By CASEY NEILL
A SPRINGVALE refugee support group slammed the Federal Government’s response to boat arrivals as an attack on asylum seekers and likened Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to dictator Mussolini.
On 19 July, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “as of today asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia”.
He signed a new arrangement with Papua New Guinea (PNG) that will see unauthorised arrivals sent there for assessment and resettlement.
“Our country has had enough of people smugglers exploiting asylum seekers and seeing them drown on the high seas,” Mr Rudd said.
“The new arrangements will allow Australia to help more people who are genuinely in need and help prevent people smugglers from abusing our system.”
But Friends of Refugees spokesman Trevor Grant said the plan breached international law.
“We are a first world country with the resources to look after refugees, as we promised by signing the Refugee Convention,” he said.
“But we are choosing to send them to a third world country that struggles to look after its own people – a country where 50 per cent of people live on under $2 a day and 61 per cent have no access to clean water.”
Friends of Refugees is based at Springvale Uniting Church and officially launched in June. The group plans to lobby MPs and offer assistance to those in need.
“The attacks on people smugglers are really an attack on asylum seekers,” Mr Grant said.
On 25 July, the Opposition announced Operation Sovereign Borders, which a 3 Star commander from the Defence Force would lead.
“There is a national emergency on our borders,” Mr Abbott said.
He said a Coalition Government would create a joint agency taskforce, turn back the boats where safe to do so, increase capacity at offshore processing centres and deploy extra vessels for passenger transfers.
“The scale of this problem requires the discipline and focus of a targeted military operation,” Mr Abbott said.
But Mr Grant said “the use of the language of war and the military is designed to frighten people into believing that somehow this country is being invaded”.
“This is a shameful lie spread by a calculating political leader who has borrowed straight from the playbook of Benito Mussolini, who was the first leader to employ the political tactic that if you repeated a lie often enough, it will eventually become a truth in the minds of the people.”
