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Sep. 1st, 2011
'Rewriting of Act' puts offshore deals in doubt.
Well, yeah, duh! That's the whole point! ONOZ, go the media, what an embarrassment for Julia and her government! Maybe they have to fall back to Nauru or Manus island!
Um... no, no they can't, because Nauru and Manus are not legal dumping grounds for exactly the same reasons Malaysia isn't, namely, our international treaty obligations forbid us from dumping refugees in a country which isn't a signatory, or which is a technically a signatory but has ‘reservations’ (ie., “except this bit”) for all the sections which matter.
And no, it's not “rewriting the Act”, it's a finding that the Act is, and always has been, incompatible with an international treaty, and therefore basically nullified. It is not a lawful law. It never was.
And you in the media? Yes, you. Do you think you might see fit to mention that these offshore dumping laws were just as illegal when Little Johnny was doing it, it just didn't get tested. The treaties and obligations haven't changed in the meantime. The only reason this didn't happen to
Johnny and his happy gang of smug sociopaths is the vagaries of the legal system (ie., the refugee advocates pushed harder this time). If this had been pushed to the High Court then, it's really difficult to see how they could have come to any different conclusion: the law whichallows demands offshore refugee dumping is an illegal law.
If they really want to pass a law to allow it, then they're going to have to, one way or another, repudiate the International Treaty on the Rights of the Refugee. Let's see if they have the testicular fortitude to plainly and openly do what they so badly and obviously want to: go backwards in our adherence to international Human Rights Law.
Well, yeah, duh! That's the whole point! ONOZ, go the media, what an embarrassment for Julia and her government! Maybe they have to fall back to Nauru or Manus island!
Um... no, no they can't, because Nauru and Manus are not legal dumping grounds for exactly the same reasons Malaysia isn't, namely, our international treaty obligations forbid us from dumping refugees in a country which isn't a signatory, or which is a technically a signatory but has ‘reservations’ (ie., “except this bit”) for all the sections which matter.
And no, it's not “rewriting the Act”, it's a finding that the Act is, and always has been, incompatible with an international treaty, and therefore basically nullified. It is not a lawful law. It never was.
And you in the media? Yes, you. Do you think you might see fit to mention that these offshore dumping laws were just as illegal when Little Johnny was doing it, it just didn't get tested. The treaties and obligations haven't changed in the meantime. The only reason this didn't happen to
Johnny and his happy gang of smug sociopaths is the vagaries of the legal system (ie., the refugee advocates pushed harder this time). If this had been pushed to the High Court then, it's really difficult to see how they could have come to any different conclusion: the law which
If they really want to pass a law to allow it, then they're going to have to, one way or another, repudiate the International Treaty on the Rights of the Refugee. Let's see if they have the testicular fortitude to plainly and openly do what they so badly and obviously want to: go backwards in our adherence to international Human Rights Law.