That Sinking Feeling: Asylum Seekers and the Search for the Indonesian Solution

Description

QUARTERLY ESSAY 53 -- Contents -- Ali Reza and the Twenty Asylum Seekers -- Legal or Illegal, a Boat is a Boat -- Waiting for Australia -- Down Mexico Way -- Little Aussie Migrant -- The Smuggling Coast -- A Boat Goes Down -- The Boats Slow Up -- The Mislaid Indonesian Solution -- Sending Them Back -- Found in Translation: Correspondence -- Rowan Callick -- Brian Nelson -- Julie Rose -- John Minford -- Response to Correspondence: Linda Jaivin -- Contributors -- Copyright -- Subscribe.;In Quarterly Essay 53, Paul Toohey looks at one of Tony Abbott's signature promises: to stop the boats. Has his government succeeded? If so, at what cost?In Java, Toohey observes asylum seekers heading for Australia and reports on the Indonesian response. He tells the stories of individual refugees, looks closely at people- smugglers in action, and witnesses the aftermath of a sinking at sea.Toohey also examines Australian attitudes to refugees, and what politicians have made of them. He assesses the use of secrecy and the term "illegals." Tracing the path that led to the PNG Solution, he considers whether there are realistic alternatives to the brutally effective system we now have.This is an unflinching look at people at their worst and best - and most ruthless and most vulnerable - by one of Australia's finest reporters.