Murdoch owns Newspoll. Newspoll can’t poll accurately. Any connection?

Newspoll is ‘the nation’s most authoritative snapshot of the political landscape’– that’s what Tony Abbott says. ABC Radio Breakfast

If Newspoll says that Rudd is losing support because he is too soft on asylum seekers, it must be true. Right?

Last week’s Newspoll result showed a significant narrowing of Rudd’s lead over Turnbull, and a significant increase in angst about asylum seekers- seeming to indicate that Rudd was losing because he is too ’soft’.

These numbers were soundly overturned by the subsequent numbers provided by Essential Research and Morgan polls, that showed little change in Rudd and Turnbull’s popularity or in voter intentions, and a more benign view of asylum seekers.

Most commentators seem to be coming to the same conclusion as Crikey’s bloggers, that the ‘most plausible conclusion from recent polling is that last week’s Newspoll is an outlier’. So You Think You Can Interpret Polls?

But, as Crikey also notes, a result of the Newspoll results is that there is now ‘common wisdom’ that Rudd has suffered because he has not been as tough as Howard towards asylum seekers.

It is interesting to note that Newspoll is owned by Murdoch. The same people who own my local Sunday paper; The Sunday Mail.

In last Sunday’s edition (the first edition after the Newspoll results) the Mail ran this headline on the front page:

‘Howard: Fact: We stopped the boats: exclusive interview’

And on page 2

‘Rudd policies ‘vain, arrogant’, accompanied by a photo of asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking.

On page 7

‘Rudd has achieved nothing- Howard’

Page 17

‘Lighten up a bit, Kev’ – Murdoch says that PM is ‘too sensitive for his own good’

Page 67

‘We stopped the boats’

Page 74 (continued from page 67)

‘Howard: we got it right’

(There were no comparable headlines in the sports section, however).

Quotes are good. You can print all sorts of things and hide behind the person who ‘said’ them.

So, I shall quote Bob Ellis:

‘After years of calling Newspoll ‘the Bill O’Reilly of statistics’ and asking why it has a CEO if its numbers are accurate, and why it turns up month after month those figures to Murdoch’s liking that make the headlines that sell the papers and do his enemies damage (‘McCain passes Obama’, ‘Nelson terminal’), I see at last, this week, what seems to me to be, the biggest whopper of all.’

Questions to be asked about whopping poll

Help change the debate – fund Amnesty’s asylum seeker ad

I have talked a lot about changing the debate about asylum seekers, and now-

I’ve funded Amnesty International’s newspaper ad for a compassionate approach to refugees. Please join me: https://support.amnesty.org.au/index_content.php

Australians pride ourselves on being reasonable, compassionate and fair. But politicians are diminishing these values in political point-scoring over “boat people”.

We have the systems, skills and rigour to assess the people who come to our shores – whether by plane or by boat – with dignity, compassion and respect for fundamental human rights. What we lack is the political will.

Please help change the debate back towards real Australian values by chipping in $30 – or whatever you can afford – to put our ad in this week’s Daily Telegraph and West Australian.

Racist… yes. Very very funny? Extremely.

I thought hard about whether to share this – but I found it very very funny!

Now you know how low my humour can go.

But beware if you are a racially-sensitive type.

Have a happy Sunday Funday!

How many would come if we just opened the borders?

Worried about asylum seekers flooding Australia?

What would happen if we just opened our borders to everyone?

Gallup polled people in 135 countries between 2007 and 2009, and found that about 16% of the world’s adults (roughly 700 million) would like to move to another country permanently if they could. 700 Million Worldwide Desire to Migrate Permanently

Nearly one-quarter said that the United States was their desired future residence. Forty-five million adults named the United Kingdom or France as their desired destination, 45 million would like to move to Canada, 35 million would like to go to Spain, 30 million to Saudi Arabia and 25 million would like to relocate to Germany. Twenty five  million named Australia.

If all adults actually moved to their desired destination country today, some countries would suffer tremendous losses and others would be overwhelmed.

Gallup’s Potential Net Migration Index (PNMI) is the estimated number who would like to move to a country, less the estimated number of adults who would like to move out of it, as a proportion of the total adult population.

The higher the resulting positive PNMI value, the larger the potential net population gain.

So there’s your answer – Australia’s population would suddenly increase by two and a half times.

Would you intervene? Easy to say yes….

 

This is a sociological experiment to see if people will intervene when an African American woman is treated unfairly.

While most people are unaffected by the discrimination they observe, others are completely offended on behalf of the victim.

It would be better, however, if the same experiment was attempted using a white shopper to determine more accurately if people are discriminating on the basis of race, or just don’t want to get involved in general.

Watch what happens when one woman, at the end of the video, stands up for the shopper loudly and clearly.

Kevin Rudd: learn how most people will behave about issues from this clip – and speak out against asylum seeker hate!

Let’s stop talking about asylum seekers and do something – want to come to Indonesia with me?

James Hathaway is something of a hero of mine (yes, I know, I’m a nerd).

He is the sort of academic expert you refer to almost as you would holy writ – “if he says it it must be so”- for issues of refugee and international law.

He has been dean of Melbourne University Law School for just over a year, and now he has quit.

Hathaway says that his mother Bernice had recently asked him when he was going to “quit being a bureaucrat and starting doing good things for the world again”.

He quit so he could devote himself to promoting a “globalised” system whereby countries would take on obligations to accept refugees regardless of where they have fled to, to share the burden more equitably

The Sri Lankan refugees who were refusing to leave their boats had “crystallised” his thinking.

“This is a unique opportunity to really engage with decision-makers and judges on an issue that I felt, after 25 years, I had something to offer,” he said. Law school head quits to seek global help for refugees

I had something of the same impulse after reading the report Behind Australia’s Doors. I was so upset by the report of the conditions in which refugees are held in Indonesia that I am intending to go and see for myself, and see what I can do. I am now looking for an NGO that I would attach to, or at least someone to go with.

Any ideas?

“Indonesian Solution” is sickening, degrading: new report

 

What does the ‘Indonesian Solution’ look like?

And why do people try to escape by risking their lives on rotten boats?

Jessie Taylor has today released a comprehensive report on immigration detention facilities in Indonesia.

She visited 11 facilities in July 2009. Her report, Behind Australian Doors: Examining the Conditions of Detention of Asylum Seekers in Indonesia, is available at  http://www.law.monash.edu.au/castancentre/news/behind-australian-doors-report.pdf

Extracts from the report are below, but a warning, they are sickening and upsetting:

“Generally water is rationed at around 500mls per person per day. A number of detainees at Kuningan are suffering an aggressive skin disease.  It is dark purple in colour, and has the appearance of an allergy or fungal infection, and causes great discomfort to those who suffer from it. It is apparently brought on by lack of each person’s ability to maintain an acceptable standard of personal hygiene, and the cramped and filthy conditions inside the cells.”

“As there are 13-15 adult males in each of the irregularly shaped 3×4m cells, sleeping is very difficult.  Detainees inform us that they sleep in rows, on their sides, as there is not enough room to lie flat.

“The kitchen is open to the elements and covered in fungus and mold.  The shower is a hose over a filthy toilet.  The water supply is polluted and contaminated.  There are problems with rodents and snakes in the kitchen and living areas.

“The filth in this accommodation is difficult to describe, and constitute by far the worst conditions I have seen human beings living in.

“Almost all of these detainees have been accepted as refugees by UNHCR, many of them in mid-2008.  Needless to say they are anxious as to when they might be resettled elsewhere in a country where their children can get on with life.

“Medical treatment was utterly lacking.  There was a man who had broken his ankle very badly a number of weeks previously. The ankle was inflamed and infected around the primitive stitches, and he depended on another detainee to dress the weeping, pus-covered wound once or twice a day.  Fluid seeped through the bandage and was visible from the outside of the dressing.  He had been supplied with weak painkillers by IOM, but no further attention had been paid to him and he was in significant pain.

“I’ve been waiting nine years now.   How much longer will it take?” – MDK, 26, Cisarua

Also released today: results of a News poll on asylum seekers:

“Question: The Federal Government is currently working with the Indonesian government to stop asylum seekers entering Australian waters. For each of the below statements that have been made about current incident of asylum seekers, please indicate your level of agreement.”

Watch this, and be afraid of where the asylum seeker debate could take us

In the United States the immigration bête noire is illegal immigrants (read ‘Mexicans’), while in Australia ours is boatpeople.

9500 Liberty is a new documentary, based on the groundbreaking YouTube channel, 9500liberty, just released in the US. I hope it will make it to Australia. Here’s the synopsis:

“Prince William County, Virginia became ground zero in America’s explosive battle over immigration policy when elected officials adopted a law requiring police officers to question anyone they have “probable cause” to suspect is an undocumented immigrant.

“9500 Liberty reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks using the Internet to frighten and intimidate lawmakers and citizens.

“Alarmed by a climate of fear and racial division, residents form a resistance using YouTube videos and virtual townhalls, setting up a real-life showdown in the seat of county government.

“The devastating social and economic impact of the “Immigration Resolution” is felt in the lives of real people in homes and in local businesses. But the ferocious fight to adopt and then reverse this policy unfolds inside government chambers, on the streets, and on the Internet. 9500 Liberty provides a front row seat to all three battlegrounds.

John Grisham says that “9500 Liberty makes it clear that when we, as a nation of immigrants debate the immigration issue, we are defining our very identity as Americans”.

For ‘immigration issue’ read ‘asylum seeker issue’, and for ‘Americans’ read ‘Australians’.

 

PhD tales from the Heathrow detention facility

It’s Sunday Funday!

I regularly have a look at Jorge Cham’s ‘Piled Higher and Deeper’ website, where Jorge cartoons about life and PhD candidates.

It’s funny, or, as Jorge says,

“Results show that persistent exposure to phdcomics dot com (PDC) is mildly correlated to jocular deportment, which suggests improvements in temporal-delay behaviour of bounded activity.”

And this week Jorge cartooned his experience of being detained and very nearly deported from Heathrow airport.

(If you need some seriousness on the same topic, however, see yesterdays’ post on this blog Want child abuse? Night raids? Summary justice? Just ask your Immigration official)

Want child abuse? Night raids? Summary justice? Just ask your Immigration official

Actions taken against people suspected of violating migration legislation are decided and applied by decision of the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

These ‘compliance’ actions are mostly taken against ‘aliens’ who have no resident status, but as we have seen in recent years, the Australian Immigration Department has also acted against Australian citizens such as Cornelia Rau.

Residents and citizens of Australia are protected by the Rule of Law, and so, once her status was discovered, Rau had to be released immediately and had recourse to compensation.

(Notice that protection against summary actions of the immigration department depends on those actions coming to light.)

When migration officials decide to take action, however, it seems that residency or any other status have little deterrent effect. This blog has reported about the child in immigration detention who was separated from her father and flown to Iran without his permission, Australian immigration officials investigated over child abduction, and overseas students who have been subject to compliance raids in the middle of the night and had their homes searched by immigration officials.  Failed your exam? Go to jail!

It is not only in Australia where immigration is a law unto itself. Human Rights Watch reports that, in 2008, airport police deported or removed one third of the 1,000 unaccompanied migrant children who arrived at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and who were denied entry into France.

“Airport border police place detained children in the same facilities as adults, putting the children at risk of abuse. They routinely threaten children as young as age six with deportation, subject children to strip searches, handcuff them during rides to hospitals, and order intrusive age examinations even when there is no doubt the child is under 18.” France: Abolish Airport Limbo for Migrant Children

There are of course international treaties that proclaim guidelines for the treatment of aliens. Some people refer to these as ‘laws’, but a law is not a law unless it can be enforced, and there is no body that can sanction nations for their treatment of people who are not official residents or citizens.

The wonderful Hannah Arendt more than half a century ago saw that the concept of human rights ‘collapses in ruins’ in the face of the stateless, the refugee, and the asylum seeker. To these we may add ‘those in the hands of immigration departments’.