Foreign Aid inducement plus costs will abrogate responsibility.
It will be a silenent “operational matter”
Cambodia is a refuge for political expediency
Date
September 27, 2014
Editorial
The Abbott government’s squalid deal with one of Asia’s poorest and most corrupt nations reflects badly on Australia, harms our regional ambition to be seen as a friendly neighbour and abdicates our moral responsibility to the vulnerable.
‘Their standards are not our standards – and it is very wrong of Australia to send people who have come into our care, however briefly, to a country whose standards are so different from ours.”
How two faced can you get? This was Tony Abbott’s withering critique, from opposition in 2011, of Labor’s ill-judged people-swap with Malaysia. The Coalition at the time refused to support the Malaysian deal, arguing – as did The Age – that the rights of asylum seekers could not be protected. Those very same doubts apply in at least equal measure to Cambodia.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, having initially refused to acknowledge the negotiations with Cambodia with his regrettable contempt for public information, has now made a risible attempt to dress up this deal as a sign of that country’s progress. But, politically, the country is moribund. Prime Minister Hun Sen has preserved his grip on power for more than two decades by intimidation and repression.
Australia to strike a deal that promises Cambodia an additional $40 million in aid over four years, to accept refugees whom Australia itself has refused to accept, smacks of exploitation.
Offshore processing of refugee applicants in Nauru and Papua New Guinea is an attempt to evade Australia’s international obligations; now, by paying to send refugees to Cambodia, the government is similarly attempting to buy its way out of the responsibility to resettle people found to be fleeing persecution.
It is extraordinary that, beyond the additional $40 million in aid, the government has entered into this deal with an apparent blank cheque, to pay for the costs of providing for refugees in Cambodia. Mr Morrison has conceded the cost is unknown.
There is no economic argument for what Morrison is doing. If 20,000 adult refugees were settled to become tax payers of this country at the lowest level $10-15k it would bring the government approx $300 mill or over $2 billion income over the next 5 years and that’s only one group of 20,000. What’s our reputation as a global citizen worth. Nothing it would appear to this government. Immigration,Climate,Security,Welfare,Education have become the most regressive policies in the Western World.
olddogthoughts 