Upper Class Twit

Suburban Twit

I was hoping to get to the latest evidence of the Americans and their constitutional right to go forth and murder one another, but yesterday's Guantanamo-cum-Pacific Solution -- or a 2007 update of people trafficking -- by their government and ours still requires a few words.

Bruce from over at the Garage sent this as a comment on the above link:

In May 2002 the then Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Philip Ruddock said that a newspaper report which claimed a refugee exchange with the United States of America was wrong and that no special deal had been done for Australia to resettle people from Haiti and Cuba in return for the USA taking people from Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

As we wonder at the stupidity at the latest refugee deal with the USA, there is evidence of Ruddock's cold dead hands all over this. The brief report above illustrates that this new deal is not the first time that Bush and Howard talked of trafficking in human lives.

The question of the Christmas Island prison complex lurks in the background still unanswered. What is the future for the most expensive, highest security facility ever built in Australia (albeit an excised portion)? Who is destined to suffer there? Why do the Christmas Islanders not want the facility on their island? Does the Christmas Island complex play a role in the human trafficking deal? Why did the USA Homeland Security team fly in a chartered flight from Singapore in November 2006 to inspect the high security Christmas Island facility?

The new arrangements with the USA follows those with Indonesia and Malaysia - all secret deals between the Howard government and others which are a violation of international refugee protection obligations to not punish people, asylum-seekers, with the rationale of deterrent. (italics mine)

The thick plottens.

I was amused to hear a soundbite on the subject from Kevin Rudd yesterday. You could almost see him scratching his head. Later I heard the Minister for No Immigration, Kevin Andrews, hysterically responding. The two quotes go something like this:

Kevin Rudd: I'm struggling to see the logic in this…
Kevin Andrews: See? Labor is soft on border protection!

Links:
The immoral people trade undermines Australian values
Australia and US to swap refugees

PS: The twittish photo of John Howard (is there any other kind?) appeared in an article by Alex Millmow, How Howard walked the road to ruin. He talks about the Pm's stint as perhaps one of Australia's worst treasurers. Here are a couple of extracts:

The 1982-83 recession, over which Howard presided, was the worst since the Great Depression, according to former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane.

When Howard became treasurer, the budget deficit was $3.2 billion, inflation 8 per cent, the unemployment rate 6.3 per cent and the growth rate 1.6 per cent. When he surrendered the Treasury keys to Paul Keating in March 1983, the budget deficit was $4.3 billion, inflation was 11 per cent, unemployment was 10.2 per cent and growth was a negative 0.4 per cent. Not a beautiful set of numbers.

The black hole of the budget deficit forecast quickly grew to $9 billion when Hawke and Keating examined the books. The economy, moreover, was in deep freeze, though Howard never publicly admitted to a recession, unlike Keating.

-- Olney Garkle