PART 1
Asylum seekers are a group of people, who from fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, social group or political opinion, has crossed an international frontier into a country in which they hope to be granted refugee status. The Australian public opinion towards asylum seekers has often been unwelcoming at best and hostile at worst and this is often the way the media has portrayed the influx of people seeking asylum in Australia.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard's asylum seeker policy aims to tackle people smuggling. The Government is stepping up efforts to process asylum seekers offshore, and has recently negotiated a refugee swap deal with Malaysia. Opposition Leader …show more content…
For instance, I have come across a Channel Nine news clip that reports on the centrelink benefits that the asylum seekers are granted with. Using the terms “the true welfare cost” and “current wave of asylum seekers” while sinister music playing in the background to create an unwelcoming scene towards the asylum seekers can cause a very influential decision making process made by the viewers at home. While these words are used in a judgemental way that is creating a bad image for asylum seekers as undeserving and unwanted people. While the majority of the viewers would have taken no notice of the type of music being played because a subconscious trick has been played on our thoughts making these facts very more believing. As the reporter goes on images and texts are passing the background video footage of an incoming boat filled with asylums as the large, bold figures of statistics are distracting the viewer which makes it difficult to concentrate on the footage as we are being told that 3 out of 4 asylum seekers are granted these centre link benefits and other numerical …show more content…
And numerous reports have shown that many asylum seekers are unaware of Australia’s domestic asylum policies, so the use of punishing policies has zero limiting effect. A clear example of the failure of punitive policies to prevent asylum seekers is the policy of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). The number of asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia continued to increase after the introduction of temporary protection visas in 1999 (48% more asylum seekers arrived by boat in 2001 than in 1999). Asylum seekers arriving by boat only started decreasing in 2003 when global asylum numbers started dropping. This evidence strongly suggests that temporary protection visas have no value as a restriction to number of asylum seekers arriving by boat. The same rationale holds true for mandatory detention, introduced in