Left will leave a bloody trail with their bleeding hearts
It’s a pity that those demanding the Coalition be more humane have never seen dead bodies floating in the ocean, never heard the cries of drowning people, never had to pick up and bag body parts, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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It’s a pity that those demanding the Coalition be more humane have never seen dead bodies floating in the ocean, never heard the cries of drowning people, never had to pick up and bag body parts.
If they had, there’s a slim chance that they might have rejected the irresponsible decision to re-open the opportunity for people smugglers to resume their lethal trade with the erosion of the government’s effective border control regime.
For that’s what Labor leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Richard Di Natale have surely done with their embrace of independent Kerryn Phelps’ formula to reduce the power of the minister to determine who reaches Australia.
In the past week there have been a lot of falsehoods told by Mr Shorten, Dr Di Natale and Dr Phelps about the effects of the legislation they ill-advisedly backed.
Not only did they ignore warnings from the security agencies which have been dealing with illegal immigrants for decades, they rejected the lived experience of those who have had front-line knowledge of the deadly effects of people smuggling.
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Humane now joins the ever-expanding list of words utterly debased by Green, Labor and independent politicians.
Not so long ago, to be humane meant having compassion or benevolence. But in the dystopian, Orwellian world of the Left, those who claim to be humane are wholly responsible for encouraging the hateful people smuggling people trade which so often results in the most horrible death imaginable — drowning at sea.
This is not scaremongering. This is a fact and what’s more, we’ve seen it all before.
Do you remember the acronym SIEV? If you can recall the days of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, you should recollect that the letters stand for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel.
You may even have some memory of December 15, 2010, when a boat which became known as SIEV 221 smashed into the cliffs of Christmas Island, the destination of choice for people smugglers operating from Indonesia, killing 48 people aboard and adding to the more than 1000 lives lost under Labor’s last experiment with loosening successful and lifesaving border controls.
For it is a fact that John Howard’s realistic border control policies effectively brought an end to the people-smuggling business.
The combination of its Pacific Solution model in 2001-2002 and the issuance of temporary protection visas (TPVs) saw no boats arrive in 2002-2003. The next year there was one boat and another reached an “excised” area — Christmas Island. None arrived in 2004-2005, in 2005-2006 there were four boats and in 2006-2007 there were five, including one from West Papua. In 2007-2008, there were three.
When the Labor/Green/Independent Gillard government took office there were a handful of illegal entrants in detention.
At the end of that disastrous trial in trade union-led socialism there were more than 50,000 illegal entrants and once-closed detention centres had to be reopened to cope with the flood — hence Manus Island and Nauru.
It seems that those who proclaim their humanity — and the taxpayer-funded presenters on the ABC and SBS are among the most shrill — have forgot a lot about those years.
During the coverage of the passage of the Phelps-inspired bill there was no mention by its supporters of the Christmas Island tragedy, not a word about the losses at sea, the boats that were purposefully destroyed — maiming and killing people — by smugglers upping the ante and ensuring the RAN would collect the survivors and provide lifesaving medical assistance.
Nor was there any reference to the disastrous riots on Christmas Island on November 21, 2009.
With sharpened pool cues, spears fashioned out of broomsticks and clubs made of thick branches ripped from shade trees in the compound, the unhappy and distrustful inmates viciously attacked each other, cracking heads, breaking legs and arms and causing severe lacerations, I wrote at the time.
The centre built for 400 held about 1000 — and more came.
Never before had men from different ethnic groups clashed in Australian immigration detention as they did that evening, seriously injuring 37 and forcing the medical evacuation of four of the most severely wounded via chartered aircraft to Perth.
I have actually visited Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and in the Pacific. Both have been seized upon by the Left, which has made false claims about each.
Ten years ago I visited Australia’s Christmas Island and saw first-hand the horror of the Labor/Green border control failure. Immediately within the entrance of the main detention facility was a large pillar covered in posters advertising all the services available to illegal entrants, free mobile phones, legal and health services, welfare benefits and contacts on the mainland.
The other Christmas Island is said to be sinking in rising oceans. It isn’t, according to residents I spoke to.
In my column of January 1, 2010, after I visited Christmas Island I wrote: “There is literally a flotilla of boats making their way here, their passengers encouraged by the Rudd Government’s softening of Australia’s border protection regime.”
And so it proved.
The poet-philosopher George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Mr Shorten, Dr Di Natale and Dr Phelps, what would it take for you to understand the disaster you have launched?
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