Pacific Solution | The Monthly

Comment: The Australian Solution

By Waleed Aly

There was a Pacific Solution, a Malaysia Solution and, fleetingly, until someone thought to ask the Timorese, an East Timor Solution. But what exactly is the problem? I’m not asking rhetorically. It’s a serious question, perhaps the most serious question in the entire debate surrounding asylum seekers arriving by boat, and yet it is barely asked. The axioms of the public conversation simp

Comment: Ten Years After Tampa

By Peter Mares

John Howard’s stand on the Tampa is generally seen in retrospect as a political masterstroke that stopped the boats and helped him to secure the 2001 federal election. But to leaf through newspaper clippings from those intense days of late August and early September 2001 is to be reminded that his government took a high-stakes gamble and came close to losing. “Refugee Deal a Shambles” w

Asylum Seekers

Comment

By Robert Manne

The first boatpeople were South Vietnamese fleeing from the communist victory of 1975. Between 1976 and 1982, 2000 reached our shores. In order to stem the flow, the Fraser government accepted more than 50,000 Vietnamese from the archipelago of refugee camps in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Australians were easily panicked by the spontaneous arrival of a small number of boats. They were comfortable and relaxed about

Christmas Island

The Indian Ocean Solution

By David Marr

The Jaffaris are Hazaras from Afghanistan, a people long persecuted as Shia Muslims in a country overwhelmingly Sunni. Sharif was still a boy when he fled the country to grow up in the large Hazara community in Iran. At some point, he moved to Pakistan and raised a family in Quetta. But as inter-faith violence intensified in Pakistan over the last year, the

Faith in Politics

By Kevin Rudd

OCTOBER 2006: Above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey are arrayed ten great statues of the martyrs of the Church. Not Peter, Stephen, James or the familiar names of the saints sacrificed during the great Roman persecution before Constantine's convers

Comment

By David Corlett

In 2001, at the height of the refugee debate, the Edmund Rice Centre (ERC), a Sydney-based social-justice organisation funded by the Catholic Church, produced a pamphlet called ‘Debunking the Myths About Asylum Seekers’. The pamphlet challenged some of the