NEWS
25 Jul 2015

Move To Have Labor Oppose Asylum Seeker Turn Backs Fails

By Max Chalmers
Keywords: 
asylum seekers
labor
refugee policy
bill shorten
richard marles
max chalmers

After a messy bout, the party has fallen into line with the Abbott government. Max Chalmers reports.

Labor will not adopt clear opposition to the Abbott government policy of boat turn backs, with delegates today voting down an attempt to amend the party’s policy platform that would have made it explicitly anti turn back.

In a highly anticipated debate party leaders went before members in Melbourne to make the cases for and against the amendment, which has caused deep divisions in the party.

As the first speaker Andrew Giles began he was interrupted by pro-refugee protesters who took to the stage and unfurled a banner that said “no refugee turn backs”.

Giles, who was speaking in favour of the motion against turn backs, looked gutted, but was defiant once the protesters were escorted from the stage and said he was proud to be a member of Bill Shorten’s team.

“We are going to win this argument by persuasion not by protest,” he said.

But those on Giles’ side were not able to convince their own party this weekend, with the anti turn back policy going down in a final, confusing struggle.

When the amendment went to a vote Labor President Mark Butler asked for ayes and nos to be voiced and, despite the ayes clearly being louder, ruled it for the nos.

That provoked anger on the floor, and a show of hands was eventually called for, confirming the foregone conclusion.

Speakers on both sides congratulated the party on the respect shown during the debate, but those who raised their hands against the amendment received a hearty boo and cries of shame as they expressed their opposition.

The vote followed an emotional Left caucus meeting today where, bizarrely, the Labor for Refugees group argued against moving the amendment to make Labor’s policy explicitly anti turn back.

Pro refugee protesters leave placards on the walls of the convention centre

Labor for Refugees has been arguing in recent days that Labor’s platform already opposes turn backs because it calls for the humane treatment of refugees in line with international law. Clearly, Bill Shorten and Richard Marles don’t agree, with both signalling support for the policy before the conference.

New Matilda understands that in the meeting Tanya Plibersek made the case for not moving an amendment that would state the party’s clear opposition to turn backs.

While the room apparently favoured the amendment, the caucus did not bind on the matter, putting a victory on the conference floor out of reach.

Shadow Minister for Immigration Richard Marles had some sweeteners to offer, with Shorten announcing in the morning a Labor Government would double the country’s humanitarian and refugee intake to 27,000 by 2025.

But that was not enough for many in the party, with president of the textile union Michele O’Neil, dressed in a red “don’t turn back” shirt, delivering a passionate rebuke of the turn back policy, rejecting the oft-stated line that asylum seeker currently in Indonesia are safe there.

 

 

“This is not a turn back boats policy. It’s a turn back desperate people seeking refuge policy,” she said.

In the end the ‘deaths at sea’ argument penetrated deep into this conference with senior Labor leaders framing their support for turn backs around the idea of stopping lives at sea being lost.

Labor’s last Immigration Minister Tony Burke told the conference 34 people had drowned – including a 10-week-old boy – making the crossing during his brief months in charge of the portfolio.

But at the end of the day another argument must have been in the mind of many of those Labor delegates who voted against the amendment against turn backs.

It was one that hardly went mentioned, but which NSW MP Matt Thistlethwaite obliquely referenced in his address.

“Delegates, this is an issue that has divided Labor for too long,” he told the crowd.

Other speakers angrily hit out at the idea the shift made Labor the philosophical or moral equivalent of Tony Abbott.

Yet in the mind of voters it certainly does, and with the electorate still overwhelming suspicious of refugees its Labor’s chances at the next election that surely moved many of those who raised their hands against the amendment moved today.

 

 

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MJoanneS
Posted Saturday, July 25, 2015 - 18:31

Yet 18,000 kids a day are dying of starvation and we cut aid to build more refugee prisons for people in other countries because they dared not to drown.

 

They tell themselves the most pathetic lies to justify the crimes against humanity they commit.

Last year alone 12 million new people fled their homes, we helped zero, got some murdered, saw Assad slaughter 76,000 alone, watched on while 8 million kids starved to death.

 

We are now the only country in the world with a refugee deterrence policy accepted by a rogue one party parliament and still our lazy racist media refuse to understand that all these lies and angst have been about precisely 50,000 refugees over 6 years, just over one day of refugee flight.

This user is a New Matilda supporter. drys
Posted Saturday, July 25, 2015 - 21:16

Why don't members of the ALP 'right' factions join the Liberals? For surely this is their true ideological home.

The only difference between Shorten and Abbott is the way they walk.

O. Puhleez
Posted Saturday, July 25, 2015 - 21:54

As far as I am aware, at present the only way those seeking asylum in Australia can get it is to make their way to Australia and apply for it here. This means that it is only available for people with the money to fly in as tourists and then apply when they get here, or buy the services of a "people smuggler' and come on a barely seaworthy boat. 

Using the Manus and Nauru options, the government has blocked the latter.

What is needed is order in the process instead of the stampede the government clearly and justifiably fears, with the Greek situation showing clearly the kind of schemozzle a stampede can produce. The first step to orderly refugee arrival is for Australia to quit ther Refugee Convention.

EarnestLee
Posted Saturday, July 25, 2015 - 22:15

So what is our new Party to be called. Because Abbott will call an election once we start to get traction. Register it next week. THe ABC Party ( A Better Country).

MJoanneS
Posted Saturday, July 25, 2015 - 22:15

86% of the world's refugees live in countries who have not ratified the refugee convention, us pulling out over the arrival of 0,0001% would make us a global laughing stock.

Dx2013
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 00:26

You have to give Shorten Labor some brownie points for admitting the success of coalition's turnback policy.

 

MJoanneS
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 01:41

What is this success then?  We have spent $2 billion to keep away 470 refugees while 16 million kids under 5 died of starvation and war.

 

Some success.

Grace57
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 03:48

Two words: Disgraceful Decision.

xfretensis
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 06:49

I would like to be one of the first Australians to have my citizenship revoked.  Am I proud to be Australian?  Not really.  Am I of this country?  Resoundingly yes.  Irish convict, Welsh convict, Aboriginal with a dash of Maori.

When I was younger and travelling overseas I would proudly proclaim "I am Australian!"  Nowadays I merely say "I am from Australia".  Sadly, on many matters, we have become a 'quisling' nation and have no more than staged-managed nationalism - no more then Poland or France or Chezchoslavakia or any other country that stood by while its Jews and Gypsies and Trade Unionists and many other catergories were carted off for 'solutions'.

A country represented by a policy without a heart or empathy or compassion is not one that I aspire to belong to.  Revoke my citizenship so I can proudly proclaim - I belong to none, my birthright is Australia, but I am a citizen of the free world. 

O. Puhleez
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 07:44

MJS:

86% of the world's refugees live in [ie have found temporary refuge in] countries who have not ratified the refugee convention, us pulling out over the arrival of 0,0001% would make us a global laughing stock.

Assuming your stats are right there, in your own inimitable way you have just made further argument for leaving the Convention: makes no difference anyway.

Evan
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 08:38

At the next election put the Lib-Lab last.  A friend suggests the hashtag #putcorruptionlast.

mbolan
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 09:22

Wow, once again we are having our decisions made for us by career rent seekers. The labor party must now support Abbott's policy making that 'team Australia's only option'? Australia's 3 tier gravy train can now align!

We're all interconnected now, we can make up our own minds and vote on-line. We don't need 'representatives' to make our decisions for us...unless the decisions are not made for us at all but are made for our 2 (or 3) parties. The complexity of the world reduced to 2 (or 3) viewpoints. Sustainable? I don't think so.

DrGideonPolya
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 12:09

There are about 35 million Muslim refugees in the world, mostly generated by genocidally  racist Apartheid Israel  and the serial war criminal US Alliance, including Zionist -perverted, US lackey Australia. Apart from the Rohingyas, these refugees are variously fleeing the deadly imposition of sanctions, occupation, genocide, and mass murder on the Muslim world by the US Alliance, including  US lackey Australia in an ongoing Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust (13 million Muslim deaths from violence or imposed deprivation since 1990;; 34 million Muslim refugees; 6 million under-5 infant deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, 90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention; see “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

While impoverished  Greece takes in and cares for 150,000 Muslim refugees each year, genocidally racist,  anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and child-abusing Lib-Lab (Coalition and Labor Right) Australia highly abusively imprisons  several thousand refugees arriving  by boat in remote concentration camps wherein child prisoners are evilly abused under the protection of legislation mandating imprisonment of  doctors, nurses, teachers and other care-givers for reporting such child abuse in refugee concentration camps.

How low can neo-fascist, Lib-Lab Australia sink? In vain one protests the Orwellian and indeed Butlerian (Erehwonian) indecency of the mass murdering, serial war criminal,  child-abusing Lib-Labs justifying their unspeakable crimes against refugees in the name of “saving lives at sea”.  

 Decent Australians who utterly abhor racism, war crimes, mass murder, genocide, human rights abuse and child abuse will utterly reject the bottom-of-the-barrel, neo-fascist Lib-Labs, vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.

Bill Schutt
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 14:03

DrGiddayPolly is responsible again for another racist anti-semitic rant. His extremist nonsense is in stark contrast to the uplifting & moderate views of Fahad Ali.

The Labor party has adopted this policy because that's what Australians want. it's a good thing too, because it's a bigger issue to most Australians that climate-change, which is by far the most important.

MzJoanneX is also rather extreme. At the rate at which asylum seekers were arriving in 2013, and the rate increasing, we could easily be talking about 100,000 by now. Australia's resettlement of off-shore refugees would have ground to a halt. It's a general narcissistic trait to impune the motives of anyone who disagrees with you. MzJoanneX describes anyone who disagrees with her racist. Some small part of her mind can actually work-out that the 2007-2013 solution is unsustainable, and then the morally doctrinaire part of her mind has to justify why a whole lot of ordinary people don't agree with her. No MzJoanneX, the present policy is not racist, and ordinary Australians are not racist. You just got a hive of bees in your bonnet and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of another's point of view.

DrGideonPolya
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 15:01

Readers of this thread - it is obnoxiously, falsely and defamatorily asserted via  ad hominem abuse  by some (notably Zionists and pro-Zionists)  that protesting AGAINST  racism, anti-Semitism,  anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia constitutes "racism" and "anti-Semtism" - it ain't.

O. Puhleez
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 15:39

Dr GP:

There are about 35 million Muslim refugees in the world, mostly generated by genocidally  racist Apartheid Israel  and the serial war criminal US Alliance, including Zionist -perverted, US lackey Australia. 

The proposition that Muslims, if they murder and maim other Muslims (as they have been doing since the day after the death of Mohammad in the 7th C AD) have (mostly) only ever done so because they have been pushed into it by the West, or put up to it by stooges of the West, is as prejudiced, xenophobic, politically incorrect and 'religio-racist' as anything published anywhere. Moreover, it is a tad historically inaccurate.

I doubt even Murdoch would go that far.

[My emphasis throughout. - OP]

This user is a New Matilda supporter. MattQ
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 16:27

The best one can say about the Labor party in 2015 is that they're a shade less amoral than the Libs. Craven  politicking has seen them manufacture a platform from others' ideals. Zero credibility, and worse, zero integrity. Do-unto-others is no longer in fashion. Good to know.

What do you get when you add regressive to progressive? Sweet F-A, and that's what Labor demonstrably, comprehensively and reprehensibly represents. And yes, the standards are higher for Labor, because they claimed them.

Xfretensis: When travelling, since 2008 I tell acquaintances I am from New Zealand, which free's them up to deliver an earnest diatribe against those 'selfish Australians'. I have met many other Australians who do the same. Good people freakin' HATE us out there!

downboy
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 19:10

First the ALP must win government. Little if anything of national importance can be achieved from opposition.

The ALP wins government by out smarting it's political rivals - outsmarting does not mean outspending.

The ALP will outsmart it's political rivals by seemingly stealing those LNP policies attractive to wavering voters. This is a game of stealth. No place for hearts worn on sleeves.

Once the ALP has won government it will set about righting the wrongs and making Australia a decent global citizen again.

Until then, pragmatism must rule. The ALP will topple Abbott.

MJoanneS
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2015 - 20:59

I love the claim that the ALP will make things better when every vicious racist refugee policy has been done by them in government.

Syd Walker
Posted Monday, July 27, 2015 - 12:24

MsJoanneS wrote: "..saw Assad slaughter 76,000 alone" 

What a monumentally ridiculous comment, Joanne.

I thought your worldview was based on not blaming the victim?

Or do you believe nations on the Zionists' hitlist are not entitled to defend their citizenry from externally-fueled insurgencies?

O. Puhleez
Posted Monday, July 27, 2015 - 23:33

Syd:

Or do you believe nations on the Zionists' hitlist are not entitled to defend their citizenry from externally-fueled insurgencies?

As far as I am aware, every revolutionary movement in history has been characterised by its conservative and reactionary opponents as the work of a minority backed by foreign agitators and interests.

So what else is new?