Scott Morrison shames Australia yet again

Distant Australia, whose participation in the illegal war against Iraq which produced refugees and asylum seekers that would eventually head towards the antipodes, is now offering to accept a higher intake of refugees from Ukraine and “fast track” their applications. The same politicians speak approvingly of a system that imprisons asylum seekers and refugees indefinitely in Pacific outposts, promising to never resettle them in Australia. The subtext here is that those sorts – the Behrouz Boochani-types – deserve it.

In the words of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), “The Morrison Government has presided over the dismantling of Australia’s refugee intake, leaving Australia unable to adequately respond to emergencies,” with 2022 “marking the lowest refugee intake in nearly 50 years.” True, the global pandemic did not aid matters, but COVID-19 did little in terms of seeing a precipitous decline in refugee places. Australia’s refugee intake cap was lowered from 18,750 persons in 2018-2019 to 13,750 in 2020-2021.

The reduction of such places has taken place despite Canberra’s role in a range of conflicts that have fed the global refugee crisis. Australia’s failure in Afghanistan, and its imperiling of hundreds of local translators and security personnel, only saw a half-hearted effort in opening the doors. The effort was characterized by incompetence and poorly deployed resources.

The grim reality in refugee politics is that governments always make choices and show preferences. “Talk of moving some applications ‘to the top of the pile’ pits the most vulnerable against each other,” opines the critical founder of the ASRC, Kon Karapanagiotidis. “This is a moral aberration and completely out of step with the Australian public.”

Source: The Ukraine War and the “Good” Refugee – » The Australian Independent Media Network