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Issue No. 139 07 June 2002  
E D I T O R I A L

With Prejudice
For anyone doubting the ability of an incumbent government to control the political agenda, this week's sitting of the Cole Royal Commission into the Building Industry made fascinating viewing.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: Class Action
NSW Teachers Federation general secretary Barry Johnson on Bob Carr's election budget and what he needs to do to win back the profession.

Safety: A Mother's Tale
Robin McGoldrick relives the tragedy that prompted her to confront Royal Commissioner Terence Cole over workplace story.

Unions: The Hottest Seat in Town
Nostalgia buffs should make a point of catching at least one session of Tony Abbott�s controversial, Royal Commission, playing to increasingly thin houses in Sydney. Jim Marr sat through the opening scenes.

International: Defensive Enterprise
How can men and women working in the unprotected "informal economy" be helped to better defend their rights? The ICTU grapples with the issue in The Congo.

Economics: A Super Deal?
Neale Towart looks at the debate raging within Labor circles around savings and investment.

History: A Radical Life
Stephen Holt gives an insight into one of the Australian Labor Party�s original true believers through his examination of papers held in the Manuscript Collection

Media: Cross Purposes
Stuart Mackenzie looks at the lines spun at the recent Senate committee hearing into media ownership laws.

Review: When the Force Is Unconscious
Cultural Theoritician Mark Morey reports on how a trip to the Sydney Writers Festival became a battle for intergalactic supremacy.

Poetry: Wouldn't It Be Loverly
For seven decades, Queensland aboriginal workers working under government control were 'paid' below-award wages which were placed into 'trust' accounts which were pilfered, levied, diverted and bled dry.

N E W S

 Grieving Mum Turns Cole Around

 Hamberger Grilled Over AWA Scam

 Government Shrugs Off Death Sentence Charge

 Action To Pay Foreign Crew Aussie Wages

 Jockeys Face Insurance Crisis

 Birds Get More Protection Than Workers

 Budget Delivers - But Not For DOCS

 Statewide Ban On Grain Loading

 Howard Soft On Organised Crime?

 UN Honours Building Union Drugs Program

 Award-Winning Poet Wins Right To Write

 Workers Out For Gay Games

 Mahathir Told to Release Labour Activisits

 Horta Backs Western Sahara Independence

 Activists Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
It�s The Members, Stupid.
Those officials obsessed with union voting power in the ALP are missing the point, writes Luke Foley.

The Locker Room
Too Good To Be True
Phil Doyle castes his withering gaze over a week in sport that featured origin square-ups, the World Game in all its glory and a few drunken jockeys.

Bosswatch
In The Cauldron
It was another week of pull-outs, profits de-mergers and takeovers in the corporate world; but some bright news with a plan to make executive pay more accountable.

Week in Review
The Black Letter
Legal mechanisms, national and international, are throwing up challenges to all sectors of our community but the law is a beast of many shapes and sizes as Jim Marr discovers.

L E T T E R S
 Romeo and Juliet?
 Robbo's Rave
 Latham Ad Nauseum
 Our Home Is Girt By Wire
 Hands Off Hooligans!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
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Letters to the Editor

Our Home Is Girt By Wire


As someone who is currently involved in the process of preparing a final year Political Science (at UWA) report on the issue of refugees and how they affect international affairs, I'd like to make a few comments on the current debate that rages both in and around the Labor Party.

Firstly, it has to be said that much of the comment surrounding asylum seekers is mischevious and simply untrue. I read Quadrant from time to time, and it was quite startling to see what has been a quality journal in the past allow some substantial fabrications through to the keeper.

David Flint's article in the January edition "On the Protection of Our Borders" was a pearler. At one stage in his article he appeared to suggest that we should reject asylum seekers fleeing from the likes of the mafia and the Colombian drug lords. How he can live with this position is beyond me. He then elected to state the usual argument against accepting asylum seekers from Indonesia: they could have claimed asylum there, or in a number of countries before they got there.

This claim is problematic. Whilst it is true that Article 31 of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees states that contracting states cannot impose penalties on asylum seekers who come directly from a territory where their life or freedom is under threat (it is implied many asylum seekers that seek to come to Australia are not coming from such a territory), it must be remembered this: there is not one signatory to the 1951 UN refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol, between Afghanistan and Australia. The closest signatory to the east of Afghanistan is China. Afghan asylum seekers have no guarentee of security in these transit countries (notwithstanding the shambolic state of the UNHCR's presense in Indonesia: largely due to lack of funding).

On balance it is possible (and, I suppose, most Australians support this; but does that justify anything?) that there is a case for not accepting asylum seekers from "transit countries". This can be justified as it would certainly harm the people smugglers, for whom I have little sympathy. But surely, if one was to make that case, it would have to be backed up by the obligation to ensure that the "off-shore" processing system was fair and just and resourced well (as has rarely happened). Whilst I don't always agree with Labor for Refugees, I admire them for generally calling a spade a spade; the "queue" is in bad shape (at times, non-existant)

According to a paper circulated by Senator Jim McKiernan, Labor for Refugees in Queensland wants an "end to the processing of asylum seekers off-shore".

If this is true, it raises a few issues. Are they suggesting that everyone who seeks asylum off-shore will be transported to Australia whilst processing? Or will it simply be impossible to seek asylum oversees? If the UNHCR was properly resourced, and we substantially increased our annual refugee intake (as even Paddy McGuinness has indicated was feasible) , would the objections to overseas processing persist? I shall request, for the sake of rational debate and clarity, an answer from them in due course.

On the whole, however, I believe that Labor for Refugees has mostly played a constructive role in debate on the issue. Certainly, as it is hoped we should adopt some of their recommendations, it will make for two and a half hard years of explaining our policies to the voters: a challenge we ought to take up with gutso.

Mandatory Detention is a whole new issue. I find it very difficult to see exactly how anyone who has observed these detention centres first hand could possibly defend the way in which they are run. As many detainees in those centres are fleeing the very menace that we are currently at war with (radical Islamism, for example), why we treat them in a manner that we would treat violent criminals is beyond me. Clearly there must be an alternative. Perhaps the Swedes can drop us a line?

I have, however, mistakingly indicated that much of my opposition to the "anti-refugee brigade" is based on the same Leftist sentiment that drives much of the pro-refugee lobby; allow me to dispel any such notions you may have had.

A large part of my opposition to the Federal Government's policy on asylum seekers (which is not in the least bit humane), is based on my fundamental belief that the idea of "cultural relativism" is a load of pseudo-intellectual progressivist twaddle. Our universities have been reduced to all new lows by the trendy New Class academics of the humanities and social sciences, who have (the worst examples being in Literature and English) completely debauched the public money they receive in order to indoctrinate students with their rubbish theories.

The idea that all cultures are morally equal is one of the most absurd ideas of the academic Leninists, one that must be challenged. Confucious once said that good government was attained when the people were made happy, and those from far off were attracted: clearly the West must be doing something right.

I am of the firm belief that the more people we accept fleeing tyrannical regimes, especially those of an Islamist bent, the faster those regimes will implode. We should be doing everything we can to convert more people to our peaceful, democratic way of life, to show people that they need not live in misery or desperation. I believe that instead of being apologists for rapists and murderers in the Third World, as many in the progressivist academia are, we need to assert ourselves and be prepared to accept more people to our cause; how else can we spike the growing boil of extremism?

The more we treat people, who merely want to adopt our lifestyle, in a similar manner as those atrocious countries they fled, the more the self-styled intellectuals will be able to peddle their childish theories about the evils of the West and modern life, and the virtues of so-called "traditional societies". It is unfortunate that the Labor Party has fallen somewhat under the influence of the inner-city latte set - perhaps the do-gooders (who are pushing the refugee cause very hard) will, in time, come to terms with the reasons why the refugees want to come here in the first place.

Please, for God's sake, let them in!


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