Loose Lips and Pollyanna

It's a Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day

Spare a thought for lil' old New Zealand.  It has been afflicted with a novice for a Prime Minister.  Her loose lips launches ships.  Australia has confirmed it has intercepted three "refugee" boats, bound for New Zealand.  Our novice PM was warned that if she postured as the leader of a country which was going to welcome illegitimate migrants the dirty business of people smuggling would explode.  

To be clear, we believe policies of managed immigration and managed refugee intake are both ethically and economically sound in principle.  We strongly support New Zealand's managed refugee policies, where some of the wretched of the earth are flown to this country to enter our refugee programme.  Once here they begin a reasonably lengthy period of education, assimilation, and induction.  Community volunteer groups put their hands up to sponsor refugee families and take responsibility to assist the task of integration in to a new life.

Many of the refugees come from war zones; their extended families have been decimated; they are in a long lasting state of shock.  They come knowing no-one, unable to speak our language, cut off, isolated, and desperate.

Loose Lips Launch Ships

Ardern's Moral Posturing Has Consequences

During the Second World War, in Britain the warning was, "Loose Lips Sink Ships".  As the U-boats hunted for convoys of merchant vessels, sinking hundreds as they made their way to Britain carrying vital supplies, people were made conscious of the need for secrecy.  Given German intelligence operatives were active on radio listening posts, information often deemed to be harmless might have been sufficient for security leaks, leading to focused U-boat efforts on expected convoys. 

Now circumstances have changed.  We need to update the slogan from "Loose Lips Sink Ships" to "Loose Lips Launch Ships".  Several years ago Australian waters were invaded by boats launched out of Indonesia, carrying "refugees".  The Labour government of the day welcomed them into Australia.  At its height, one boat a week was arriving on Australian shores.  Most of these "boat people" were not genuine refugees: they were economic migrants who had paid money for passage to Australia.  They arrived, as the scam requires, with all their documentation mysteriously missing.  No passports, no documents proving provenance.  No UN refugee certification.  Nothing. 

Then Labour lost an election, and the Liberal administration stopped the boats virtually overnight.  They simply deployed the Australian navy to detect the ships and turn them back to Indonesia.  They continue to patrol in this fashion, and they continue to turn boats back.

But those in the business of people-running on the seas are smart, well-informed, cunning, and business savvy.

Deadly Internationalism

Calling Turtle Bay . . . Are You Receiving?

European nations have no sovereignty left.  It's substantially been transferred to the European Union.  And the European Union, for its part, has substantially transferred it to the UN.

The following paragraph in the Guardian about the proposed actions and policy with respect to the wave of people "migrating" to Europe via smugglers plying their evil trade of human trafficking says it all:

The EU is seeking UN approval to take military action in the Mediterranean against people smugglers including the destruction of boats used by gangs operating out of Libya. France and the UK are due to formally propose the use of military action to the UN security council, although the UN’s secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has already warned against such a move. [Guardian]

Anyone care to speculate about how long it will take the UN to consider the matter and reach a decision?  Anyone care to put a number on how many more lives of desperate, duped innocents will be lost in the Med over this deadly, misconceived  monstrosity? 

Europe Frozen by Faux Guilt and Misdirected Pity

Killing Innocents

People smugglers are killers.  Pure and simple.  Europe remains frozen in the headlights as people smugglers kill thousands whilst crossing the Mediterranean Sea.  European nations are "conflicted".  They are so imprisoned in a faux humanitarian ideology that they indirectly cause the deaths of innocent people--men, women, and children.

Australia faced the same crisis.  Under the previous Labour administration, the "boat people" from Indonesia, Vietnam, and other countries were carried relentlessly in rickety boats to Australia, duped and gulled by people smugglers, trading in human desperation.  As soon as Labour was tossed out, the Abbott government stopped the traffickers overnight.  They turned the boats back.  The foul trade has stopped.

By allowing the survivors into Europe as refugees, European authorities are providing every incentive for the smugglers to continue their nefarious trade.  But Tony Abbott has provided a voice of sanity amidst the crisis: