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one are prepared to lead that far from the front so that the others behind them can leverage solutions. Instead, they are on par with each other and merely cast blame and aspersion and portray themselves as being able to do the job better.

Ministers Chris Bowen and Jason Clare, Minister Scott Morrison and Senator Bob Brown are all speaking very much alike and none of them are affecting any difference, or any leadership that can leverage any real and significant way forward.

The four of them have attacked the organizers of the boats for our asylum seekers as “people smugglers” and have convoluted their practices and assistance as “trafficking”. These people are not traffickers of indentured human labor or slavery, or of illegal immigrants. They are assisting in the passage of asylum seekers, which according to International Conventions is lawful and
humanitarian.

It is these misrepresentations by Ministers Bowen, Clare, Morrison and Senator Brown, and by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and the Coalition’s leader Tony Abbott, which have directly led to people drowning at sea.

Migration walls need to be dismantled. People should not have to work in clandestine ways to seek asylum. People smugglers should be seen as humanitarians, and they should not be criminalized, which if so will allow them the freedom to ensure sea worthy boats and to liaise with various public agencies. And Australia should work regionally and with a moral leadership to raise refugee resettlement numbers in regional nations with a high social wealth and human development index.

Australia has a capacity for 50,000 resettled refugees each year and more, without an impact on its social wealth.

Australia has a capacity to develop points of contact in Indonesia and other regional locations with our asylum seekers to best assist them, and in conditions that are humane. However, political leadership, leading far from where we are at this time, is requisite.

The boats will stop in this event. They come because they are denied expeditious assistance.

If this changes and if conditions in interim locations are developed, then our asylum seekers will wait and work with those that care about them.

The only other way to stop the boats is to do what John Howard did and cruelly turn them back and let people languish in dire and abject conditions. They fled persecution and they fled adverse conditions. Most have families they care about, of course many will risk the high seas when there is no humanity on tap, and instead they seek to find themselves face to face with us so we look into their eyes and into their pain.

Our days are numbered, we need not waste them with sickly parochialism, self-regard and inhumanity. Our politicians need to scrub up and get their act together. Yes they are directly responsible for sinking boats, for drowning, for self-harm, mental breakdowns and suicides in detention centers.

Political heavyweights must lead from the front at the very least, and for those, such as the Greens, who once claimed to care about humanity at all costs, they need to lead far from the front, and not become like those they once argued against and who asked us for our goodwill to get them into government.

Those who assist in the passage of asylum seekers are not criminals. However, Australia’s political leadership is criminal.

Gerry Georgatos
Bridgetown, WA