Thatcher asked Australia to buy island for boat people

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: ABC

British Cabinet documents have revealed Margaret Thatcher was so worried about resettling Vietnamese refugees in Britain that she wanted Australia to help buy an island in South-East Asia to house them.

The documents from 1979, released under the 30-year rule, show that Baroness Thatcher, then in her first year as British prime minister, asked Australia to help buy an island in Indonesia or the Philippines.

She warned ministers that there could be a public backlash and riots if 10,000 boat people went to Britain at the UN's request.

But the plan was opposed by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, who was concerned the colony could become a ''rival entrepreneurial city''.



Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/31/2783256.htm?section=justin

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Interesting that Fraser (Liberal Party, ie right of centre in Aus) thinks refugees aren't a problem

from the article:

"Australia took up 20,000 (boat people) or more for two or three years in a row," he said.

"We managed to handle that number with compassion, with humanity, and without any particular concern."
...
Mr Fraser says Opposition leader Tony Abbott's opinion that refugee boats should be turned back, is out of touch.

"I think it's the policy out of the past, appropriate to the 1930s," he said.

"The idea of taking boat people back out to sea is also a total denial of obligations under the refugee convention."

It shows that some countries really have had a rightward shift in the past couple of decades, when the old party leaders are criticising the present ones as too right-wing.