About that 'boat people ad'

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post criticising the Australian governments policy of reopening the immigration centres on Nauru and Manus Islands. Since then the government has launched a advertising initiative on YouTube to compliment the return to offshore processing of asylum seekers.

The initiative is to distribute an advert on You Tube and in DVD format, telling asylum seekers that arriving by boat will not give them or their families an advantage over those arriving legally or been processed in refugee camps. The advert will be translated into seven different languages and  be distributed on line and through Australian Embassies.

In my view, processing asylum seekers offshore and distributing a YouTube advertising will not prevent asylum seekers coming by boat to Australia. Even if the ad is translated in to seven different languages, most of the people being targeted by this ad will probably not have access to a computer or the internet to view this ad. Not to mention it has cost us a lot of money to produce.

Like the decision to open the Pacific Solution, this is just another band-aid solution to a complicated issue.