Kevin if you say that the establishment only supports elections if they can win, and then we have an election where there is a good chance they will lose, there is obviously something wrong with the first statement.
There’s nothing wrong with that, we have that situation now was because the Dem really thinks that they can win a month ago. If you recalled the earlier poll we can see that the Dem is actually neck to neck with PT, now they are 17% apart.
As for the CTW arson, I would love to see a private investigation team to investigate who actually burned it. I have seen pictures from our beloved Andrew Marshall, which are pictures of the CTW right before arson took place. I mostly saw army officers in there, with guns. I saw a few red shirt protesters, and most of them were injured in the leg. They could not have burned this majestic shopping centre in their conditions.
I seriously believe that private investigation will reveal who actually ordered the arson, and it might shock all the Thais. But with one-sided media who accuses other without convincing evidence dominating Thai media today, I don’t see that happening. Personally, I would hold my bet that the elites planned this so that they could blame the protesters for it. But until this is proven by private, impartial, third party investigators, we probably would never know.
What I know, however, is that the yellow themselves have seized the airport. That makes them terrorists. Furthermore, the main supporter of the Yellow is Queen Sirikit. So I guess that makes her head of terrorist, I assume?
I do hope that sensible policy making as you have suggested will find its way into the spines of the ALP, the Greens and the Coalition – and the independents.
I’d hate to see the day when the behaviour of the Government of Australia were no better than the behaviour of the Government of Malaysia.
Kevin if you say that the establishment only supports elections if they can win, and then we have an election where there is a good chance they will lose, there is obviously something wrong with the first statement.
If the Democrats thought they had a better chance with a July election, then that is no different from any other parliamentary democracy where the government gets to set the election dates within the obvious term limit.
Last year we had comments here suggesting that there will be no election which was proved wrong. Now you run up another false flag which is proved wrong before you finished typing.
Let’s all hope that the July 3rd. election at least starts to give Thailand a bit of stability it has been lacking for some time. We may not be confident in that, but we can hope.
I’m not a Kachin or Shan, so I can’t say exactly. I do think you have to keep in mind that from the start there has been a lot of money (comparatively speaking) to tempt the various insurgent groups to stray from political struggle to economic warlordism. The Kachins had jade, the Karen crossborder trade from Thailand during Ne Win’s isolationism, the various Shan groups, and the Kachins to some extent, opium. Furthermore, these economic interests caused the ethnic minority leadership to develop close business relations with the neighboring countries that often were/are at odds with the average person in Burma. For example, note that the KIO isn’t exactly opposed to all hydroelectric dams and/or Chinese businesses, just the ones currently being built at Myitkyina.
Also note that the ethnic minorities don’t have a lot of alternatives with regard to economic outlets. If the Shan cause problems in Thailand, the Thais can simply shut off any consumer goods, food etc going in to the Shan State. And what is the Shan alternative then? China? Laos?
LesAbbey: No idea what you are getting at. It seems entirely reasonable to point out Suthep’s response on this attempted murder.
It seemed to me that the local press was pointing the finger, without actually saying it, at an extremely influential local family who are I think regarded as Thaksin/Phue Thai supporters. Maybe you read it differently.
And, to add to the reasons why, recall that Abhisit wanted a few constitutional items in place. See this account also: rajprasongnews.blogspot.com/2011/06/abhisits-early-election-gamble.html?spref=tw
LesAbbey asked, in relation to my comment at 20: The “establishment” only supports elections if they can win them.
He asked: So any reason why we having one now when there is a good chance that Phue Thai will win?
In my view the answer is pretty simple if you look at what was happening at the time the election was called. There were remarkable pressures not to have an election from several quarters. Not having an election – due by December – would have been a risky strategy in terms of constitution, law and an unpredictable political reaction. At the time, it seems clear that the Democrat Party strategists and Abhisit wanted an election now because they really thought that they could do well. They confidently predicted doing better than in 2007.
And they had good reasons for some confidence. They had defeated the red shirt risings twice. They had established pretty good censorship of the most vibrant red shirt media, cutting off the messages that the Democrat Party found most damaging. The government considered that the security organizations had locked up, silenced or scared much of the red shirt leadership. The Army and ISOC were widely deployed in red shirt areas. Abhisit personally seems to have wanted desperately to erase any notion that his government was not democratic in origin.
So it may well have appeared that July was the best option.
Frankly, I think the DP has been staggered to find out (again) that the pro-Thaksin parties remain so popular. I think many had convinced themselves that the arson of last May had destroyed the political base of the red shirts. They convinced themselves that there was a huge pool of voters in the middle who are repulsed by political violence. They still seem to believe this and so are working harder at trying to get these voters over to the DP by campaigning almost solely on this issue now.
A message for Nuomi’s friend (the masters graduate Cambridge, hardcore democrat voter Jun 20, 2011 at 3:26 pm).
I don’t know what they teach at Cambridge these days – but Indonesia is the largest democracy in Southeast Asia. And, unlike Thailand, they have moved beyond their former feudal state to an actual working democracy.
aiontay, I agree with your comments about foreign intervention but do the Kachin, Shan etc understand this? If so why are so reticent to act against the foreign supporters of SLORC? With over a million Shan in Thailand just imagine the mischief they could get up to?
In the Islamic World there seems to be no difficulty in acting against foreign powers that interfere e.g the Taliban in US ally Pakhistan or Al Qaeda in NY City.
The Burmese in Thailand could do something mild like calling a one day general strike and marching on some of the key collaborators EGAT, PTT etc
“The UDD ought to make theirs a merit-making ceremony, not only for the repose of the innocent souls murdered by Royal Thai Army snipers, but to make merit even for the Army and Democrats as well, to return some good for such unspeakable evil, to balance and cancel out the outrageous deed of celebrating murder that the Democrats and Royal Thai Army are going to carry out there.” J.F. Lee C37
John Francis Lee’s should be proportionally directing his anger at the Red Shirt leaders who deliberately fed lies to ‘sow hatred’ to their followers.
Anyone following the chronology of violent Red Shirt escalating provocations would be rightfully outraged at the Red Shirt leaders callous disregard of the danger to the lives and limbs of their followers as they were lied to and then ‘sacrificed’ to foment the Thaksin/Khattiya/Pallop civil war in April-May 2010.
Considering the ‘madness’ and intransigence of the Red Shirts leaders at that time, the carnage could only have been avoided had the Red Shirt leaders had more consideration for their followers rather than for their Supremo Thaksin.
Bkk Lawyer: It’s the Lopburi case I mentioned. It was all over the news on television and has been now for three days.
LesAbbey: No idea what you are getting at. It seems entirely reasonable to point out Suthep’s response on this attempted murder.
Max: I don’t have a list, although the Bangkok Post had a partial list of attacks on all parties last week. There was a reported murder of a PT canvasser in Ayutthya yesterday.
I am terribly cynical now. I too feel that the Military will stage an event at the Thursday Rally. With Abhist’s numbers so dysmal, it is easy to imagine a Seh Deng event and its consequences.
Will A thow himself on the sword allowing the military to pospone an election and bring in a coup government of ‘national reconciliation’ or will the Someone die, the nation goes into greiving and the election gets posponed?????
According to a report* in The Notion today, the Dems are holding a “mass” rally in Songkhla this evening at which “….Suthep Thaugsuban will then give a speech titled ‘Don’t allow anyone to burn the country.'”.
Lucky Suthep that he can work in a book promo – and presumably also a dress-rehearsal for the rally scheduled for Rachaprasong next Thursday – with/without audio-visual support (depending on the EC declaring it “legal”). You half-wonder if Thursday’s site was chosen for convenient access to nearby bookstores…..
More seriously, I think the counter-ceremony JFL describes (c37) should be a very good counter to what the desperate Dems clearly have in mind as their last-fling gamble. I say should because I doubt it would get proper coverage by most Thai media. And by “proper” I mean remotely fair/accurate; one just knows they’ll ignore it if there’s nothing [cough] “useful” to report – or they’ll play up to the nth degree anything (real or not) that could conceivably be construed as damaging.
On that basis, maybe silence (and absence) is golden – and the Thai audience should be left to draw its own conclusions about the Dems’ very nasty piece of political theatre. I’d really like to think JFL is right in thinking that much of the mainstream Thai reaction to it will be to see dishonour in the event.
* http://tinyurl.com/3k9epnx
I hope that UDD Chair Thida will a] make it very clear to UDD/redshirt followers that there’s a trap being baited for them and they should stay well away from it….. and b] warn loud and clear in advance of the very real prospect of a “staged” incident at Rachaprasong on 23 June.
I would hope that the UDD would call their own rally, as far as possible away from Ratchaprasong and the Democrat’s celebration there of their massacre of the Thai people last year.
The UDD ought to make theirs a merit-making ceremony, not only for the repose of the innocent souls murdered by Royal Thai Army snipers, but to make merit even for the Army and Democrats as well, to return some good for such unspeakable evil, to balance and cancel out the outrageous deed of celebrating murder that the Democrats and Royal Thai Army are going to carry out there.
Certainly the Democrats’ sacrilegious rite can only bring dishonor to those in attendance. They will bring nothing but a curse upon themselves. How could it be otherwise? There is certainly no room there for redshirts, or for any but the blackest hearts among the Thai people.
Speaking of “hua khanaen” it would be interesting to survey the country to identify homes belonging to these people and compare their relative value to homes of normal people.
I also want to respond quickly to whether the Malaysian deal is actually ‘good’ or not. It seems to me you’re disagreement with one of the commentators (Naiharn) boils down to different philosophical approaches. Naiharn is approaching the issue from a consequentialist perspective: what outcome is achieved. You, and most people who oppose the deal with Malaysia are approaching it from a deontological perspective, which judges the morality of the action itself, rather than focusing on the results it leads to. A deontological perspective doesn’t need to completely ignore outcomes of course, and I don’t think you are (its common to consider means and ends as indistinguishable), but the essential debate is one of ‘do the ends justify the means’.
To answer that, you have to ask if better means can achieve similar, equivalent, or better ends. If more palatable means result in terrible outcomes, which has become a core argument of the Howard doctrine, then we should stop our bleeding hearts and accept that a distasteful policy produces the best results. But if we can achieve good results through moral actions, then that approach should certainly be preferred. Maybe even if the results do not initially appear quite as good, because the second order results, due to precedent and exemplar behaviour can eventually outweigh the initial results.
To do this we have to actually identify and justify the desired ‘ends’. In this case, I think there are a number of objectives:
1. Provide security, liberty and opportunity to refugees
2. Ensure the process is fair
3. Ensure the process is compassionate and humane
4. Avoid deaths through voyage to Australia
5. Alleviate perceptions of existential threat and invasion by foreigners
The last one is essentially a matter of politics. @Naiharn, I’m happy to spell it out: there are Australians who talk virulently about refugees. Much of what they say is overtly racist. If you want proof, have a look at this
Even when not explicitly racist, there is a strong tendency to ‘blame the victim’ and direct undue hate and scorn toward some of the world’s most vulnerable people. While its also discriminatory to tarnish all people of a particular policy persuasion as holding the views expressed in the link above, pointing out this part of Australian society is fair game. Such people should be shamed.
Part of the problem we have, is that Howard, and now Abbott don’t care about the last objective. Their priorities look like this:
1. Get elected
They have both proven themselves willing to exploit fear and bigotry to achieve that objective.
Anyway, my main point is that in a lot of debate on this issue people are talking past each other, because they don’t identify their objectives. They debate the merits of different policies without first agreeing on what the policies should achieve.
Another part of the problem is that typically, the left direct a lot of empathy toward the visible problem (humane and compassionate treatment of people at our border) and don’t try to deal with how it fits into the larger problem. As of the end of 2009, the UNHCR identified 36 million people “of concern”. Of that, 8.6 million were refugees, 1.5 were “like refugees” almost 1 million had pending applications for asylum, 15 million were internally displaced, 6.5 million were stateless people. Australia provided asylum for nearly 25,000 people of concern, 22,548 of whom were refugees and 2,350 of whom had applications pending (I assume many of those 2,350 were in detention). Data: excel file from UNHCR
I don’t know how to ensure the process is fair when a refugee granted asylum in Australia through the UNHCR process is probably better off than one granted asylum in, say, Syria or Iran (both of which have 50 times the number of refugees as are here, if I’m reading the data correctly). By what process do you determine who goes to which country? I do know that you can’t ensure a humane or compassionate process if you have a policy of mandatory detention, or of sending asylum seekers to a third country that has an inhumane or un-compassionate refugee policy.
As for the fourth objective, which is supposedly the justification for “stopping the boats”, I mentioned that 142 countries have ratified both the relevant protocol and convention. Surely we could easily have a swap arrangement with any of those countries if it turns out that this encourages asylum seekers to look for a safer method of seeking refuge.
There’s some room for debate over the relative merit of each objective, but that isn’t the debate we’ve been having.
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Thailand’s invisible hand
LesAbbey – 43
Kevin if you say that the establishment only supports elections if they can win, and then we have an election where there is a good chance they will lose, there is obviously something wrong with the first statement.
There’s nothing wrong with that, we have that situation now was because the Dem really thinks that they can win a month ago. If you recalled the earlier poll we can see that the Dem is actually neck to neck with PT, now they are 17% apart.
Thailand’s invisible hand
CT – 45
CT I guess you aren’t too keen on the Human Rights Watch report then?
Thailand’s invisible hand
As for the CTW arson, I would love to see a private investigation team to investigate who actually burned it. I have seen pictures from our beloved Andrew Marshall, which are pictures of the CTW right before arson took place. I mostly saw army officers in there, with guns. I saw a few red shirt protesters, and most of them were injured in the leg. They could not have burned this majestic shopping centre in their conditions.
I seriously believe that private investigation will reveal who actually ordered the arson, and it might shock all the Thais. But with one-sided media who accuses other without convincing evidence dominating Thai media today, I don’t see that happening. Personally, I would hold my bet that the elites planned this so that they could blame the protesters for it. But until this is proven by private, impartial, third party investigators, we probably would never know.
What I know, however, is that the yellow themselves have seized the airport. That makes them terrorists. Furthermore, the main supporter of the Yellow is Queen Sirikit. So I guess that makes her head of terrorist, I assume?
Australians, cattles, refugees and Four Corners
Dom,
Thanks for putting things in perspective.
I do hope that sensible policy making as you have suggested will find its way into the spines of the ALP, the Greens and the Coalition – and the independents.
I’d hate to see the day when the behaviour of the Government of Australia were no better than the behaviour of the Government of Malaysia.
Thailand’s invisible hand
Kevin Hewison – 41, 42
Kevin if you say that the establishment only supports elections if they can win, and then we have an election where there is a good chance they will lose, there is obviously something wrong with the first statement.
If the Democrats thought they had a better chance with a July election, then that is no different from any other parliamentary democracy where the government gets to set the election dates within the obvious term limit.
Last year we had comments here suggesting that there will be no election which was proved wrong. Now you run up another false flag which is proved wrong before you finished typing.
Let’s all hope that the July 3rd. election at least starts to give Thailand a bit of stability it has been lacking for some time. We may not be confident in that, but we can hope.
War in Kachin State
Ricky,
I’m not a Kachin or Shan, so I can’t say exactly. I do think you have to keep in mind that from the start there has been a lot of money (comparatively speaking) to tempt the various insurgent groups to stray from political struggle to economic warlordism. The Kachins had jade, the Karen crossborder trade from Thailand during Ne Win’s isolationism, the various Shan groups, and the Kachins to some extent, opium. Furthermore, these economic interests caused the ethnic minority leadership to develop close business relations with the neighboring countries that often were/are at odds with the average person in Burma. For example, note that the KIO isn’t exactly opposed to all hydroelectric dams and/or Chinese businesses, just the ones currently being built at Myitkyina.
Also note that the ethnic minorities don’t have a lot of alternatives with regard to economic outlets. If the Shan cause problems in Thailand, the Thais can simply shut off any consumer goods, food etc going in to the Shan State. And what is the Shan alternative then? China? Laos?
Thailand’s ballots and bullets
Ralph Kramden – 11
LesAbbey: No idea what you are getting at. It seems entirely reasonable to point out Suthep’s response on this attempted murder.
It seemed to me that the local press was pointing the finger, without actually saying it, at an extremely influential local family who are I think regarded as Thaksin/Phue Thai supporters. Maybe you read it differently.
Thailand’s invisible hand
And, to add to the reasons why, recall that Abhisit wanted a few constitutional items in place. See this account also: rajprasongnews.blogspot.com/2011/06/abhisits-early-election-gamble.html?spref=tw
Thailand’s invisible hand
LesAbbey asked, in relation to my comment at 20: The “establishment” only supports elections if they can win them.
He asked: So any reason why we having one now when there is a good chance that Phue Thai will win?
In my view the answer is pretty simple if you look at what was happening at the time the election was called. There were remarkable pressures not to have an election from several quarters. Not having an election – due by December – would have been a risky strategy in terms of constitution, law and an unpredictable political reaction. At the time, it seems clear that the Democrat Party strategists and Abhisit wanted an election now because they really thought that they could do well. They confidently predicted doing better than in 2007.
And they had good reasons for some confidence. They had defeated the red shirt risings twice. They had established pretty good censorship of the most vibrant red shirt media, cutting off the messages that the Democrat Party found most damaging. The government considered that the security organizations had locked up, silenced or scared much of the red shirt leadership. The Army and ISOC were widely deployed in red shirt areas. Abhisit personally seems to have wanted desperately to erase any notion that his government was not democratic in origin.
So it may well have appeared that July was the best option.
Frankly, I think the DP has been staggered to find out (again) that the pro-Thaksin parties remain so popular. I think many had convinced themselves that the arson of last May had destroyed the political base of the red shirts. They convinced themselves that there was a huge pool of voters in the middle who are repulsed by political violence. They still seem to believe this and so are working harder at trying to get these voters over to the DP by campaigning almost solely on this issue now.
Thailand’s invisible hand
A message for Nuomi’s friend (the masters graduate Cambridge, hardcore democrat voter Jun 20, 2011 at 3:26 pm).
I don’t know what they teach at Cambridge these days – but Indonesia is the largest democracy in Southeast Asia. And, unlike Thailand, they have moved beyond their former feudal state to an actual working democracy.
War in Kachin State
aiontay, I agree with your comments about foreign intervention but do the Kachin, Shan etc understand this? If so why are so reticent to act against the foreign supporters of SLORC? With over a million Shan in Thailand just imagine the mischief they could get up to?
In the Islamic World there seems to be no difficulty in acting against foreign powers that interfere e.g the Taliban in US ally Pakhistan or Al Qaeda in NY City.
The Burmese in Thailand could do something mild like calling a one day general strike and marching on some of the key collaborators EGAT, PTT etc
New Mandala turns five!
Many happy returns! And many many thanks for a splendid site and forum.
Thailand’s invisible hand
“The UDD ought to make theirs a merit-making ceremony, not only for the repose of the innocent souls murdered by Royal Thai Army snipers, but to make merit even for the Army and Democrats as well, to return some good for such unspeakable evil, to balance and cancel out the outrageous deed of celebrating murder that the Democrats and Royal Thai Army are going to carry out there.” J.F. Lee C37
John Francis Lee’s should be proportionally directing his anger at the Red Shirt leaders who deliberately fed lies to ‘sow hatred’ to their followers.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/03/17/opinion/Thaksin-red-shirt-leaders-betray-their-own-people-30124866.html
Anyone following the chronology of violent Red Shirt escalating provocations would be rightfully outraged at the Red Shirt leaders callous disregard of the danger to the lives and limbs of their followers as they were lied to and then ‘sacrificed’ to foment the Thaksin/Khattiya/Pallop civil war in April-May 2010.
(http://asiancorrespondent.com/28675/will-the-red-shirts-peoples-army-be-armed/
Considering the ‘madness’ and intransigence of the Red Shirts leaders at that time, the carnage could only have been avoided had the Red Shirt leaders had more consideration for their followers rather than for their Supremo Thaksin.
Thailand’s ballots and bullets
Bkk Lawyer: It’s the Lopburi case I mentioned. It was all over the news on television and has been now for three days.
LesAbbey: No idea what you are getting at. It seems entirely reasonable to point out Suthep’s response on this attempted murder.
Max: I don’t have a list, although the Bangkok Post had a partial list of attacks on all parties last week. There was a reported murder of a PT canvasser in Ayutthya yesterday.
Thailand’s invisible hand
I am terribly cynical now. I too feel that the Military will stage an event at the Thursday Rally. With Abhist’s numbers so dysmal, it is easy to imagine a Seh Deng event and its consequences.
Will A thow himself on the sword allowing the military to pospone an election and bring in a coup government of ‘national reconciliation’ or will the Someone die, the nation goes into greiving and the election gets posponed?????
Thailand’s invisible hand
According to a report* in The Notion today, the Dems are holding a “mass” rally in Songkhla this evening at which “….Suthep Thaugsuban will then give a speech titled ‘Don’t allow anyone to burn the country.'”.
Lucky Suthep that he can work in a book promo – and presumably also a dress-rehearsal for the rally scheduled for Rachaprasong next Thursday – with/without audio-visual support (depending on the EC declaring it “legal”). You half-wonder if Thursday’s site was chosen for convenient access to nearby bookstores…..
More seriously, I think the counter-ceremony JFL describes (c37) should be a very good counter to what the desperate Dems clearly have in mind as their last-fling gamble. I say should because I doubt it would get proper coverage by most Thai media. And by “proper” I mean remotely fair/accurate; one just knows they’ll ignore it if there’s nothing [cough] “useful” to report – or they’ll play up to the nth degree anything (real or not) that could conceivably be construed as damaging.
On that basis, maybe silence (and absence) is golden – and the Thai audience should be left to draw its own conclusions about the Dems’ very nasty piece of political theatre. I’d really like to think JFL is right in thinking that much of the mainstream Thai reaction to it will be to see dishonour in the event.
* http://tinyurl.com/3k9epnx
Thailand’s invisible hand
I would hope that the UDD would call their own rally, as far as possible away from Ratchaprasong and the Democrat’s celebration there of their massacre of the Thai people last year.
The UDD ought to make theirs a merit-making ceremony, not only for the repose of the innocent souls murdered by Royal Thai Army snipers, but to make merit even for the Army and Democrats as well, to return some good for such unspeakable evil, to balance and cancel out the outrageous deed of celebrating murder that the Democrats and Royal Thai Army are going to carry out there.
Certainly the Democrats’ sacrilegious rite can only bring dishonor to those in attendance. They will bring nothing but a curse upon themselves. How could it be otherwise? There is certainly no room there for redshirts, or for any but the blackest hearts among the Thai people.
Thailand’s ballots and bullets
I’ve seen little mention of a BJT canvasser being shot dead on Khao San Road in Bangkok on June 16.
Reported by The Nation:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/06/17/national/Vote-canvasser-shot-dead-on-Khao-San-Road-30158049.html
Thailand’s ballots and bullets
Speaking of “hua khanaen” it would be interesting to survey the country to identify homes belonging to these people and compare their relative value to homes of normal people.
Australians, cattles, refugees and Four Corners
Greg,
I also want to respond quickly to whether the Malaysian deal is actually ‘good’ or not. It seems to me you’re disagreement with one of the commentators (Naiharn) boils down to different philosophical approaches. Naiharn is approaching the issue from a consequentialist perspective: what outcome is achieved. You, and most people who oppose the deal with Malaysia are approaching it from a deontological perspective, which judges the morality of the action itself, rather than focusing on the results it leads to. A deontological perspective doesn’t need to completely ignore outcomes of course, and I don’t think you are (its common to consider means and ends as indistinguishable), but the essential debate is one of ‘do the ends justify the means’.
To answer that, you have to ask if better means can achieve similar, equivalent, or better ends. If more palatable means result in terrible outcomes, which has become a core argument of the Howard doctrine, then we should stop our bleeding hearts and accept that a distasteful policy produces the best results. But if we can achieve good results through moral actions, then that approach should certainly be preferred. Maybe even if the results do not initially appear quite as good, because the second order results, due to precedent and exemplar behaviour can eventually outweigh the initial results.
To do this we have to actually identify and justify the desired ‘ends’. In this case, I think there are a number of objectives:
1. Provide security, liberty and opportunity to refugees
2. Ensure the process is fair
3. Ensure the process is compassionate and humane
4. Avoid deaths through voyage to Australia
5. Alleviate perceptions of existential threat and invasion by foreigners
The last one is essentially a matter of politics. @Naiharn, I’m happy to spell it out: there are Australians who talk virulently about refugees. Much of what they say is overtly racist. If you want proof, have a look at this
Even when not explicitly racist, there is a strong tendency to ‘blame the victim’ and direct undue hate and scorn toward some of the world’s most vulnerable people. While its also discriminatory to tarnish all people of a particular policy persuasion as holding the views expressed in the link above, pointing out this part of Australian society is fair game. Such people should be shamed.
Part of the problem we have, is that Howard, and now Abbott don’t care about the last objective. Their priorities look like this:
1. Get elected
They have both proven themselves willing to exploit fear and bigotry to achieve that objective.
Anyway, my main point is that in a lot of debate on this issue people are talking past each other, because they don’t identify their objectives. They debate the merits of different policies without first agreeing on what the policies should achieve.
Another part of the problem is that typically, the left direct a lot of empathy toward the visible problem (humane and compassionate treatment of people at our border) and don’t try to deal with how it fits into the larger problem. As of the end of 2009, the UNHCR identified 36 million people “of concern”. Of that, 8.6 million were refugees, 1.5 were “like refugees” almost 1 million had pending applications for asylum, 15 million were internally displaced, 6.5 million were stateless people. Australia provided asylum for nearly 25,000 people of concern, 22,548 of whom were refugees and 2,350 of whom had applications pending (I assume many of those 2,350 were in detention).
Data: excel file from UNHCR
I don’t know how to ensure the process is fair when a refugee granted asylum in Australia through the UNHCR process is probably better off than one granted asylum in, say, Syria or Iran (both of which have 50 times the number of refugees as are here, if I’m reading the data correctly). By what process do you determine who goes to which country? I do know that you can’t ensure a humane or compassionate process if you have a policy of mandatory detention, or of sending asylum seekers to a third country that has an inhumane or un-compassionate refugee policy.
As for the fourth objective, which is supposedly the justification for “stopping the boats”, I mentioned that 142 countries have ratified both the relevant protocol and convention. Surely we could easily have a swap arrangement with any of those countries if it turns out that this encourages asylum seekers to look for a safer method of seeking refuge.
There’s some room for debate over the relative merit of each objective, but that isn’t the debate we’ve been having.