http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-...r-slow-to-act-on-asylum-seeker-boats-in-past/ The Prime Minister and his new Immigration Minister have conceded Labor has been too slow to act on asylum seeker boat arrivals in the past. Kevin Rudd dismantled the Howard government's so-called Pacific Solution when he came to first office. The Opposition says that decision is to blame for creating conditions for thousands of asylum seekers to try and reach Australia by boat. Mr Rudd in 2007, and honoured the commitment. "If we have made a mistake, let me just say this," he said. "It was in perhaps not being quick enough to respond to the new change in external circumstances with an outflow from Sri Lanka from a civil war in 2009-10." The Gillard government reintroduced offshore processing in Nauru and on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island in 2012. New Immigration Minister Tony Burke railed against offshore processing during the Howard era. In 2006 he said the last thing Australia should be doing was dumping desperate people in Nauru. In his first interview since taking on the immigration portfolio, Mr Burke has told Lateline his opposition to offshore processing at that time was wrong. "I had a view which was wrong, which was that you could choose settings, keep them in place and they would deal with all of the changes in international situations," he said. "The view that we should never do [offshore processing] turned out to be wrong." He says Labor should have changed its policy faster in response to unrest in nations like Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq. "When the situation changed in 2009, there is no doubt that the policies that we'd taken to the election and the views that I'd put for that point in time were no longer what Australia needed," Mr Burke said. "We missed the mark by not changing as quickly as we needed to when international situations changed. "If what Chris Bowen took to the Parliament with respect to Malaysia in 2010 and 2011 had been in front of us back then, then I suspect we would've been able to deal with these issues quite differently." Asylum processing resumes, Burke to focus on children in detention Meanwhile, Mr Burke has confirmed the Government has restarted processing asylum seeker claims after an 11-month hiatus. Labor put in place a no-advantage test for asylum seekers last August and stopped processing asylum claims. Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says because asylum seeker processing has been frozen there is now a massive backlog of claims. He says boats are continuing to arrive and the issue will push past this year's election. Mr Burke has also promised to make the detention of children a specific focus of his portfolio. Labor initially promised to remove all children from detention centres, but that has not happened. "What I also want to make sure of is I don't deal with it in a blanket way that creates a different problem of creating an incentive so the smuggling operations think 'what we need to do now is put unaccompanied minors on the boats'," Mr Burke said. "If I did that it would be fundamentally against the welfare of children." ============================================================================== Call me clinically cynical if you wish , but I do get the sneaking suspicion that this admission of failed policy (somewhat diluted by the Sri Lankan escape clause), may not have happened if we weren`t in election mode. I wonder if Cranky Kev will say sorry to the victims of this failed policy?
Keeping the emotion to one side. When he did dismantle the incumbent policy of the day, did he not feel he should of had a policy of his own ready to take its place ? I mean do you throw your old wheely bin out before you actually have a replacement ?
Unfortunately Slippery it is very hard to keep emotion to one side over this. The celebrity status determined Rudd's policy over this issue. He bolstered his ratings with this initially because many wanted the pretence of moral outrage over Howard's policy. Sure, the hard line of Howard did see death, but compared to previous efforts and later efforts, nobody can deny many people were saved from the few deaths. Not that I condone his policy because I do not. BUT he did stop the boats Rudd in his popularity contest brought the boats and the escalation of death is pure and simply due to that. That is one reason the ALP need to go, But far more pressure need to be put on the next government to actually address this issue properly, I have suggest one solution that while hard should benefit all. But as I am not the smartest man in the world (yeah, Yeah) I am sure there are many others out there that could achieve the goal with the same humanity. It is so hard to keep emotion out of this, when people continue to support this popularity game with people’s lives that are generally the most oppressed, without a home. All so they can pretend Australian’s have morals
He did have a policy, but it was to treat people "humanely" by abolishing temporary protection visas, closing down Naru and Manus island and processing people onshore, etc. He didn't have a policy to "stop the boats", because really there wasn't a need to stop them at that point.
Wonderful, that nice "humane policy", directly resulted in how many deaths? Sometimes touchy feely isn`t the right way to go. In this instance, feelgood "policy", proved to be a disaster in every aspect. Ziggy, you say "He didn't have a policy to "stop the boats", because really there wasn't a need to stop them at that point." There wasn`t a problem with the boats at that point, because the policies of the Howard Govt were actually working. Rudd reopened the flood gates, with his simplistic, populist policies. As with the home insulation program, which was over simplistic, and amateurishly managed. Dosen`t it ring alarm bells for you when the federal government takes on less responsibility for it`s own managed programs, than are rightly imposed on the smallest of registered builders? The mum and dad operations, that are run from home. Re Rudd`s Indonesian visit. Can we trust him not to cause problems with future negotiations on this issue with Indonesia, simply for his own selfish political purposes? The question isn`t, "would he stoop so low?". The question is, "could he get away with it?".
