Labor politicians see Gillard and ALP diminished by Malaysian refugee solution

MEDIA RELEASE
By the Human Rights Alliance
8/5/11

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Labor Parliamentarians describe that Gillard and the ALP will be diminished because of their cowardice towards a Malaysian Solution. Some are utterly embarrassed and distressed at the new low by the ALP.

The Human Rights Alliance, through Gerry Georgatos, are fully aware that some ALP Parliamentarians believe that the Julia Gillard Government has made a horrific mistake, and one tantamount to cowardice, in moving towards a piecemeal Howard/Ruddock-like Malaysian Solution.

In 2004 30% of the ALP voted against Mandatory Detention of Asylum Seekers, and this 30% voted to end Mandatory Detention, and therefore many within the ALP would be naturally frustrated, appalled and increasingly disgusted by their party's leadership.

ALP Parliamentarians have described to me that they are working behind the scenes, however with their backs against the wall, for an end to Mandatory Detention or for more propriety driven policies in relation to our Asylum Seekers. Some of these ALP Parliamentarians, some of whom were part of Labor for Refugees, are disgusted. One Parliamentarian has described to me that the Gillard/Swan led ALP has made a horrific mistake in listening to focus groups on what the constituents of Australia are perceiving about our Asylum Seekers. This parliamentarian believes that rather than keeping voters happy with ultra conservative policies that instead, ironically, the ALP will be crushed at the next election because more progressive and sympathetic voters will be lost to the Greens and other, conservative and the less informed, voters will be lost to the Liberals who they perceive have more consistent policies. - Gerry Georgatos

An ALP Parliamentarian believes that the ALP has lost its conscience and is prostituting itself and will do anything to stay in power. She believes that the ALP should be leading the way with a public debate, with dissemination, educating Australia and taking on the challenges of incumbent Liberal Party views. She believes that Australians if educated by strong and honest ALP leaders that they would understand and sympathesize.

The Malaysian Solution will solve nothing and will make matters worse for 800 people who will be discriminated against in terms of the fact that they will only make up 10% of Asylum Seekers who will come each year by boat to Australia because of the vile crises and persecution in their homelands.

The UNHCR should reject what Australia is trying to do in Malaysia.

East Timor rejected Australia's infamous proposition to them which in effect discriminates and insults our global neighbours. The Malaysian Solution is discriminatory of our South East Asian neighbours, an insult to the global community.

The ALP Parliamentarian said to me that Australia will further damage its already poor standing with the United Nations and the UNHCR and that we will increasingly become the pariah of South East Asia, and that we cannot hold up our heads to China and Burma in relation to human rights. She is very concerned at the lack of the ALP's moral compass and however she believes that the ALP is self destructing and that some ALP politicians will finally stand up and do a 'Petro Georgiou'. She also made comparisons to Julia Gillard's collapse of the Australian Union of Students in 1983 and to what she sees the current malaise and implosion of the Labor Party. The AUS collapsed in as much similar ways with ugly wills of power.

I hope in that she is correct and that in for instance the Louise Pratts and Anthony Albaneses, amongst others, begin to stand up to their ALP for the sake of human dignity, human worth, human lives.

People are dying in the new phenomena of Detention Centre Deaths in Custody, six in the last eight months, and in Immigration Deaths in Custody, 29 since 2000 as compared to one death in Immigration Custody from 1992 to 1999. We also have inside information from a Serco employee at Christmas Island that in the last month there were more than two hundred incidents of self harm and suicide attempts. Australia will not be absolved of human rights abuses, self harm incidents, suicide attempts and deaths from the 800 (10% of all estimated Asylum Seekers to Australia by boat) transported to Malaysia. - Gerry Georgatos, PhD Law researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody, Convener of the Human Rights Alliance.

In June of last year I briefly spoke to then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and I presented him with a letter about the ALP's poor language and nescient policies to our Asylum Seekers which he placed in his shirt pocket, promised to read, did read, and in the remaining couple of weeks leading up to his removal from the Prime Minister's role he argued that the Labor Party should not 'lurch to the "right" in regards to our Asylum Seekers. What is his position? Has he done another about-face?

THE HUMAN RIGHTS ALLIANCE

Working towards a Better Future

We acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians whose ancestral lands we are now part of. We acknowledge and remember the horrific atrocities inflicted upon them. This is and will forever be their land.

CONTACT - Gerry Georgatos - 0430 657 309