Tragedies happen when you weaken border laws so recklessly that poor people figure $20,000 and the danger of a short boat trip is worth the chance to live in a rich welfare state. That’s why we’ve gone from no deaths at sea in the six years before Labor changed the laws to 600 since.
The Greens call Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s dramatic new boat people policy “illegal and immoral”.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard says it’s “reckless and dangerous”.
And I don’t know which is worse – their blindness or their hypocrisy in damning Abbott’s promise to order the navy to turn back boats of asylum seekers from Indonesia.
The hypocrisy is, of course, the most obvious. Even the most shut-eyed critic should now know what’s truly “dangerous” are our laws.
Since Labor softened our boat people laws in 2008, we’ve had some 600 boat people lured to their deaths at sea. In December, at least 95 drowned off the coast of Java.
And what did the Greens – now attacking Abbott as “immoral” for putting “at risk the lives of … asylum seekers” – say so airily of those December drownings?
“Tragedies happen,” sniffed Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
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