Media Release 15 October
\n\u201cDesperate Liberals, sliding further behind in the opinion polls, are trying to turn refugees into a political football once again. Ruddock\u2019s comments about a \u2018pipeline of 10,000 asylum seekers\u2019 are on a par with his claim in 1999 that \u2018whole villages were packing up to come to Australia\u2019. He had no evidence then, he has none now,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are discredited comments from a discredited former Immigration Minister. Likewise, WA premier Barnett\u2019s comments about denying visas to Afghan asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Liberal Party would like to start a political arms race about which party is tougher on refugees. What irks the Liberals is that any refugees are gaining protection in Australia at all. Ruddock spent his whole political life as Immigration minister trying to make sure Australia took no responsibility for asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is well established that deterrence doesn\u2019t work. Asylum seeker numbers rose after Ruddock introduced temporary protection visas. Worse, the deaths of 353 asylum seekers on the SIEV X in 2001 were directly attributable to the Liberals polices.<\/p>\n
Close Christmas Island<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhat is needed is a welcome refugee policy. Kevin Rudd should close Christmas Island. Excision is a disgraceful monument to the Liberals\u2019 failed deterrence policies. The vast majority of boat arrivals are found to be refugees. Christmas Island is simply inflicting unnecessary suffering on detainees. The Labor Party should live up to its declared policy of using detention as a last resort,\u201d said Rintoul.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of spending millions of dollars on \u201cborder protection\u201d to use Indonesia as a warehouse for asylum seekers, that money could be spent processing refugees in Indonesia and bringing them to Australia. We don\u2019t want any more SIEV X\u2019s. Asylum seekers have already drowned on boats heading to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, information obtained late yesterday (Mon 12 October) indicates that deported Sri Lankan asylum seeker, Sarath Tennakoon was released by the Sri Lankan air force after being in custody for over 36 hours. Sarath has been left without money or documents.<\/p>\n For more information contact Refugee Action Coalition, Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media Release 15 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}