Yes, it is all about the children, so bring them here
Posted by John, February 25th, 2015 - under Malcolm Turnbull, Refugees.
Tags: Asylum seekers, Children in detention, Gillian Triggs, Human Rights Commission
Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister in waiting, has distanced himself from Tony Abbott, the current Prime Minister, and Abbott’s trashing of Gillian Triggs, the Human Rights Commissioner. In doing so Turnbull has repeated the lies of the Prime Minister about stopping the boats being the best way to keep asylum seeker children out of detention.
Here is what James Massola in the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
“The bottom line is this: one child in detention is one child too many. Everyone is anguished by having children locked up in detention,” [Mr Turnbull] said.
“The best way for children not to be in detention is of course for them to not get onto smugglers boats and of course we have effectively ensured that by Scott Morrison stopping the boats.”
This is only true if you have a policy of detaining asylum seeker children. Releasing them and their families into the Australian community would avoid the physical and emotional suffering that arises from locking them up.
As well, stopping the boats only outsources the problem to Indonesia and Malaysia, where tens of thousands of asylum seeker kids and their parents rot in hell holes.
Gillian Triggs was quite right to point out the abuse of asylum seeker children that went on under Labor and is going on under the Liberals. That should be our focus instead of the circus about so-called political partisanship that the Abbott government is using to hide its abuse of children.
There is an alternative to brutalising kids. Bring them and all the other asylum seekers to Australia for release into the community.