Chris Kenny: Greens hypocritical on Mediterranean refugee drownings

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young, inset, insists on trumpets compassion for North African refugees whose ships have sunk in the Mediterranean, main image.

No matter what they get wrong on border protection, how much they refuse to learn, how much trauma and tragedy is unleashed and no matter how often their prescription is proven to be callously naive, the Greens insist on trumpeting their self-professed compassion.

The latest hypocritical nonsense from Sarah Hanson-Young in response to the horrendous tragedies in the Mediterranean confirms the Greens are incapable of the most basic levels of understanding, common sense or real compassion on this issue.

Hanson-Young styles herself as the posturer-in-chief on asylum-seekers and moves effortlessly from teary distress to angry outbursts as she snarls at the government and derides her fellow-Australians — whatever best suits her transparent aim of claiming the moral high-ground and trumpeting a level of compassion she says is found wanting in most of us.

So it is that while the Senator can cry in parliament for children in detention she was also able to check out a band at a pub, and tweet happily about it, while Australians risked their lives trying to rescue asylum-seekers and retrieve their bodies on the night 48 died at Christmas Island almost five years ago.

Later, after yet another disaster and in response to questions about Greens culpability through their open-borders approach, Hanson-Young famously said “tragedies happen, accidents happen.”

The policies favoured by Hanson-Young and the Greens were implemented by Labor from 2008.

They led to the arrival of more than 800 boats, 51,000 asylum-seekers and the deaths of at least 1200 people on attempted journeys.

They saw detention centres built and filled in every state, tens of thousands of people put through detention, and anything up to almost 2000 children held in detention at any one time.

They also saw Australia’s generous humanitarian intake of refugees outsourced — with all the places taken by people who had been able to pay people-smugglers anything up to $10,000 and no places left for refugees waiting in camps in Sudan, Pakistan, Indonesia or elsewhere.

In short, it was an epic disaster for everyone except the criminal people-smugglers and a select group of their paying customers.

Yet Hanson-Young somehow finds a way to attack Australia and the Abbott government over what is unfolding in Europe — where the sort of softer approach she promotes has been implemented by the Italians with the predictable result of increasing numbers of boats and tragedies.

“Turning our backs and cutting off safe avenues for resettlement, as Tony Abbott has done, gives refugees fewer options and pushes women and children into further danger,” says Hanson-Young.

This is a vicious and absurd slur which turns reality on its head for the sake of a political attack.

Even Abbott’s political enemies can see that Operation Sovereign Borders has closed off a dangerous and exploitative people-smuggling industry and far from “cutting off safe avenues” has freed up Australia’s humanitarian quota to take refugees from overseas — chosen by authorities on the basis of need, rather than drafted by their ability to funnel cash to smugglers.

“Tony Abbott might want to trumpet stopping boats in Australian waters but the truth is men, women and children are still drowning over the horizon,” says the Greens spokesperson, trying somehow to link the Mediterranean deaths to Australian policies.

Hanson-Young should be made to explain how any of the North African refugees seeking to cross the Mediterranean into Italy were planning to head to Australia, and how the cessation of the people-smuggling trade from Java to Australia has made that escape more difficult.

Her comments are arrant, callous and desperate nonsense.

Don’t hold your breath for Hanson-Young to be taken to task by the ABC or Canberra Press Gallery — they have let her get away with this sort of sickening posturing for years.

Thanks to strong border protection Australia actually has the capacity to take refugees from overseas now; and that quota has been increased.

The situation in the Mediterranean is more difficult than that faced by Australia because of the proximity, the civil strife in the countries directly affected and the absolute numbers involved.

Yet the unfolding tragedy tends to endorse the action Australia has taken.

Hanson-Young’s intervention demonstrates yet again that hers is a game of politics and vitriol, with no regard for solutions and safety.