Michelle Grattan, The Age (Melbourne), October 22, 2009
TIM Costello has challenged Kevin Rudd over calling the influx of asylum seekers “illegal” immigration and reminded him that some people smugglers in the past have been viewed as heroes.
As debate flared over the Prime Minister’s language, Mr Costello, chief executive of World Vision, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian Mr Rudd much admires, spoke up for Jewish refugees and helped smuggle some of them out of Nazi Germany into Switzerland. “This is why he was charged and sent to prison.”
Mr Rudd wrote in 2006, praising Bonhoeffer as the man he admired most from the 20th century, that “the parable of the good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst”.
Uniting Church president Alistair Macrae said in a letter written to both political parties that “it is not a matter of national security that people come to Australia seeking protection as refugees”, and he pointed out that “everyone has a right under international law to seek asylum”.
Mr Costello said that “refugees have a right to come and calling them illegals isn’t right. They are irregulars.”
Mr Rudd has referred to “illegal” immigration, and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull to “illegal arrivals”.
The Prime Minister’s use of the term “illegal” was challenged this week by Victorian Labor backbencher Michael Danby.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday dismissed the criticism, saying that Mr Rudd was sending a message nationally and internationally “that we’re very committed on border security”.
Mr Costello warned against getting back to the “ugly language” of the Howard years.
Mr Rudd has referred to people smugglers as “vile” and “vermin”.
Mr Costello said: “When we talk about smugglers, many of us think about The Sound of Music [in which the von Trapp family was smuggled out of occupied Austria] and Schindler and a whole heap of people who were smugglers.”
Australians had a “sea phobia”, Mr Costello said; people arriving by plane didn’t stir such feelings.
Mr Costello said that Indonesia, a poor country, had a huge number of refugees. “It causes concern in the region when countries there are asked to solve our domestic political problem in the face of their having to cope with huge numbers of refugees in camps”.
Despite Mr Turnbull’s reference to “illegal” arrivals, the Opposition spokeswoman Sharman Stone said the correct term was “unauthorised arrivals”. The terminology Mr Rudd was using “is deliberately to meet the anxieties of the right wing in his party”, she said. “It is not about illegals . . . other than if you are talking about the smugglers.”
Greens spokeswoman for immigration Sarah Hanson-Young said Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull were doing a disservice by calling asylum seekers illegal. “As a career diplomat, Mr Rudd knows very well the importance of the words he uses. He also knows there is only one reason to use this sort of language—to deliberately inflame public debate.”
Original article
(Posted on October 26, 2009)
Comments
Australia doesn’t NEED these people. Australia has nothing to gain by letting them in.
Just when I thought Australia was starting to grow some brains, on the matter of illegal immigration; some people there are starting to think that human smugglers who brazenly exploit their “cargo”; are to be compared to Oskar Schindler. That’s a slap in the face to the memory of Schindler, who did what he could to protect Jews in Germany, from state-sponsored slaughter. There’s a difference between the German Jews Schindler saved, and the refugees from Indonesia, who want to ride the welfare gravy train. They aren’t being persecuted in Indonesia.
There’s another thing the Australians must consider, but aren’t. Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims on the planet. Allowing them to come unfettered and unchecked to Australia will almost guarantee that the Cronulla riots will be repeated on an annual basis, similar to American college students partying on Florida beaches for spring break. Only, the results are going to be a lot deadlier.
Tim Costello’s words, “Refugees have a right to come”, could be Australia’s epitaph in the near future.
“Mr Costello said that “refugees have a right to come and calling them illegals isn’t right. They are irregulars.””
Uh, no, “irregulars” is another word for “guerrilla fighters.”
“Mr Costello said that ‘refugees have a right to come and calling them illegals isn’t right. They are irregulars.’”
Oh what fun coming up with new names for the illegal alien invaders must be, for all the Reds of the West. You know what, why should they have all the joy? Here I will give 10 wonderfully delightful euphemisms for the ghastly marauding hordes of the Third World, and hope that others will join in with me, on the giddy high jinks too:
1.) The Differentially Migratory,
2.) The Rewardingly Transitional,
3.) The Miscalculated Enrichments,
4.) The Transcendentally Employable,
5.) The Cosmically Deserving,
6.) The Nomadically Misunderstood,
7.) The Unappreciated Transplants,
8.) The Culturally Relocated,
9.) The Exceptionally Required,
10.) And The Newly Neglected.
As always, God help us all!
We see this same dynamic happening over and over again. Standing up against the immigration deluge are a couple of politicians facing a barrage from special interest lobbyists. This happens in Canada all the time. People wanting tight borders and immigration restriction are either not represented by their own lobbyists and spokesmen or the newspapers don’t see fit to interview them.
It is not accurate to compare the smuggling of Jewish refugees from Germany into neutral countries during WWII with the mass migrations of today. First of all, those Jewish refugees did not, with the exception of Palestine, alter the demographics of their new countries in any appreciable manner. Secondly, those Jews were mostly highly educated, completely Westernized and of high I.Q. In contrast, most invaders of today lack education, are of foreign culture and are on the wrong side of the bell curve for I.Q.
“Refugees have a right to come”. How many? Millions? Hundreds of millions? Costello should migrate to hell.
In Australia, they’re not “illegals;” they’re “irregulars.”
LOL. In America, somebody “irregular” is plugged up.
Most Australians are up-in-arms about the number of ‘asylum-seekers’ arriving in our waters. Numbers are very small by world standards, but people are concerned that it will eventually increase to millions as has happened in Europe and the UK. The latest are Tamils trying to blackmail us by going on a hunger strike.
PM Rudd is responding to community concerns (he is a popularist and realises this issue will lose him votes in the next federal election). He paid Indonesia (with our tax dollars) to accept the last boatload of illegals.
A lot of Australians are angry that there are so many young Afghan males fleeing here while our soldiers are fighting the Taliban - something they should be doing for themselves instead of running away.
As for Tamils - they can always go to India, where they have their own state, Australia should not be in the business of harbouring the losers of civil wars. Of course we all know why Australia is targeted, Rudd changed our border control laws, making us a soft target.
‘Mr Costello said: “When we talk about smugglers, many of us think about The Sound of Music [in which the von Trapp family was smuggled out of occupied Austria] and Schindler and a whole heap of people who were smugglers.”’
Idiot! Costello was Treasurer in the Howard government. I can assure you, nobody is thinking about The Sound of Music. All we see is criminals making big bucks by using leaky boats to transport so called ‘refugees’ into Australia.
Uhoh - sorry, PETER Costello was Howard’s Treasurer, TIM Costello is his bleeding heart brother.
No one has a right to enter a country not his own. Always cock your pistol when someone starts talking about rights. In these days, they are very likely out to rob you.
Just to correct the post from Soprano Fan
Most Australians know they cannot turn back the tide of mass immigration. There just is not enough white aussies to hold majority. If the allow the boats to come in at all they will turn into America. Once a predominately white civilized country, now due to immigration, has grown a violent, uncivilized, 3rd world streak. Aussy look to the states, this will happen to you.
This is NOT a put-down of Jews or anti-semitic!!!
I beg to differ with a couple of posters here…There are many Jewish refugees that should never had been allowed in the USA…seems their descendants like Jacob Javits, Emanuel Cellar (1965 NON-white Immigration Act) just to mention a few and many others were not a blessing to this country. How about Rahm Emmanuel, Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, David Axelrod, just to name a few. Just because they were Jews doesn’t mean they were/are a blessing to America and Europe. Just the opposite.
NON-white immigration was the brainchild of Jews in America and Europe because they felt it would take the heat off themselves to have such a diverse culture and peoples in the lands where they live. Now it has come to the point that it is biting them in the rear end and they will also become the victims of their misguided plan. They will become the oppressed just as Whites are in their own lands. Do they honestly believe that the Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks and other nonwhites they helped bring here will spare them their wrath when the time comes?
The Jews had also better wake up ( I sure hope they do) and reverse what they helped to create hoping it would take attention away from themselves. It backfired. Keeping silent about their own role in this fiasco is detrimental to themselves and to us. Hope the regular Jews out there wake up to what part their own “elites” played in this travesty and save themselves and us. The truth never hurts, it informs.
“Mr Costello said that “refugees have a right to come and calling them illegals isn’t right. They are irregulars.”
Does that mean those that carry an illegally gotten and smuggled gun can claim it is not illegal but irregular?
How about the “unconventionally registered”?
Illegal is illegal!!!
Grow a backbone, mates!!!
To John:
Thanks for correcting me on the country of origin, regarding the immigrants flocking to Australia. Admittedly, I saw “Indonesia”, and I made an erroneous conclusion.
To John PM:
Your ‘Top Ten” list of what to call immigrants is absolute genius (Post #4). As a mattter of fact, Madonna can appear on the Letterman show, clad in a bra and thong, and read the Top Ten list on his program. She’s always loved immigrants, and refugees.
I wish that I could dispute #13 Anonymous’ statement, but it’s true. With our (the USA’s) current national government/regime, it only promises to get much worse before it gets better.
“NON-white immigration was the brainchild of Jews in America and Europe because they felt it would take the heat off themselves to have such a diverse culture and peoples in the lands where they live”
I have to say plenty of Christians, such as the Catholic church, Lutherans and others, have also played a huge role.
