Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Not since World War II has any boat, no matter how small, arrived on our shores, with the intent to have its passengers clandestinely settle in our country and disappear into the community. It's time Minister Evans stops acting like John Howard, and it's time he stops uttering the nonsense lines of the widely reviled former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock.

Just three days after many people started contacting new immigration minister Chris Evans to raise the issue of the swathe of refugees holed up on Nauru, he declared his hand.

A scandalous and brutal Bill has been proposed by the Howard government to block all access to Australia of all asylum seekers arriving by boat, both for processing their claims and for settlement if these claims prove true. We need a dozen Liberal and National MP's in Parliament to become confident enough to Cross the Floor and block this legislation; and we need two Senators to Cross the Floor and block the passage of this Bill - no matter how its amendments try to obfuscate the sneakiness of its contents.

"About ten months ago I wrote an article about the Dutch and the way they store away their "outprocessed" asylum seekers, published both on the Project SafeCom website and in the New Matilda magazine - a practice so nasty that it almost beats putting them far and far away in hot and arid desert 'refugee jails' like Baxter and Woomera. This week the Dutch PM Jan Pieter Balkenende is visiting Australia, and ABC's Lateline is grabbing him for an interview tonight. I've asked Lateline to ask Balkenende some questions about the West Papua situation and about the asylum barges." Jack Smit

by Jack H Smit
Project SafeCom

Ian Harper, John Howard's new Fair Pay Commissioner, is an Anglican who's on God's side, and he's been pretty open about it since his appointment. It seemed a bit up in the air at the time, but Australian reporters let him have his day in Heaven when he was first appointed. Now, it seems, Mr Harper may know more about God than about the Australian history of Industrial arbitration, a discovery probably first made through Sydney-based blogger Evan Jones - on his Alert and Alarmed Blog - and further brought to the public domain by the folks of ABC Radio's PM program this week.

"When Petro Georgiou MP - the leader of the now famous backbenchers' revolt over Australia's permanent jailing policies of refugees - met with refugee advocates in several locations around Australia, including the Baxter detention centre, at the end of 2004 and at the beginning of 2005, it was reported that he countered the desperate voices and the mood of extreme urgency in the representations made to him in almost a mantra-like way - in his characteristically low and sombre voice inflection, repeating at nauseam with a 'we'll get them out' ... 'we'll get ALL of them out.'." Jack H Smit

Today four years ago a boat on its way through the sometimes treacherous waters off the Indonesian coast sunk within the Australian Government's Search and Rescue Zone for ships in distress. Some people were rescued. Several people cancelled their plans to board the massively overcrowded vessel - and are alive today as a result. Three hundred and fifty-three people, mostly Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers, including 146 children, drowned. ... In memoriam...

"I think the Bill is a disgrace, but it is also an opportunity to show to the better informed how the fight to the death between politicians in the Howard administration and the "refugee lobby" is a callous one, and that for the politicians, backed up by the best of their legal advisors and legislation drafters, this fight is one they're fully prepared to fight - and it seems there's no limit to the budget. No doubt they, the politicians, are set for another win in the context of a Senate majority, but it will not necessarily be a win for public opinion of those politicians." Jack H Smit

"So when the mainstream media are failing to such an extend that they are no longer reporting the thinking and truths behind the facts behind the events, and when they on many occasions choose to completely ignore the reporting of even the events themselves, the landscape of reporting changes and the nature of journalism shifts as dramatically as it shifted when newspapers first came into circulation. ... Margo's move to Webdiary was in itself already something to take note of, and her separation and independence of Fairfax is something which I imagine will still be discussed in journalism courses in 50 years time, if we still run them in Australia." Jack H Smit

"It doesn't happen every day that a journo phones me to let off steam, but yesterday, following a press conference by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone on the Baxter Detention Centre, it did. The journo just needed to let off the frustration of being subjected to an inordinate amount of government spin emanating from the mouth of the Immigration Minister... So I went hunting for a transcript, and that quest shows that Webdiarists would do well keeping and building a database of reporters and journalists. It took about five phone calls before another good reporter with one of Australia's better dailies sent the transcript." Jack H Smit

"Australia's harsh measures of keeping people locked up 'forever' have permanently damaged hundreds of people and broken their trust in what Australia has to offer and the confidence in a belief in their own ability to engage with and in society on the deepest level of their being. Demand for life-long psychiatric and psycho-social support services for the long-term detainees was not a part of the Georgiou deals. Just like Australia ignores life-long support for those in the Aboriginal community whose broken personal cultures and lifestyles - damage entirely due to the encroachment of white culture in their regional areas and its violent superimposition on Aboriginal culture - have driven them into alcoholism, Australia ignores that the policies themselves are to blame for the fact that we owe it to the political prisoners of Howard's attempt to win the 2001 election to have a full program of restorative justice, no matter what it costs to the budget." Jack H Smit

"Finally, I will have the last swipe. It will be a swipe at my government. Up it comes: date of birth, mother's maiden name, nationality, last date of entry into Australia, flight number, colour of my eyes, known medical condition, started smoking when I was fifteen, was blacklisted and arrested pending self-removal from the USA in 1997 for overstaying my visa for 48 hours. And on it goes. I expect a big amount of crunching to go on inside my old computer. Never mind, I'll boil the kettle for another coffee, dream of an Australian Bill of Rights and wait. Then, Mr Howard, Mr Ruddock, Mrs Vanstone, I'll Select All, and I'll press delete. Because all the information, Prime Minister, all of it, is mine. It always was mine - and it certainly is not yours to hold or behold." Jack H Smit

Want to know how a man with a passion and a computer can help hold a government to account? Webdiarist Jack H Smit began 'Project Safecom' after Tampa. He is now one of Australia's most respected and effective refugee advocates. Here is his story.