Serving the people desperate to get to Australia is a very profitable trade for those without a conscience. They simply buy or steal a barely seaworthy boat and pack aboard bodies to fill every imaginable space. As long as it capable of travelling well out of sight of the country of departure they are satisfied because every soul aboard has paid what amounts to a King's ransom for the privilege of facing an agonising death at sea.
We see pictures from the Mediterranean of men, women and children packed shoulder to shoulder in inflatable boats powered with outboard engines. These have not turned up in Australian waters because the journey is longer but this hugely profitable " people smuggling " operation follows the same rules. The people smugglers are selling " hope " with blatant dishonesty. They really don't care if the refugees reach land or die at sea. They are in it for the huge profits that people smuggling deliver - for a very small outlay.
Right now Australia is vulnerable to the trade resuming. We are just days away from an election and some people with political ambitions are seeking votes by claiming that they would clear the detention facilities offshore - if they were elected. The two major parties are careful to be unequivocal that nothing will change, but the people smugglers are cleverly circulating rumours that a Labor victory is in sight - and that would see the monumental changes that Kevin Rudd delivered after his victory back in 2007.
This week saw the Australian navy and a customs vessel intercept a refugee boat in the Timor sea. It held twenty asylum seekers and the vessel was in such poor condition that its occupants were sent back to their country of origin - Vietnam - by air and the boat set on fire and sunk to remove a hazard to navigation.
This was an ominous warning that the people smugglers are very good at marketing their services. When Australian newspapers report the comments of aspiring politicians pleading for the votes of those sympathetic to letting more migrants into this country - those news stories are circulated in the Indonesian and Sri Lankan holding camps. That intercepted boat was probably a test run to probe our defences. Had it made it to Christmas Island - that could have opened the flood gates in expectation that out migrant policy was undergoing change.
Unfortunately, we have some people in what amounts to detention in Nauru and Manus island and they had the misfortune to arrive when a new policy had just been implemented to " stop the boats ".
It was made clear that they would never be settled in Australia - and should that situation change on humanitarian grounds the people smugglers will proclaim Australia is again " open for business " and the boat armada will resume.
Many Australians have sympathy for their plight. Efforts are being mad to settle them in a third country but few are offering to take up this solution - and the only countries willing to grant acceptance have living standards that are considered " third world "! It is a dilemma with no end in sight !
At this moment we are at teeter point. People smugglers are desperate to get the boats moving and garner the huge profits they deliver and they are using this election to claim a policy change in Australia is imminent. Once the election is over and a clear decision has been delivered the danger will have passed - but at the moment incendiary statements from the fringes of politics reported in our newspapers are being used to fuel dangerous rumours.
Unfortunately, having the refugee boats again landing on our shore is exactly what some on the extreme edge of politics hope to achieve !
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