FRED. wrote on Sep 1
st, 2011 at 8:55am:
Dnarever wrote on Sep 1
st, 2011 at 8:52am:
Maqqa wrote on Sep 1
st, 2011 at 7:33am:
Offshore processing started because Australian lawyers used a loophole in Australian laws to get asylum-seekers their refugee status
So as long as the asylum-seekers landed on the mainland - they are assured of refugee status
Even if security checks turns out against the asylum-seeker the Australian lawyers will use this loophole to keep them here.
The legal challenges are often costly and involve the media.
The Greens generally will jump on the bandwagon
Rubbish - all it did was to give them access to the Australian judicial system which meant that their rights including with refugee claims had to be handled properly or take the risk of being overturned.
There was no loophole to grant refugee status.
In reality off shore processing started because Mr Howard wanted to be able to say that We will deciede who comes to this country in his 2001 election campaign. That is literally all it was about.
Howards 10 Billion dollar election stunt.
5 External links
BackgroundThe policy "Migration Act 1958 " was discretionary prior to 1992 but since the 1990s when the Paul Keating ALP government enforced a policy of mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals, non-citizens arriving by boat without a valid visa were detained until they were either granted a visa, or deported. [3]
Towards the end of the 1990s, a large increase in the number of unauthorised arrivals exceeded the capacity of the existing Immigration Reception and Processing Centres at Port Hedland and Curtin.[4]
Facilities [5]
HARD FOR YOU buggers to ADMIT
Dnerever is right. Offshore processing was Ruddock and Howard's response to the Tampa crisis in 2001. A Norwegian container ship picked up a shipwrecked boat near Christmas Island and was refused entry to Australian ports.
The solution: the tiny Island of Nairu offered to take them for 10 million dollars and a purpose built facility. Subsequent facilities were built on Christmas Island and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The "Pacific Solution" was born.
It wasn't planned policy, it was a crisis-driven response to an international crisis. Indonesia refused them, Australia refused them. There was no time for maritime law to be argued in the courts.
All but 2 of the 1229 refugees detained in Nairu were eventually taken into Australia as refugees, but the "Pacific Solution" saw a drop in the number of refugee boats coming to Australia. Hence, Ruddock was able to claim that the policy broke the business model of the people smugglers.
Maybe. When Rudd got in and abandoned the Pacific Solution, the boats started coming again. Labor addressed "push factors", diplomacy and an Australian Federal police task force to work with the Indonesians to catch people smugglers. The civil war in Sri Lanka ended. But the numbers continued to rise.
As the numbers rose, it became increasingly hard to argue that offshore processing hadn't worked. The shock jocks went wild. When Rudd was deposed, Gillard was tasked with solving the boat problem. Talk returned to breaking the people smuggler business model and the Pacific Solution was reborn: first East Timor, then the Malaysian Solution.
Mandatory detention is an entirely separate policy, begun by the Keating government in 1992. A detention limit of 273 days applied to all cases, and the policy had bipartisan support.
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