Mike at Taree

Would you demand the French Navy come and rescue you?

Look, not being heartless - it's a tragedy that people- especially children have drowned, a terrible end to a presumably terrible few weeks and months of their lives. And no these are not semi humans or anything, they are feeling and loving people just like us but with different cultural upbringings.

However the elephant in the room that doesn't seem to get discussed in the media is that they drowned 50m offshore from Indonesia so why phone Australia for assistance?

So by extension if my boat was foundering off Southport Qld and I had announced the fact that my fifty passengers and I were on the way to New Caledonia for a better life, wouldn't it be strange to find the French media hand wringing and beating themselves up because they didn't immediately dispatch planes and ships to rescue us from the Gold Coast?

Discuss.

commonwealth

No I will call the French Embassy in London.

That's what they did, they phoned the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. WTF?

Mike at Taree

I'd guess the poor buggers had been informed by the smugglers that they would be welcome in Australia, and that their Housing Commission Unit, mobile phone and big screen TV were already booked and that the Australian Navy would make every effort to ensure their safe passage. All they had do do was ring the Embassy who would be delighted to take their call.

Apparently the skipper fled the scene.

eddie007

I'd shout
Bernie and hope he wasn't saving small creatures from the grim reaper

duh!

Bermudashorts

Do you know, I thought exactly the same thing myself this morning. I even wondered why the coverage I read, whilst vaguely mentioning that they were in Indonesian waters, did not really make a point of it.

eddie007

So the Australian navy invades Indonesian territory to perform a daring rescue mission....

Sound like a plot for a film to me.

commonwealth

AFAIK the AUS and INA govts have an arrangement that allows AUS navy/coast guard to enter INA territory, to rescue them. But AUS navy must turn over these people to INA authorities and not bring them to AUS land/facility.

eddie007

So where is the problem?????????

Australian navy/coastguard gets useful exercise... Boat people get rescued.. Sometimes... And delivered to indonesia for processing......

brissybee

These poor people should have been rescued by anyone who could help them.

I often contemplate how desperate boat people are to put their children in these rickety old boats to cross the ocean.

And while we're on the topic of boat people... I think it's bloody scary that the government is now trying to censor information about these goings on.

sonlymewalter

When these people get on these boats they know they are taking a risk - they pay to obtain a place and people smugglers keep taking the money knowing full well if the boat goes down, it's someone else's problem.

Aus cannot afford to just keep letting them in and doesn't have the money to keep letting it happen. And Indonesia has had a gut full too.

Reality is, these people come by boat, take a risk and often lose their lives. And that's their choice. That's the constant reality.

The harsh reality is Aus can't save the people who live in all the shitty places of the world and if they take a gamble to pay people smugglers and get on a rickety boat, and the boat sinks eventually people might start to learn it's not the best way. Maybe when illegal immigrants see that they are taking a gamble and there's no one to save them, they'll stop taking this gamble, especially with their kids lives

eddie007

..........

eddie007

Jews "illegally" crossing borders to escape Nazi occupation in Europe were taking massive risks too... Often with children in tow...

Perhaps if resistance workers and various random humanitarians had stopped helping them they would have seen sense and stayed where they were eh?

In these boats WILL be people escaping regiemes which promise imprisonment, torture and perhaps at best death to them should they return "home"....

Kapri

I agree. No one is saying they should then be brought to Australia. They could be rescued and sent back to Indonesia.
They are human beings. Let's not forget that.

sonlymewalter

What happened during WW2 with regards to jews and Nazi occupation is not even the same league - for so many reasons.

Whilst no one wants to see anyone suffer in the world at the end of the day we cannot solve the worlds problems by bringing in anyone and everyone in every country who is being persecuted by regimes within their own country.

And what about those who bypass other safe countries to get here?

Emotion is a powerful battering ram but the reality is Australia only has so much money and so much resource.

The west cannot solve the worlds problem regimes.

History tells us that.

eddie007

No, but a civilized society has a moral and humanitarian responsibility to those who, for Quasimodo religious or political reasons face Persecution, torture imprisonment and death at the hands of their so called governments....