By Jenny Haines
In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald’s National Times section on December 22, Robert Manne, stated his opinion that the left got it wrong on boat people.
Manne notes the current stalemate between the political parties in parliament and does not resile from his opposition to John Howard’s Pacific Solution cruelties, but he criticises the left for not recognising the efficiency of the Pacific Solution in reducing the numbers of refugees arriving by boat.
New Immigration Minister Chris Evans makes a good start
Bob Gould
It’s not exactly a socialist revolution, but in an effective if piecemeal way the Rudd Labor government is wrapping some of the nastiest remnants of the Howard government’s demagogic, chauvinist refugee policy.
Jenny Haines
The social justice committees of the Catholic churches, St Brigid’s Marrickville and St Mary’s Erskineville, organised a forum on September 9, with the billed speakers, Julian Burnside QC and Dr Louise Newman, both drawcards because of their forthright campaigning on refugees issues. As Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian intellectual, critic of the Mubarak Government and long term campaigner for democracy in Egypt, said recently, “the role of the intellectual is to speak the truth to power”. Burnside and Newman more than fufill that role.
Jenny Haines
Sydney University law school assembly hall was packed to standing room only for this forum on September 6, 2005. The speakers put various perspectives on comments David Marr.
Green Left Weekly discussion list, April 21, 2005
Norm Dixon is being a bit cute. He well knows, or should well know, that I and a number of associates have been vigorously engaged in campaigning in the Labor Party against Laurie Ferguson’s views on asylum seekers, and for the program of Labor for Refugees.
Bob Gould
The awesome scale of the natural disaster around the Indian Ocean rim has moved the world, including Australia, deeply. Australian doctors and nurses, military personnel and Federal Police have volunteered in large numbers, and are doing courageous and dangerous work in immediate disaster relief with the full support of other Australians, who are responding generously to the relief funds. The enormous proportion of the disaster is brought home to Australians by our increasing connections with the region. Many relatively recent migrants have relatives in the affected areas. Southern Thailand in particular is a favorite Australian tourist spot, which is why the Australian victims are largely concentrated there. The Australian Government has pledged an initial $60 million in immediate disaster relief, a good start.
Ozleft 