No Lecture, More Pressure

Just as we have suspected all along, the PNG deal was designed by Rudd/Gillard Labour government as a temporary, short one year term solution [#1], implemented as a circuit-breaker for the heightened people-smuggling activities at that time 2011-2013. The direction of which Mr Rudd now reveals in this Canberra Times article is also consistent with the recommendations in Huston's Expert Panel report of 2012. The Rudd's public statement in 2012 about "refugees not setting foot on Australian soil" was subject to annual review and it is not a permanent position. That much is clear now. What had taken place was the Abbott/Turnbull LNP government had subsequently thrown out every details of PNG plan, including shelving of Huston Report.

Whether LNP has had any right or being entitled to abandon the Labour plans on offshore refugees is, of course, entirely up to LNP themselves. What we must count is that an elected Australian Government had deliberately failed to solve the offshore caseloads. Suffice to say, the 2012 Huston Report has had wide-ranging and well thought-out policy plans, which broadly covered solutions for these offshore caseloads. Put it simply, by means of Huston Report, everything, including solutions for these offshore caseloads, had been on the table. We note this 'constructed failure' by LNP government to solve offshore caseloads actually favoured the refugee detention industry, which is worth $1.2 billion par annum.

Recent deliberate and provocative move by the LNP on trying to implement life-time visa ban for the offshore caseloads [#2] is just another attempt to delay and divert the government from finding a proper solution; which again in favour of the refugee detention industry. This is no-longer the case of LNP's cockroach creating a side-show just to divert and distract attentions. The LNP know what they are doing and we -- the activists -- are not blind to see that.

My friends, this just isn't time to give the LNP government lectures on human rights. What the Turnbull government needs now is pressure. Let's stage up pressure.

-- In Solidarity, U Ne Oo, Sydney.

[#1] http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/malcolm-turnbull-has-sunk-to-a-new-low-over-refugees-to-hang-on-to-his-job-20161101-gsfbui.html

[#2] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/refugee-visa-ban-a-likely-breach-of-refugee-convention-20161104-gsic81.html