RSS Feed
June 23rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda The coalition is avoiding the political blame game on asylum seeker policy out of respect for the five confirmed dead and 90 still missing after a boat capsized en-route to Australia.
Rescuers on Saturday found two more bodies during the search for survivors of the overcrowded asylum seeker boat, spotted by an Australian Customs and Border Protection surveillance aircraft halfway between the Indonesian island of Java and Christmas Island on Thursday afternoon.
Those who had been rescued and taken to Christmas Island to recover stood at 109 on Saturday afternoon but 90 passengers were still unaccounted for.
Poor weather hampered Saturday’s search, with authorities saying it was unlikely more survivors would be found.
The tragedy prompted Liberal MP Mal Washer to call on Opposition leader Tony Abbott to consider supporting Labor’s Malaysia Solution to prevent more asylum-seeker deaths at sea.
The plan was stalled last year because it did not get the Opposition’s approval, which it needed to for it to become law.
Mr Abbott said he had not been approached by the government for talks to break the deadlock.
In any case, he was standing by the Howard government’s Nauru policy.
But it wasn’t the right time to criticise the government’s Malaysia policy while the tragedy was still unfolding, he maintained.
“I am doing my best to avoid (politicising the issue). Not a word of criticism will escape my lips today,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Sydney.
“We should be grieving for those who are lost.”
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt took the same line.
“My own view is that the current arrangements will lead to a significant flow of people and potentially further tragedies but I don’t believe, respectfully, that today is the day for myself to try to pre-empt the policy discussions which will occur in coming days.”
Federal transport minister Anthony Albanese pushed for a speedy resolution on asylum-seeker policy.
“I note Dr Washer’s genuine comments,” he said in Sydney.
“And I think certainly I am of the view, and the government is of the view, that we want to work together across the parliament to secure an outcome that reduces the possibility of a tragedy like this being repeated.”
A rally for World Refugee Day at Sydney’s Town Hall on Sunday will call for an independent inquiry into the incident.
It coincides with World Refugee Day.
Posted in 
Tags: 
