrative business for them. It is very obvious that the numbers arriving in Australia are going to increase markedly. So what should we be considering.

As the UNHRC says the arrivals are a mixture of refugees and economic migrants. The question now is whether the increased pull by Australia and its consequent numbers arriving here, (fueled by our new policies plus the reduction in asylum space plus the increased push on asylum seekers) is what we can or want to live with. I can’t believe that Rudd, or at least his smarter Ministers don’t understand this. The honest approach would be for them to put that to the Australian people.