"HIV Patients Not Welcome in Australia" John Howard (1 Viewer)

[banco55]

I think the reason there is widespread public support for immigration in Australia is because it's seen as benefiting Australia. Once you start allowing the immigration of large numbers of people who will frankly only be a burden on the taxpayer support for immigration will probably fall.

 

[withoutaface]

Thaannks. It's true though...

1. Evidence?
2. Relevance?

 

[Nebuchanezzar]

1. It's the same with all of you "free market, privatise everything" sons of bitches. As soon as you need some help it's waah waah waah to the government for help.

2. See above.

 

[withoutaface]

1. Secundum quid.
2. See above not sufficient even your response to 1 were true, because even if my credibility is nil there should be something within the argument itself which is faulty, and you've failed to identify that something.

 

[_dhj_]

Nice tu quoque.

dhj: I'm making a statement based on the current circumstance, and then another provided certain other conditions were met, because I believe this is a good way to illustrate the reasoning behind my position. I fail to see the inconsistency.

And I'm saying that there is no need to provide those conditions because they will never arise in a liberal democratic society. The "weakness" of human nature - including our compassion and nature as social creatures - disallows it.

 

[ur_inner_child]

Howard in hot water over HIV comments

Kerry-Anne Walsh
April 15, 2007

AN off-the-cuff commitment by Prime Minister John Howard to consider banning HIV sufferers from entering or migrating to Australia is likely to be quietly dishonoured.

Government insiders said federal immigration and health ministers were yet to hear from Mr Howard about how such a "difficult" plan could be implemented.

On Friday, Mr Howard told a Melbourne radio station the Government could consider barring the entry of migrants or refugees with HIV status.

Mr Howard had reacted spontaneously to a radio interviewer's question "without thinking", insiders said.

"This is one of those rare occasions when he's said something that's got him into strife," a government adviser said.

The Prime Minister said on radio that his "initial reaction" was that HIV sufferers should only be allowed into Australia for humanitarian reasons.

He was responding to a statement by Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike that 70 new notifications of HIV-positive people were due to "immigrants" to that state.

Mr Howard said he thought Australia should have the most stringent possible conditions in relation to HIV migrants, though humanitarian considerations could temper that.

A spokesman for Ms Pike later said the 70 immigrants the Minister referred to included 50 arrivals from interstate.

Mr Howard's response will be raised in the Liberal Party room if it becomes a definite intention.

All people over the age of 15 who apply for permanent residence are tested for HIV; those under 15 are only tested if either or both parents are HIV positive.

The majority of temporary visa applicants - more than 200,000 a year - are not tested for the non-contagious but transmissible disease. Only those seeking to come to Australia to work in the medical profession are tested.

Government sources said it would be difficult to screen temporary entrants, and even more difficult in a non-discriminatory immigration program to single out HIV sufferers.

HIV experts have criticised Howard's declaration.

Levinia Crooks, chief executive of the Australasian Society for HIV Medicine, told The Sun-Herald that it was "incorrect to link the rise in HIV diagnoses to international migration".

 

[Bacilli]

People rejecting purely on the basis that "Pauline suggested something similar" are morons.

The idea is to prevent a pandemic.

My stance is that Australia shouldn't take any immigrants who are, or will be in the very near future, unproductive and as such will leach off our welfare and public health systems.

Yeah, other factors need to be considered as described above; we only need to investigate the countries these people originate to discover it's a bad idea to grant them citizenship. Their lack of awareness itself is a weapon, and allowing large volumes of international diseased people will bring nothing but grief to the Australian people. I realise they're human and we should recognize their hardship; however, there's no need to argue the obvious - it's a bad idea to allow them to migrate into Blacktown.

 

[imaginarylife]

Immigrants are already screened with respect to HIV, so John Howard's proposal is not a new idea. Those HIV sufferers that are let through are usually spouses, or have humanitarian needs.
John Howard just shows his ignorance again. Further restricting the system is unneccesary.

 

[jimmayyy]

Discrimination and racism, all in one.

rofl

when you are both a minority in your own land and infected with AIDS ill remind you of this

 

[nekobutterfly]

I think it matter....but the answer is not to just keep letting people immigrate, these people wouldn't want to immigrate if their country wasn't in such a bad condition and if their government weren't co corrupted, we should be aiming to fix this rather then just keep letting people in because even if they do immigrate here, they are still strangers and their family are still in their other country, also it would mean we wouldn't need to spend so much money on helping them settle in (not to mention it would save us from cultural clashes).

 

[Cheap Thrills]

Typical Howard. I'm gonna use this thread for a bit of a rant on him. What a dumbass. Ignorant, capitalising fuck and those that elected him should be shot. I don't understand how this absolute fucktard has managed to be re-elected so many times, but it is seriously shitting me to tears. Lying and two-faced. Fuck I can't wait till I can vote:burn:

 

[ur_inner_child]

Well, rant all you want, just make sure it's kinda relevant to the topic at hand somehow...

 

[Cheap Thrills]

Yeah i know a bit irrelevant, but I did it anyway. I just don't like the guy.

 

[liverpool3k]

So, you liked Latham?

 

[loquasagacious]

Funnily enough this was actually the topic of a tute I had last week on security studies.....

My position is broadly similar to wafs.

Start with the basic premise that the primary function of the state is to protect its citizens.

Does AIDS/HIV pose a threat to Australian citizens? Yes, it would suck pretty majorly to get infected. How then do you stop people getting infected? Well your first step is to minimise the number of people who are already infected - this means excluding the infected from entry to Australia. Then you deal with the infected who are already here through education programmes.

Then there is the budget, or rather the health of the state, the state must be healthy to protect the people therefore we should be aiming for healthy budgets. This means cutting un-necessary costs as this leaves more money to be spent more productively elsewhere. For instance would you rather $8-13K be spent on treating an immigrant with AIDS or would you rather it being spent on schools?

There's a fair body of historic precedence; people with tubercolosis are currently excluded, people with spanish influenza were quarantined, etc etc. Even today migrants undertake a physical to asses their potential impact on the healthcare system and if it is going to be a big impact their capacity to 'pay their own way' is assessed. Looking to the future it may become a very pressing issue to close our borders to disease carriers if we have to face threats like avian flu or an airborne strain of ebola.

In summation: it's nothing new, its completely justified and in the future we may well have to do it on a larger scale.

 

[S1M0]

rofl

when you are both a minority in your own land and infected with AIDS ill remind you of this

Well i've fulfilled the first criteria, we'll wait and see for the second.

 

[jimmayyy]

Typical Howard. I'm gonna use this thread for a bit of a rant on him. What a dumbass. Ignorant, capitalising fuck and those that elected him should be shot. I don't understand how this absolute fucktard has managed to be re-elected so many times, but it is seriously shitting me to tears. Lying and two-faced. Fuck I can't wait till I can vote:burn:

o rly i c

so u will just vote against him for those reasons? not because there is actually a better candidate out there?

change for changes sake?

typical uneducated young fuck.

this is why youth is wasted on the young.

im so sick of ignorant kids spewing this sort of crap.

"O M G HOWARD IS BAD SO LETS VOTE LABOUR"

its fucking ridiculous. youth in this country are SO uneducated against politics. more and more young people are becoming infected with this bullshit philosophy that they should vote labour simply because they dont like howard because of what they read in the papers or see on tv or what their dickhead leftist union loving business studies teachers tell them at school. so many peers of mine have no clue about economy, welfare, medicare etc etc and are just going to turn 18 and become little sheep voting for whoever the fuck labour puts up come election time because its the trendy thing to do. the whole "it's time for a change" (based on some people not digging Iraq, or petrol prices, or David Hicks, or IR laws or whatever the Telegraph jerks off over enough to put on their front page) train of thought is so dangerous its not even funny. we are going to elect a fucking boob simply because cunts like this "dont like john howard". nothing to do with the fact he has lead one of the most stable government periods since Menzies, nothing to do with the fact he has taken the economy on a $16B swing from red to black, nothing about his outstanding work when it comes to foreign dipomacy.

oh no, none of that

"i dont like john howard"

that.

THAT is why we are going to end up in the same hole we always end up in when we elect labour simply because we want a change from liberal, even if liberal have done a fucking good job.

fuck me.

end rant.

 

[banco55]

Funnily enough this was actually the topic of a tute I had last week on security studies.....

My position is broadly similar to wafs.

Start with the basic premise that the primary function of the state is to protect its citizens.

Does AIDS/HIV pose a threat to Australian citizens? Yes, it would suck pretty majorly to get infected. How then do you stop people getting infected? Well your first step is to minimise the number of people who are already infected - this means excluding the infected from entry to Australia. Then you deal with the infected who are already here through education programmes.

Then there is the budget, or rather the health of the state, the state must be healthy to protect the people therefore we should be aiming for healthy budgets. This means cutting un-necessary costs as this leaves more money to be spent more productively elsewhere. For instance would you rather $8-13K be spent on treating an immigrant with AIDS or would you rather it being spent on schools?

There's a fair body of historic precedence; people with tubercolosis are currently excluded, people with spanish influenza were quarantined, etc etc. Even today migrants undertake a physical to asses their potential impact on the healthcare system and if it is going to be a big impact their capacity to 'pay their own way' is assessed. Looking to the future it may become a very pressing issue to close our borders to disease carriers if we have to face threats like avian flu or an airborne strain of ebola.

In summation: it's nothing new, its completely justified and in the future we may well have to do it on a larger scale.

Hey if you're not prepared to accept sufferers of bird flu as immigrants and let them wande around sydney you're a fascist.

 

[kami]

Someone who is unhealthy in the more generic sense may or may not contribute direct to the economy (and being ill does not prevent one from doing so) however they may contribute in other ways; socially, culturally or what have you and as our country is not a purely economic agency and thus we cannot in good conscience reject people based solely on that. However AIDS is a different matter entirely; it is an incurable, lethal, highly contagious infection that as of yet we have not been able to control within our own society. I do fear the consequences that would follow from taking a hardline stance with this - there do exist certain prejudices, rooted in both race and sexuality, that may cause the current exclusionary government to prevent entry to people based on obvious demographics they think might have AIDS.

 

[KFunk]

Another way of dealing with the problem (speaking in terms of infectious diseases in general) --> invest more in research/medications which aim to lessen the prevalence of the disease. Regardless of what we do, infectious agents typically refuse to respect national borders. Even if we do succeeed with keeping infectious people out of our country nature will often find a way, think poultry, rats, mosquitos, parasites in river systems and so forth (we are more protected than most being an island). It's easy for european nations to sit back and see the spread of tuberculosis through the Russian prison system as just 'Russia's problem', back that ignores the fact that it vastly increases the chance of an outbreak in the region. If the world could unite on the issue of health then perhaps we wouldn't have to deal with this problem? (certainly not to the same degree).