Robert Manne | AustralianPolitics.com

How can we stop people putting themselves in peril?
AAP/Josh Jerga

Last weekend, an overcrowded fishing boat sank off the coast of Indonesia with more than 200 asylum seekers on board.

In Australia, the political blame game started soon after with both sides trying to get the upper hand in the controversial policy area.

Tony Abbott has been under pressure from Liberal party elders Alexander Downer and Philip Ruddock to reach a workable solution with the Gillard government, but the situation remains at an impasse.

As we begin to come to terms with the second major refugee boat disaster in less than 12 months, The Conversation asked key experts to take a considered look at the problem of refugees who risk the journey to Australia by boat.

We had two simple questions – what is the problem? And, most importantly, how can we do better?

This is what they told us.

This page provides a collection of extended quotations gathered during the 2001 Federal Election campaign.

The quotes cover the campaign period and the election’s aftermath.

How A Single-Issue Party Held Onto Power

We shall never know for certain that the Tampa would have been, by itself, sufficient to ensure the Howard Government a third term or whether it was the combination of the Tampa “crisis” and September 11 that the Howard Government required. What we do know, however, is that when the now retired Defence Minister, Peter Reith, suggested that al-Qaeda terrorists might be found among the Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers on the leaky vessels travelling to Australia, a politically decisive connection between border control and the terrorist threat to Australia was conjured in the public’s mind.

Posts tagged as “Robert Manne”

Five Ways To Prevent More Asylum Seeker Tragedies

Quotes From The 2001 Federal Election

How A Single-Issue Party Held Onto Power