As Anthony Albanese unpacks from yet another foreign jaunt since becoming PM just weeks ago, the country is rapidly falling apart around his ears. Lettuces are $11 a head, fuel is over $2/l, interest rates are spiking, and large parts of the eastern seaboard are facing blackouts just as temperatures are plunging below zero. Labor’s “plan to fix it all” has vanished in a puff of reality.
But there’s one issue where Labor is moving with astonishing speed.
Operation Sovereign Borders has intercepted a third asylum boat since election day, forcing the government to scramble together a plan to return the passengers home.
This is almost a rinse’n’repeat of the last Labor government: there was literally one person in immigration detention when the Howard government left office. By the time Labor were booted, boats were arriving daily and tens of thousands of illegal arrivals were crammed into detention.
But even Rudd and Gillard took at least six months to re-start the boats. Albo’s got the people-smuggling trade revving up almost instantly.
News of the latest interception close to the Australian territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands spread among residents on Monday as the Albanese government reconfirmed its commitment to the principles of Operation Sovereign Borders.
A spokesman for the Australian Border Force said on Monday no person who arrived in Australia on an asylum vessel would be allowed to live in Australia. “Australian government policy is steadfast: people who travel illegally to Australia by boat will not settle permanently here,” he said.
Rudd/Gillard also swore, hand on heart, that they weren’t weakening border protection, too. We’ve seen how that worked out in reality. But with the same speed he’s set the boats rolling in, Albanese is also contradicting the claim that illegal arrivals will not settle permanently. One of his first acts as PM was to allow a Sri Lankan family of illegals out of immigration detention and back into the country — with Albanese signalling that it will be permanent. These grifters, it must be remembered, have lost every single immigration case they’ve pursued (at taxpayer’s expense). The High Court itself ruled that they are not genuine refugees.
None of that matters to Albanese, nor to Labor’s powerful pro-illegal immigration faction, which is still agitating to overturn Australia’s border protection entirely.
The arrival of three people-smuggling boats close to Australian shores in less than a month, coinciding with the change of government, ends two years without any turnbacks or takebacks, according to government data published in monthly reports by Operation Sovereign Borders […]
Boats did not stop attempting to reach Australia after the Abbott government took office in 2013 but published government figures show the number and frequency reduced over time as a policy of returning arrivals swiftly took effect.
The Australian
This gives the lie to the left’s claims that “boats didn’t stop, Morrison just stopped talking about them”. No-one says they didn’t stop setting out — but they were stopped from arriving. Now, they’re getting closer to evading the turnback net.
And it’s only going to get worse.
The Sri Lankan navy has revealed it is now regularly intercepting boats trying to leave the country as people-smugglers dupe desperate people into believing they will be allowed into Australia, despite warnings they will be sent back.
A leading Colombo-based human rights lawyer has also said Australia should expect many more boat arrivals in the next few months driven by the collapse in Sri Lanka’s economy.
Which has absolutely zip to do with Australia.
“Today, everybody is saying ‘You must allow us to go to Australia’.”
The Australian
The absolute entitlement complex of these illegals is staggering. They have no claim whatsoever on Australia, yet they demand to be allowed to crash our borders?
Sri Lanka’s economic woes are due to its own disastrous policy of going 100% “organic”, as well as the same disastrous Covid policies governments around the world copied from the CCP. This is a problem entirely of Sri Lanka’s own making, with more than a little help from China.
Funny how they’re not clamouring to go to China, though.
