Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr warns of new breed of asylum seeker, driven by economic factors

Big backpedal now Viets are coming.  Viets mostly vote conservative.  Muslims vote Leftist

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Bob Carr fears asylum-seeker numbers could double unless a new approach is found to stop the influx of boats.

Senator Carr's warning comes as a new breed of asylum seekers - not linked to conflict zones - is heading to Australia.

Senator Carr told a function in Sydney last night that the numbers would continue to grow - and be driven by economic factors - unless Australia found new solutions to stem the flow.

"The nature of the challenge has changed for us," he said. "It's no longer a tiny number, it's 3000 or more a month - that's 40,000 a year - it could go higher, and that's 20 per cent of the Australian migrant intake.

"And I just think people with humanitarian instincts, we've got to start thinking about fresh answers on this because if it can be 40,000 a year without a major upset in the region ... then that 50,000 a year, 40,000 a year could very easily double."

Senator Carr said it was a "different quality of the problem" faced by Australian between 2001 and 2004.

"It really is," he said. "We've got a capacity to turn Australians xenophobic against immigration because of the mounting numbers and the fact that - yes I will insist on this - we're getting many advise that it is economic pressure (and) economic aspirations (driving the arrivals)."

The latest boat, carrying 84 people, sailed directly from Vietnam, where there has been no conflict for 30 years.

Already this year, 759 Vietnamese boat people have come to Australia - the largest group to turn up since just after the Vietnam War - and more than four times the total number that has arrived in the three previous years.

The unexpected influx will put increasing pressure on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to toughen up his asylum-seeker policies.

More than 17,000 boatpeople arrived last year, but already 14,500 have landed on our shores this year.

The new Vietnamese rush came as Mr Rudd left PNG with no breakthrough on the asylum crisis. There had been speculation of a new deal but Mr Rudd said the countries would "continue to strengthen and to further our practical co-operation against our common enemy, people smugglers".

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa left open the prospect of accepting the Opposition's tow-back boat policy yesterday and said a conference to combating people smuggling would take place next month.

He also dealt the Government a blow after it had seized on Indonesia's insistence no country should take "unilateral action" as evidence it would reject the Opposition's policy.

"Well, I think the first point that must be underscored is that when we used the term 'unilateral action' it is not to deny the fact that there are things that countries can do at the national level," Mr Natalegawa said.

"We have had good communication, including with the Opposition party in terms of where they wish to take the discussion forward."

SOURCE






Indonesia says it is 'willing to talk' with Opposition on turn-back-the-boats policy

A FRESH wave of Vietnamese boat people is reaching Australia, with the latest vessel carrying 84 intercepted within sight of the WA resort town of Broome as Indonesia's foreign minister left open the prospect of accepting the Opposition's boat turn back policy.

The group is believed to have sailed directly from Vietnam, with 759 Vietnamese arriving this year and 937 since 2010, almost half the post-war influx in the late 1970s and early '80s.

Immigration officials are concerned young girls could be being trafficked and that the people-smuggling trade between Vietnam and Australia had links to drugs, with concern also yesterday that two Vietnamese asylum seekers escaped from Northern Detention Centre near Darwin during the weekend.

HMAS Maitland took the group to Broome and they were to be taken to Curtin Detention Centre for health, security and identity checks.

The new Vietnamese rush came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd left PNG securing only further talks with the country on regional responses and little breakthrough on the asylum crisis.

There had been speculation of a new deal but Mr Rudd said the countries would "continue to strengthen and to further our practical co-operation against our common enemy, people smugglers."

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa left open the prospect of accepting the Opposition's tow-back policy yesterday and said a conference to discuss combating people smuggling, agreed to when Mr Rudd was in Jakarta, would take place next month.

He also dealt the government a blow after it had seized on Indonesia's insistence no country should take "unilateral action" as evidence it would not accept the Opposition's policy.

"Well I think the first point that must be underscored is that when we used the term unilateral action it is not to deny the fact that there are things that countries can do at the national level,'' Mr Natalegawa said.

He added: "We have had good communication, including with the Opposition party in terms of where they wish to take the discussion forward. So I am sure when the time comes, if the time comes, there will be a lot more communications going back and forth in trying to better comprehend and better understand what the Opposition has meant by policies that have introduced."

Mr Rudd's visit to PNG came just days after a baby boy from Sri Lanka drowned and eight other asylum seekers vanished from a vessel that sank north of Christmas Island on Friday night.

It is understood at least two children are among the asylum seekers missing, presumed dead.

Australian authorities have also conducted another dramatic rescue after HMAS Bathurst found a captainless vessel carrying 67 people at 11am Sunday.

The passengers told the crew their skipper had plunged from the vessel around 6am and that another crew member had leapt off several hours later but had been recovered alive.

HMAS Bathurst, another navy vessel and a RAAF plane scoured the ocean 113 nautical miles north of Christmas Island.

The captain was spotted alive by the surveillance plane around 6pm and rescued by the crew of HMAS Bathurst, with asylum seekers already on board identifying him.

Authorities were baffled about why the pair plunged from the vessel, with speculation they may have believed they were to be picked up and returned to Indonesia as part of the people-smuggling operation.

About 2000 asylum seekers have arrived in the first 14 days of July, with Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison saying: "Kevin Rudd is on track to beat even Julia Gillard's record for the most arrivals in a month, with people turning up at the rate of almost 1000 per week."

SOURCE





Rudd's priority protecting Labor, not the planet

LET'S be very plain, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would put it: The great Labor crusade against climate change has been abandoned for the sake of short-term electoral gain.

What once had been the "the great moral question of our generation" has been reduced to an election bribe.

Mr Rudd's policy revisionism today was about making a neutered version of the climate change crusade an election positive by promising it would deliver further help to household finances.

The priority was switched from protecting future Australian generations from disastrous global warming to protecting Labor from an electoral roasting.

The climate change crusade was ended in the most brutal way. It was "terminated," in Mr Rudd's word.

This will annoy the Greens but will hearten most Labor MPs struggling to justify a scheme which the Labor Government itself called - for almost three years - a carbon tax.

Those Labor MPs will not regret shucking off the electorally damaging carbon price scheme forced on it by the Greens during creation of the minority government.

Mostly it will annoy the Tony Abbott Opposition which has seen it's "great big tax" line taken from it and used against it. It's now the Opposition which is being accused of a "great big tax" to fund its Direct Action scheme for subsidised carbon emissions reduction by business.

That wasn't the only political purloining.

Mr Rudd has effectively acknowledged carbon pricing has been a burden on household and business budgets, much as Mr Abbott has been saying.

The Prime Minister today said extra assistance was needed "at a time of economic transition and structural change in the global economy". Which is pretty well what Mr Abbott has been saying.

The Rudd version of an early, floating price on carbon would help households by around $380 a year, while the Opposition's direction would cost $1200 in taxes. Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey has called those calculations "lies" but clearly the debate has shifted substantially.

SOURCE





Newman Government explores establishing shale gas industry in Queensland

QUEENSLAND could have its own shale gas industry within two years, the State Government says. Government briefing notes for Environment Minister Andrew Powell show there are 16 shale gas exploration programs in the state.

But it warns any development would need numerous wells and an extensive expansion of the gas pipeline network to be viable. It would also use the controversial process known as fracking, which will put the fledgling industry on course for a battle with environmentalists.

The departmental briefing said the extraction of gas "can mobilise naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) into water extracted from the well".

It said NORMs were limited in Australian geology but the issue would need monitoring by the companies involved.

The main areas for exploration are the Cooper, Galilee, Eromanga and Maryborough basins. The Cooper Basin is already well developed and is considered the most likely to have the infrastructure to handle the development.

The Maryborough Basin may be the most difficult, with a growing concern among the community to coal and gas development. Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer are exploring for coal in the district.

"Operators have advised that up-scale and production (of shale gas) will likely commence in 2015," the ministerial briefing note said.

It said the process used would drill as deep as 2000m, which "significantly reduces risks of interconnectivity with aquifers".

It said up to 16 million litres would be needed for one well, compared with the 1 million used by CSG. However, most shale gas wells are dry and do not harvest the levels of groundwater CSG wells do.

An APPEA spokesman said similar to the production of natural gas from coal, any water sourced could potentially be re-injected underground or used to drought-proof regional Queensland properties. But, according to the State Government, exploration "is occurring in basins where water availability is limited".

Anti-CSG activist Drew Hutton said the American experience showed there were strong community concerns with shale gas, especially with the impact of fracking.

He said his organisation, Lock the Gate, had the same concerns with shale gas as it did with CSG, including its potential health impacts and possible water contamination.

"We are concerned about shale gas activities along the Cooper River, in western Queensland, because of its potential effects on the Lake Eyre Basin and in the Maryborough-Bundaberg area, which is good farm land," Mr Hutton said.

SOURCE