Fraudulent and extreme  Green/Left claims about Sri Lankan illegals

    Andrew Bolt summarizes below.  What Andrew might have mentioned is that this is a really dumb issue for the Left to hang their hat on -- as the great majority of Australians are strongly opposed to illegal immigration.  The Leftist shrieks are in fact  most likely to make Tony Abbott look good

Refugee lawyer George Newhouse and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser have likened returning boat people to Sri Lanka to returning Jews to Nazi Germany

THE outrage over the forced return of 41 Sri Lankan boat people has been exposed as a fraud by the “asylum seekers” themselves.

Here’s conclusive proof that our “refugee lobby” is motivated by deceit, self-preening and insane hatred of the Abbott Government.

These 41 were on one of two boats of Sri Lankans intercepted by our Navy over the past fortnight, and were sent back this week.

Greens leader Christine Milne was apoplectic, describing the passengers as victims of a Sri Lankan tyranny and the evil Tony Abbott: “Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been returned to Sri Lanka: the persecuted to the persecutor.”

Refugee lawyer George Newhouse and former prime minister Malcolm Fraser even likened returning boat people to Sri Lanka to returning Jews to Nazi Germany.

And journalists of the Left competed to be the most horrified. ABC host Fran Kelly, won, gasping: “Since when does our Government disappear people?”

Bad luck for Kelly. The 41 have now appeared again, back in Sri Lanka where they spoke to reporters.

So were they “refugees”? Were they truly the “persecuted”, fleeing a Third Reich in the Indian Ocean?

Let me quote every single one who talked to reporters. You judge.

Punchi Banda Podinilame, speaking for 10 relatives on board, told Fairfax “they had all gone to Australia to find employment”.

Manushika Sandamali, wife of another passenger, admitted: “My husband went to Australia to get a job.”

M.G. Sumanadasa said he was a stone mason who “got on board to earn more money and to have a family house in New Zealand”.

Anthony Fernando said: “I have gone to Australia by boat to find employment.”

The only human rights abuse Fernando reported was our Navy feeding him old muesli bars: “Australian authorities have ill-treated us; they have given expired food, which had a date of May 22.”

Passenger Bhamith Caldera refused to say if he really “had a case for asylum”.

Kasun Hemantha Jayasekara said he was actually “very happy to be back in Sri Lanka”, given “the alternative was an island prison” like Manus.

Sujeewa Saparamadu came closest to claiming some passengers feared persecution. She said a Special Task Force commando accused of helping to organise the boat “has a political problem”, which she did not identify.

She also claimed she’d been harassed by Sri Lankan authorities after giving an interview to the ABC two years ago, leading her family to decide “to go to another country like New Zealand that offered better economic circumstances”.

In fact, that ABC interview had merely recorded her husband admitting his four brothers had themselves just been returned by the Gillard government after trying to find work in Australia.

(And, yes, Labor returned more than 1000 Sri Lankans against their will, yet the Left waits until Tony Abbott does it before protesting.)

The only human rights abuse Saparamadu complained of this week was Australian officials confiscating her iPhone 5, her daughter’s digital camera and her husband’s gold credit cards.

So how could the Greens claim it a crime to have sent back economic migrants? How can so many journalists — and the Human Rights Commission — scream we’ve breached our human rights obligations?

But don’t expect a sorry. No, the Left is now screaming about the second intercepted boat, this carrying 153 passengers now believed to be in Australian custody at sea.

Newhouse and barrister Ron Merkel, QC, have persuaded the High Court to issue a temporary injunction against returning these 153 to Sri Lanka, and the same superheated rhetoric is heard about torture, the “disappeared” and Nazis.

But are these boat people any more likely to be true refugees?

Answer: no, even though these, unlike the first 41, are mainly of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority.

In fact, Merkel has already conceded most — if not all — sailed from India, where they presumably lived in the safety of the established refugee camps.

So why did they try to come here?

As yet, they are still held incommunicado, but Ragajini, the 32-year-old wife of one passenger, told The Sydney Morning Herald from India’s Aliyar refugee camp that “her husband had crippling debts and had needed to escape to a country where he could earn money”.

So not needing our asylum. Just our jobs.

Sure, the 153 might not want to be returned to Sri Lanka but I’m guessing the plan is to send them back to India, where they were always safe.

So if a crime against morality has been committed it is surely this: that so many atrocity-mongers and moral poseurs have inflicted upon us a gigantic fraud.

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Senators should find savings: Abbott

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has challenged cross bench senators to come up with savings to match the holes they are punching in the federal budget.

THE Senate will resume debate on the carbon tax repeal on Tuesday, after the government successfully brought on the package of bills on Monday.

Palmer United Party senators threw the government temporarily off balance when they initially voted with Labor and the Greens not to bring on the bills until next Monday.

The coalition, which holds 33 seats in the new upper house, is confident of securing the six extra votes it needs to pass the bills as early as this week.

But Clive Palmer, whose party holds three crucial votes, insists the government should keep a number of costly Labor climate programs.

Mr Palmer also says the government should not go ahead with at least $9 billion in cuts to spending out of Labor's mining tax scheme.

Mr Abbott said the coalition promised at the September election to scrap the SchoolKids Bonus, the low income support payment and the low income superannuation payment because they were funded by the mining tax which is to be abolished.

"Obviously, we will keep talking to the cross bench senators but, in the end, if they want to keep spending this money presumably they are going to have to find savings to pay for it," Mr Abbott told the Nine Network on Tuesday.

"We will push on with implementing our program. That's what we were elected to do."  He described the debate in the Senate as a "bit of argy-bargy".

The repeal of the mining tax will be the immediate next order of business for the Senate after the carbon tax repeal bills are passed.

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Carbon tax repeal would save average Canberra home $228 a year

Canberra Raiders legend Glenn Lazarus quoted JFK as he pushed for all savings from the carbon tax abolition to be fully and immediately passed onto customers and told the Senate some Canberrans had been house-sitting in Queensland to escape harsh power bills.

It comes as figures show the average Canberra home will save $228 a year in electricity costs when the carbon tax is scrapped.

On his second day as a senator, the ex-prop – the Palmer United Party's Senate leader – put forward an amendment to the Coalition's carbon tax repeal package.

The proposed changes were crafted to force energy companies to explain in power bills how savings had been fully passed on.

The Queanbeyan-born Mr Lazarus elaborated his argument by telling the Senate about the effect of the carbon tax on energy bills in the national capital.

"In 2013 when I was campaigning for election to the Senate in Queensland I took a short break and visited family in Canberra," he said.

"While in Canberra I became aware of an elderly couple that are forced to house-sit in Queensland each winter because they simply cannot afford the cost of heating their own home in Canberra.

"Every winter they have to leave the comfort, familiarity and safety of their own home just to survive the cold winter months.

"What sort of country have we become?"

The senator then added a quote from US president John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech from 1961: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

A public gallery heckler interrupted Mr Lazarus and the interjector was warned by Senate President Stephen Parry.

On Tuesday morning the ACT's main energy supplier, ActewAGL, said it was unsure when the savings would flow through to its customers because it depended on when the tax was removed.

The federal government was confident of repealing the carbon tax, perhaps as early as this week.

But the government was reliant on the support of the Senate, specifically the help of Palmer United Party senators as well as independent Nick Xenophon, Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm, Family First's Bob Day and Motoring Enthusiast Ricky Muir.

In the ACT the savings from repealing the carbon tax were already going to be passed on following a decision by the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission, and some other regulators across Australia have made similar decisions.

ActewAGL's general manager of retail Tony Muckle said the ICRC had estimated an average territory household with an annual electricity consumption of 8000 kWh paid about $1959 during 2013-14 for electricity.

It was estimated an average ACT household would pay $2044 a year based on carbon-inclusive prices during 2014-15.

If the carbon tax was repealed, the same average ACT household would pay $228 less during 2014-15, or a total of $1816.

"Given the current uncertainty surrounding the timing and details of the proposed repeal legislation, we are not in a position to provide a detailed plan or timeline for the removal of the carbon price component from our energy prices," Mr Muckle said.

"We can, however, confirm that any adjustments to energy pricing as a result of the repeal of carbon legislation will be passed on to our customers in accordance with our legal and regulatory requirements."

Price adjustments would also be passed on in full for gas bills.

"Before ActewAGL can determine the exact impact on 2014-15 gas prices, an approval of the gas network charges, without the price of the carbon component, must be provided by the Australian Energy Regulator," Mr Muckle said.

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Christian army officer Bernie Gaynor pays the price for marching out of step with top generals

The Australian Army will terminate Major Bernie Gaynor's commission tomorrow.

Gaynor served three tours of duty in Iraq while serving in Army intelligence. In a column published on March 17, I quoted a speech he had given to a conference in Melbourne: "It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that the Australian Defence Force has a fundamentally broken approach to religion, an approach shaped partly by the triumph of bureaucratic administration over battlefield considerations but mostly by political correctness …

"The ADF has a fundamentally flawed understanding of Islam. Just look at Iraq. I was one of the last Australians to serve there. All the politicians and military hierarchy were saying the withdrawal of Western military force was based on success. And yet al-Qaeda today controls more of Iraq than it ever did while Western forces were in the country …"

None of this is why Gaynor is being drummed out of the army. Rather, Gaynor sees this military failure as a symptom of a cultural issue over which he was willing to sacrifice his army career: his Christian faith. On this issue, by his own admission, he has been a provocateur and a serial litigator.

He formally protested the decision by the army to allow service personnel to march, in uniform, in the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. He argued that army personnel are barred from participating in political activities while in uniform and that the Mardi Gras is a political event as defined by its own articles of association.

He also pointed out that Mardi Gras had a long history of openly vilifying the Catholic church, and Catholic clergy, over its opposition to same-sex marriage. Gaynor, who is Catholic, argued this was offensive to many Catholics, who make up about 40 per cent of military personnel.

The army’s "quick assessment" response to his complaint even conceded his core points while dismissing his complaint:

"The ADF traditionally avoids overt support of specific political viewpoints. By allowing official participation in the 2013 Mardi Gras by uniformed personnel the ADF could be seen as now being comfortable in supporting politically polarising issues.

"If a uniformed member were to support a gathering that insulted strongly held beliefs of a religion other than Christianity (to use Gaynor's example), vilifying Islam with 'Mohammad is Gay' signs… that member would be severely dealt with. In the case of the Mardi Gras, the opposite occurred."

Gaynor half-won that argument but he over-stepped the army’s mark by using his private blog to wage a cultural war against what he calls politically correct policies. Eventually, Major-General A.J. Campbell requested his resignation, stating: ''In short, army does not share your views, which are both offensive and divisive and not in the interests of army or our people.''

This view was ultimately confirmed by the Chief of the Defence Force. Gaynor will thus be gone tomorrow.

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