Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott reminded us all why he was forcibly removed from office this week during a speech at the Margaret Thatcher Lecture in London Wednesday morning.
The Australian politician cited Thatcher's legacy and even the Bible, but his reigning idea was that the rest of the world, especially the European countries facing a massive refugee crisis, should follow by Australia's example.
As Twitter was quick to point out, there's quite a bit wrong there.
You can always rely upon #TonyAbbott to try to fix a catastrophe by adding more misery to it.
— Harry Leslie Smith (@Harryslaststand) October 28, 2015
Oh god. No. Just no #TonyAbbott pic.twitter.com/ffXRPFuOus
— Kylie (@misskylie77) October 27, 2015
Here are three things Abbott got wrong on Wedesday.
1. His advice isn't really applicable to Europe.
The magnitude of Syrian refugees coming to Europe compared to Australia is significantly different. While about 150,000 Syrians have declared asylum in the European Union, Australia plans to offer around 12,000 additional refugee visas to its original 13,750 spots.
It is also clear that simply turning boats away from European borders is an ineffective policy that won’t discourage refugees desperate to escape the brutality of the Assad regime from seeking asylum in Europe.
2.The majority of asylum seekers with accepted applications come from countries facing deteriorating political conditions.
While in his speech, Abbott argues that many of those seeking political asylum are just economic migrants taking advantage of the refugee crisis, the vast majority of accepted asylum seeker applications come from Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea, countries facing intense political crises. Here's a visualization of that movement, via The Economist.
DailyChart: Ahead of the EU's new refugee quotas, where asylum seekers come from and go http://t.co/WIDtxfQ9EK pic.twitter.com/Q5mbzs9O0r
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 13, 2015
3. "This means turning boats around for people coming by sea..."
Abbott argues that the importance of preserving European culture supercedes the responsibility of providing asylum to Syrian refugees. But especially after the photo of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on Turkish shores shocked the world last month, it's getting harder for EU leaders to brush off the needs of refugees so easily.
The UN's refugee agency says more than 700,000 refugees and asylum seekers have arrived on European shores in 2015, and that number doesn't show any signs of slowing down. If European countries want to find a solution, it's going to take a lot more work than Abbott seems to have in mind.
