Opinion
As I wrote yesterday, the Albanese government is a parliament of headless chickens. His entire term to date has not just been about lighting fires of his own (the Brittany Higgins affair, the Voice referendum), but running around, clucking and squawking, as spot fires erupt all around him.
The latest smouldering conflagration to erupt into fresh flames is illegal boat arrivals. And, once again, Albanese hasn’t the first clue what to do about it. In fact, in thrall to his own feral left factions and the loony Greens, he clearly doesn’t want to do anything about it.
Anthony Albanese has no contingency plan to use the mothballed Christmas Island immigration detention centre as a back-up offshore option to Nauru, amid warnings of ongoing aerial surveillance cuts and more asylum seeker boats arriving off Western Australia.
Instead, he’s kidding himself that offering money to illegals won’t encourage more boats.
The Australian can reveal the Albanese government will provide dozens of asylum seekers on Nauru the option of accessing financial resettlement packages if they return home or to a third country.
Under Coalition governments, asylum seekers were offered cash incentives known as “return or settlement packages” ranging from $3000 to $20,000.
Of course, Albanese won’t come straight out and say that.
Government sources on Tuesday rejected the Coalition’s use of “cash incentives” but confirmed they maintained humanitarian assistance via settlement packages for asylum seekers who move out of the system into third countries or home.
And in other news, a spade is now a manual rectangular earth-moving implement.
But the “cash incentives” amount, really, to subsidising people smugglers. The illegals pay the smugglers, then get their fare back from the Australian taxpayer. Does this strike anyone as remotely sane? Still, it is cheaper than putting the grifting bastards up in motels on tropical islands — which they burn down anyway.
I’ve a much cheaper proposition: a torpedo, delivered amidships.
Israr Abbasi, from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency people smuggling unit, said asylum seeker movements had dried-up in the wake of the deaths last June of more than 300 Pakistani nationals in a boat sinking off the coast of Greece.
Incentives work.
Australian Border Force last week confirmed eight of 23 illegal maritime arrivals sent to Nauru in September and November last year were no longer on the island. Before 39 asylum seekers arrived in Nauru over the weekend, after being found by locals on Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, only 15 IMAs were housed in the refugee-processing centre.
Since September, 62 asylum seekers – mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi men – have been sent to Nauru by ABF officials, including 51 who made landfall after being dropped-off by Indonesian-linked people smugglers in remote northern WA.
And this is just the beginning. They are literally testing the waters.
After all, remember Kevin Rudd and odious boat-chaser Julian Burnside sneering that the first few boats under Labor’s watch in 2007 were nothing to worry about. Three years later, boats were arriving twice daily, and detention centres were crammed to bursting.
And now, no one’s even watching our borders apart from a handful of remote Aboriginal Australian residents.
ABF figures show a 20.7 per cent decrease in aerial flying hours and a 12.2 per cent fall in maritime patrol days in 2022-23, compared with aerial and maritime surveillance hours logged in 2020-21.
Indigenous people in local Beagle Bay communities have also expressed concerns about biohazard risks from food and other materials left behind by 39 asylum seekers near the Pender Bay camp. They told The Australian that ABF officials had not been seen visiting the landing or camp sites.
So, what’s Albo going to do about it all? Refuse to even talk about it.
As Peter Dutton ramped-up attacks over border security funding ahead of the March 2 Dunkley by-election, Anthony Albanese said “we don’t talk about operational matters”.
The Australian
This is the same gambit “Airbus Albo” tried to put on, during his near-constant overseas jaunts: refusing to answer questions on domestic affairs while overseas. No one bought it then, they’re not buying it now.
And as the boats keep coming, Albo’s ship will just keep sinking.