Editor of The Daily Examiner David Moase on the subject of asylum seekers, 20 February 2014:
It is time for Australia to grow up, pull on its big boy pants and face up to the real issues involved in dealing with asylum seekers.
No longer can the government and the general population hope the problem will go away if we put people wanting refuge out of sight and out of mind.
The outlaw behaviour on Manus Island this week proves that.
Detainees rioting, locals battering detainees, security staff scurrying, local police doing God knows what - the reports, which are made difficult to verify by the Federal Government's secretive attitude to this issue, are both farcical and tragic.
One man has been killed and there is talk another had his throat slit. How exactly? Will we ever know the truth?
And then the private details of 10,000 asylum seekers published online.
For me and many others this isn't the last straw - the last straw was bales and bales ago.
For others, I fear, the last straw is still a seed waiting to be planted.
Offshore detention, as practised by Labor and Coalition governments, is a shabby attempt at avoiding real solutions to an admittedly difficult problem.
Difficult, but not unsolvable.
Locking asylum seekers away will never succeed in keeping them safe - and it was never really intended to do that anyway - or deal with a problem that occurs around the world.
The solution won't be found until governments are prepared to face reality and lead the public rather than reacting to scaremongering.
1 comment:
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Mr David Moase has written a very, very good Editorial.
And I have complimented him, in his own newspaper, for it.
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