Gee, what a surprise: a Labor government gets in and the illegal boat arrivals start up again. Who couldn’t have seen this coming? The only surprise is that it’s seemed to take so long — but blame that on a combination of government-media secrecy and the simple realities of weather at sea.
Because the reality is that, no sooner had Labor seized government with the second-lowest vote on record, the boats were hitting the waters.
An asylum boat carrying six Indian men and four Indonesian crew was intercepted in Australian territorial waters at Ashmore Reef. Those aboard were returned to Indonesia.
The attempt followed another by 13 Iraqis, who were sent back to Indonesia in December after being detected at Ashmore Reef, and the return of 45 Sri Lankans after a people-smuggling boat was intercepted in August.
The only reason there haven’t been more to date is because it’s monsoon season.
Did anyone seriously expect anything different, after Anthony Albanese gutlessly caved to Labor’s feral pro-illegals bloc? After he gormlessly posed for selfies with country-shopping ex-Tamil Tigers and their anchor babies, whom he’d rushed to grant permanent residency, despite their losing every single court case and costing Australian taxpayers millions with their false claims to refugee status?
Compounding the storm of Labor idiocy was the government’s “accidental” lapse in renewing anti-people-smuggling measures, failing to legally redesignate Nauru as a regional processing centre when its status lapsed in October.
Now, Labor is putting a whole new bowl of sugar out for the illegals and the criminals who service their country-shopping endeavours.
The Albanese government is bracing for a potential surge in asylum-seeker boats as it fulfils its election pledge to end the use of Temporary Protection Visas, paving the way for about 19,000 refugees who arrived by sea to stay permanently in Australia.
Anyone who persists in deluding themselves as to exactly how this will play out need only cast their minds back to the Kevin Rudd years. The hollow, two-faced virtue-signalling was exactly the same. Rushing to dismantle the Howard government measures which had stopped the people-smuggling trade in its tracks, Labor smirked at predictions of disaster to come.
And disaster duly came.
When John Howard left office, there was precisely one illegal in detention. When Labor was finally kicked out, there were tens of thousands, and boats arriving daily.
Is anyone really so naive as to believe it isn’t about to start all over again?
TPV holders will be offered new Resolution of Status visas that will come with social security rights, higher education support and access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, along with ongoing Medicare cover and mental health support.
The Australian
So, a lifetime of guaranteed, gold-plated welfare? Three guesses about what’s going to happen.
It’s hard to work out who is the most dangerously stupid: the Labor flakes who keep making the same mistakes and expecting different results, or the one-in-three Australians who were mug enough to vote the clowns back in.