By Rich Bowden:

Refugee advocates have expressed concern over Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s tough new approach to asylum seekers as the country prepares for a federal election as early as August.

Ms Gillard told Australian media at the weekend that she intended to listen to Australians’ concerns about the number of refugees arriving by boat adding that peoples’ questioning of the existing policy did not make them xenophobic.

“For people to say they’re anxious about border security doesn’t make them intolerant, it certainly doesn’t make them a racist,” she said. “They’re expressing a genuine view that they’re anxious about border security.”

Her comments square with attempts to placate conservatives since her elevation to the top job, according to the Eurasia Review, quoting her comments on the 7.30 Report as proof:

“I do understand the anxiety and indeed fears that Australians have when they see boats, they see boats intercepted. It does make people anxious. I can understand that, I really can. And I can understand that Australians therefore say to their government that they want to know what we are doing to manage our borders and what we are doing to manage asylum seeker flows.”

The renewed tough stand policy is expected to be announced later this week and officials have said they are currently working on an agreement with Afghanistan’s President Karzai to guarantee the safety of returned ethnic minority Hazaras to their homeland.

Many are expecting Prime Minister Gillard’s release of the new asylum seeker policy this week to include provisions to allow the return of Sri Lankan and Afghani refugees to their homeland a policy fraught with danger says WA Human Rights group Project SafeCom.

“If reports by today’s Australian newspaper are to be taken seriously, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard is about to announce the Karzai Solution, where in a ‘pact’ with Afghanistan she expect guarantees for safety for Hazaras from the Karzai government, then she’s either dreaming or lying about the prognosis of safety for Hazaras to the Australian electorate,” said the refugee support group.

Spokesman Jack H Smit accused the prime minister of misrepresenting the facts of the asylum seeker debate.

“In the context of the ‘pact plans’ Gillard’s media lines of the last couple of days about ‘opening up the debate’ are her first brazen political misrepresentation of the facts since winning office, and we will not forget. Neither will the thousands of Hazaras forget, or the family members of those Gillard plans to send back to the war theatre, ready for point-blank-range targeted killings, beheadings or other ways the Taliban will think of to kill Hazaras.”

Sophie Richardson, from the Washington-based group Human Rights Watch, was quoted by the ABC as saying there was legitimate and historical cause for concern over Australia’s overly harsh asylum seeker policies announced close to a federal election.

“Clearly what they should [do] is get rid of these new and peculiar and frankly discriminatory standards with respect to Sri Lankans and Afghans, and return to the norm, which is very simple,” she said.

“Anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution, regardless of where they are coming from, is entitled to at least the process which determines the veracity of their claim.”

Tags: gillard asylum seekers, gillard refugees, hazari refugees, labor refugee policy