The Government's latest foray into the asylum seeker issue is beyond comprehension and I would suggest, contemptible. Malaysia's record on the treatment of refugees is so deplorable we should never agree to send people into what can only be described as a mire of inhumanity and hopelessness.

 

We send 800 people to a country that Labor acknowledges is not a signatory to the United Nation’s protocol on Refugees and in exchange they send us 4000 back. I just cannot fathom how they could be so stupid as to send a policy like that out into the public arena. Perhaps they planned for a home goal or maybe there is a Coalition maliciously proposing loopy ideas.

 

It is as if they want to be taken out of their misery and are pleading to have the reins of government taken from them. If it's right to send these people to a country that is not a signatory to the UN protocol then why is Nauru off the table? It would be a far better option.

 

We would control the treatment of these refugees and have the final say on their processing. We know that the Nauru government would welcome a reopening of the purpose-built centre. The only possible reason for the government not considering it is that the piqued Howard Government did it but it worked.    

 

Let us just have a brief look at what Malaysia offers as a venue for the 800 we plan to send there. The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said in a 2009 World Refugee Survey “Malaysian immigration officials continued to sell deportees to gangs that operate along the Malaysia-Thailand border. The gang members extort bribes from the deportees in exchange for smuggling them back to Malaysia and sell those who cannot pay into slavery. Men frequently end up on Thai fishing boats, women in brothels and children with gangs who exploit child beggars”.

 

Malaysia also, of course, believes in caning where offences involve striking the body that inflicts a wound to the bone. Amnesty International now informs us that in Malaysia, caning of convicts and asylum-seekers has reached “epidemic proportions”.

 

Disease in camps in Malaysia is commonly caused by insufficient sanitation, poor quality food and irregular access to clean water.

 

In 2002, the Malaysian parliament made certain immigration offences punishable by caning, notably illegal entry to the country. Australia has just publically announced a deal which says that we will take 4000 refugees from Malaysia and send 800 there.  It stands to reason that we have given implicit consent by our actions of their conduct.

 

Since we are now a part of Malaysian immigration policy, it might be interesting to note that Amnesty has delivered evidence from Nian Vung, a Burmese refugee, who described his trial “There were 50 of us in court. They tried us in groups of five at once. It lasted half an hour.”

 

Nian Vung was caned.

 

What a proud moment this is for Australia, what an honourable arrangement your partially democratically elected government has orchestrated. We can all walk with our heads high around Civic and look up at the noble building on the hill across the other side of the lake.

 

Say what you like about the Howard government policies on refugees but Papua New Guinea and Nauru did not participate in these barbaric acts which the current Labour government now proposes.

 

People are being sent to a county where they were denied an individual trial and subsequently caned after a half an hour investigation.

 

The Howard policies had their detractors, I do not deny that. There were no children in detention by the end of the Howard government because there were no boats arriving. There were no buildings being burnt down under the Howard Government because there was barely anyone there to light the matches. There were no people losing their lives on a desperate boat journey because no one was making the journey in the first place.

 

But still we were taking 13,000 refugees just as we are now.

 

Perhaps people won't consider these genuine concerns but merely a rant from a crazy, old boy from the country. This is not about precluding granting asylum to genuine refugees. It is about stopping people from paying smugglers thousands of dollars for a dangerous boat journey in which probably 200 people have been killed over the past year.

 

Sending people to a place where the possibility of their treatment would be deemed to be completely barbaric.