Refugee groups have accused the Immigration Minister, Tony Burke, of playing politics with asylum seeker policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cTony Burke is singing the same misleading song as the Liberals. He needs to drop the \u2018me too\u2019 rhetoric if he wants to be taken seriously,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition. \u201cHe is giving the impression that asylum seekers do not have identification documents when they arrive, but that is not true.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsequently Tony Burke\u2019s announcement that asylum applicants \u2018with identification papers will be dealt with first while those who destroy their papers or refuse to co-operate will be considered last\u2019 is meaningless,\u201d said Rintoul.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile many do not bring passports because they are fake or because they can make it easier for them to be deported, the vast majority of asylum seekers do have identification papers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilarly, Kevin Rudd\u2019s comments about extending \u2018screening-out\u2019 procedures to Iranians is all about Rudd shifting the right on refugee policy for the election. The screening-out of Tamils has been widely condemned as an abuse of human rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cScreening-out has resulted in asylum seekers being sent back to danger. It is not even remotely possible to send Iranians back, but Bob Carr and Kevin Rudd seem to think it makes a good headline.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd as for Frank Brennan\u2019s proposal to fly \u2018failed\u2019 asylum seekers back to Indonesia, that is more election nonsense. Indonesia is no more likely to accept asylum seekers being returned by plane that than they are going to allow the Coalition to turn boats back.<\/p>\n
\u201cTony Burke\u2019s announcement that children and families will be taken out of detention is very welcome. But this policy announcement only takes us back to Labor\u2019s policy in 2007. Kevin Rudd and Labor have ignored that policy for five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cKevin Rudd mark II will be measured by actions, not words. However there has been precious little action to end detention or off-shore processing and the words have been more like Tony Abbott\u2019s than about humanitarian policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Refugee groups have accused the Immigration Minister, Tony Burke, of playing politics with asylum seeker policy. \u201cTony Burke is singing the same misleading song as the Liberals. He needs to drop the \u2018me too\u2019 rhetoric if he wants to be taken seriously,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, from the Refugee Action Coalition. \u201cHe is giving the impression […]<\/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-2683","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\/2683","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=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}