In the leaders’ debate in Perth, Scott Morrison said: “I fashioned a policy to deal with [boat arrivals in Australia] and we fixed it.”
The ABC fact checked this claim by Scott Morrison. The ABC reported as follows.
“The Prime Minister has claimed previously that he is responsible for “fixing” the problem of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.
But when Fact Check examined a claim made by Mr Morrison back in 2014 that Operation Sovereign Borders had resulted in an 80 per cent reduction of boat arrivals in Australia, we found there was “more to the story”.
The big drop off in boat arrivals occurred when former prime minister Kevin Rudd announced a regional resettlement arrangement with PNG that prevented those asylum seekers arriving by boat from settling in Australia.” (See graph below’)
(By the time OSB commenced the surge in asylum seekers coming by boat had largely ended. With boat arrivals largely stopped people smugglers have found another way of getting asylum seekers into Australia…by air. With inadequate border checks by Peter Dutton’s department many people are being issued with visitor and student visas. On arrival in Australia they then make an application for refugees status. This is happening right now in record numbers. In 2014/15 ,8,587 asylum seekers came by air. By 2017/18 it had increased to 27,931 far more than the peak years for boat arrivals under Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard. This year the numbers will be even higher. Our borders have never been so insecure. John Menadue)
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
2 responses to “JOHN MENADUE. Scott Morrison claims again quite wrongly that he stopped the boats. (ABC News 30.4.2019)”
We mustn’t forget the complicity of the Greens in the defeat of the Malaysian solution. Abbott and Morrison only prevailed with Greens support.
And we mustn’t forget the Greens also supported Abbott in defeating Rudd’s carbon pricing policy, thus precipitating a decade of climate policy disaster.
So the Greens are directly responsible for both Manus Island and Nauru and also for the energy policy chaos we have today. This was a betrayal of the values of many of those who voted for them, and they cannot be trusted with our vote today.
The first is that by defeating the means to implement the Malaysian Arrangement, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison triggered the surge in boat arrivals from September 2011 onwards.
The second is that the decision by the Rudd government in July 2013 to refuse settlement in Australia for any persons arriving by boat after that date, resulted in a dramatic reduction in boat arrivals from 48 to 7. That was the game changer.
Third, when OSB commenced in December 2013, boat arrivals had almost stopped.
Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison did not stop the boats. What is clear is that they did not want Labor to stop the boats.