Posted on 02/02/2017 9:21:19 PM PST by Bratch
Too funny. Australia Herald Andrew Bolt outlines “the leaker” of the phone call between Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull and U.S. President Trump came from down under – Turnbull leaked it. Malcolm Turnbull tried to play a game of dirty politics with terrible results.
Australia has their own version of the “Calais jungle” filled with economic migrants unwanted by the majority of the Australian people.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull won’t accept any asylum seekers, migrants or refugees who arrive by boat. Instead, [Australia] intercepts such vessels and sends them to remote Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea – link –
Prime-Minister Turnbull is stuck betwix a big rock and a political hard place. He can’t accept the economic migrants, and he’s too weak to repatriate them, so he thought he could turn to a fellow traveler in a lame-duck President Obama to bail him out.
On November 13th, 2016 Turnbull announced he entered an agreement with exiting Obama to take 1,250 of the pesky migrants despite the U.S. election a week earlier delivering an election victory by a U.S. presidential candidate who would be antithetical to such an agreement.
When questioned about the prudence of such a decision Malcolm Turnbull stated: “We deal with one administration at the time. There is only one president of the United States at a time.”
Dirty deed Mr. Turnbull. Bad, bad mojo.
That sets the backdrop for the now public phone call and President Trump’s admonishment therein… Having just had the atomic sledgehammer of Trump rightly delivered upon his grand scheme, Turnbull nervously turned his political objectives toward the media. Prime Minister Turnbull figuring he would be able to back-up his position by leaking the tone of the conversation to the media and subsequently undermine President Trump.
However, what Turnbull didn’t anticipate is a new type of U.S. President willing to call out the scheming of the traditional political class regardless of their location:
Oh snap, an American president actually looking out for the best interests of America? Rut roo, this is a new and unexpected dynamic. President Trump doesn’t fear transparency, he welcomes it.
Now Turnbull has put himself, and more consequentially the relationship between the leadership in Australia and the United States, into a position of adversity.
Prime Minister Turnbull, too weak to effectively repatriate the migrants on his own, has allowed his own weakness to embarrassingly damage a relationship with a key ally.
[…] Turnbull has a very nervous wait now to see if his boat people “solution” will survive. He’s also learned a very hard lesson: don’t try messing with Trump. (link)
In most deals between Australia and the US, the US comes out ahead. If occasionally one goes the other way, that should not be a major issue.
Australia is a very good ally to the United States - and vice versa. That doesn’t mean everything is always bunnies and kittens.
No, actually they didn’t. And apparently they still don’t.
You’re obviously assuming these refugees are Muslim.
They’re not. Or at least the vast majority of them aren’t.
There’s a lot of misinformation about this deal circulating in the media at the moment. Partly because so much of it is still confidential for legal reasons. But the idea that these people are Muslims really isn’t accurate. People just seem to read ‘Refugee’ and assume it means ‘Muslim’. But there are a lot of Christian refugees from the Middle East as well.
These people have already been subjected to extreme vetting by Australia. And the US has the opportunity to do that as well.
Also - Australia is one of the only countries in the world that has officially come out in support of the US in the last week concerning American plans to better secure your border. Many of your other closest allies such as the UK and Canada have openly criticised that idea in quite robust terms. This issue caused by a leak has exploded into prominence, masking that, but Australia is still backing the US when other countries aren’t.
I've explained it about a dozen times on FR over the last couple of days and I fear I'll be seen as spamming if I keep putting it in every thread, so I'll give you a link to a previous explanation in a moment.
Short version - Australia has an absolute policy that no person who attempts to come here by boat without a visa will ever be allowed to settle in Australia. No exceptions. Even if it turns out that you're a completely genuine refugee. That's the situation that applies with these people.
Long version - here's a link - Post #16 in this thread, the one with the picture of a poster.
These people aren't being excluded from Australia because they are dangerous. They are being excluded because of the way they tried to get here.
I’ll bet both of them thought Hillary was going to win and she, of course, would welcome this deal and put all those terroris...I mean, refugees, in red states.
I’m sure they did expect Hillary to win. Which also shows what Obama thought of her. He was leaving a mess for whoever took over.
At least President Trump can honestly say that he would have had no part of this.
Then there’s little point discussing this with you further.
Although most people I’ve communicated with actually did seem to understand the policy once it was explained. It’s quite straightforward.
By the way - thank you for remaining polite and civil even while disagreeing. Considering some of what has happened on FR today, that is refreshing.
I find my Facebook friends from Australia are lovely and very supportive of the USA. Now New Zealanders appear to be out of their minds!
Interesting, I was wondering what you thought about this article.
As I say, I can’t see Turnbull leaking this. An opponent of his or some overzealous anti-Trump staffer (and one of those has just been suspended) but not Turnbull himself. This has done him far too much damage and it wouldn’t have been a surprise. If he hadn’t told the Australian people the deal was all still fine - maybe. But the fact that it’s still in doubt makes him look like he out and out lied to the Australian people, or he’s totally incompetent or both.
If anybody credible was ready to challenge (and maybe there is somebody ready - we’ll see in coming days) he might be within days of losing the Prime Ministership. As it is, I’d say he’s mortally wounded.
And if he did in fact outright lie - given how narrow his majority is in the House, this could even trigger a vote of no confidence - something no Prime Minister has faced in decades. And he could lose it.
How did Iranians and Afghans get to Australia by boat and why did they choose Australia
Why would obama be importing Christians from an island off Australia when his admin has been hostile to admitting Mideast Christians ? And turned away Cubans with a sudden policy change ?
Correct that there was a total lack on transparency from both Turnbull and obama about this “ deal” and what was the quid pro,quo
Judging from the comments on this thread, I think we are seeing Turnbull’s behavior—not Trumps’s behavior—make Australia look bad. Australians see a bad deal with this “dirty dead,” and don’t like the reputation of their country soiled by such shenanigans. Turnbull’s poor conduct has blown up in his face. If there are not calls to have him step down, he will step down when he is defeated in the next election.
Partly because so much of it is still confidential for legal reasons.Are we supposed to believe you are privy to the "confidential legal reasons"?
FAKE NEWS!
I certainly understand the policy. You’d be overwhelmed with Indonesians and others if you didn’t have it.
That said, you’re here enough to understand why thinking Americans are extraordinarily dubious about any deal cut by Obama to accept refugees in general, and especially so for one cut while a lame duck.
lol
No. You've misinterpreted what I said.
The legal reasons are quite straightforward. Most agreements between nations contain confidential clauses. I have no specific knowledge of what such clauses say in this case. But the type of thing they would relate to is not hard to guess if you know Australia's law and constitution.
In this case, as Australian law does not formally allow for refugees to be classified in terms of religion, no information relating to the religion of these refugees will be released. Many people seem to be assuming they are Muslim. There's no real reason to assume that. It's known, in fact, from media reports that some of these people are Christians.
I do actually know quite a bit about some of these people as my Church is avoiding in providing support to some of them, but that's nothing to do with the law. And a lot of the information I have has appeared in various places in the media at times.
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