Morrison resorts to bullying tactics and furphies to sell cruel bill

Scott Morrison is sounding increasingly desperate and petulant in his attempts to push through his cruel migration bill.

He continues to use bullying tactics to get cross-bench Senators to support his plans, by claiming that it’s the only way the 30,000 asylum seekers currently in Australia will have their refugee applications resolved.

ASRC Director of Advocacy Serina McDuff today said this was a complete furphy for a number of reasons:

• In the past year, he could have finalised a significant number of the 30,000 people’s refugee claims, rather than wasting his efforts trying to prevent them settling in the community.
• He claims that denying them permanent protection will act as a deterrent to other asylum seekers. This is completely disingenuous. Anyone arriving by boat after 19 July 2013 won’t be settled in Australia – yet the 30,000 people affected by this Bill arrived before this date. Denying them permanent protection is not about deterrence – it’s about punishment and political expedience.
• World conflicts are becoming more and more protracted meaning more and more refugees need permanent protection – NOT the mentally destabilising limbo of temporary protection. It’s like throwing someone a lifeline but refusing to reel them in. “Scott Morrison has created a situation of uncertainty and limbo for thousands of people in our community who deserve protection, not punishment,” Ms McDuff said.

“Now he wants us to believe that only he can fix the mess, so long as everyone gets out of his way. But his solution will only cause more harm.

“He accuses others of using asylum seekers as ‘collateral damage’, yet he is the one playing God with people’s lives.

“He is trying to sledgehammer the bedrock of our current strong statutory refugee determination framework – which, for many years, has successfully identified who is and isn’t a refugee – and replace it with legal quicksand, where decisions about people’s refugee claims will be arbitrary and random.

“Morrison’s Bill will undermine the integrity of our current robust system and replace it with a cursory decision-making process that will see mistakes made and people in need of protection sent back to harm.

“The courts will be flooded with appeals because his proposed system is so legally flimsy.

“Scott Morrison is only interested in giving himself more power. He must stop bullying the Senate and undermining the High Court for his own political ends and get on with his job of processing refugee applications” said Ms McDuff.