Well I will not be signing the petition. In fact I find the whole idea of supporting a fascist prison camp in Tasmania for a small economic gain to be quite creepy.

Does each detainee cost $80k/year to keep in detention? That is a truckload of extra tax for Australians to have to pay and no doubt a significant fraction is also siphoned off by bureaucrats who oversee the money-flow process. So let’s find a different system which doesn’t cost as much, as enjoy the benefits of a smaller deficit for future generations.

Lets keep the refugees in our community and tell SERCO and their chemical controllers to piss off.

Pontville is Tasmania’s share of Gillard’s open door enforced immigration, wiping her hands of the social consequneces, like ‘Big Australia’ Rudd before her.

Many people who sign the petition are against indefinite mandatory detention. We should be creeped out as to why a rich, peaceful, diverse and strong nation need such hysterics about asylum seekers!

While we ask government for policy reform, there are real people who in the next month will experience real losses of community support (asylum seekers) and jobs (Tasmanians).

Amen to processing people on-shore in the community; more dignity, more savings. However, this petition is simply about location, not government policy. Location here or there.

Whether people are in Pontville (close to community care) or in overcrowded and remote detention centres in a desert. Whether the employees will be Tasmanian or mainlanders.

Consider signing & sharing.

Yet another shining shemozzle and a superb example of how our government works.

What was this place….$15 million bucks for six months, plus whatever it costs to “house” these people.

Imagine the “inmates” coming from the sweltering heat to a “rifle range” in the middle of a Pontville winter.

Hell on earth for sure.

We, the working poor will no doubt have to fork out more and more to help keep the money tree upright, while our government will simply “requisition” another of whatever they decide they need this week…..

If it wasn’t real it would all just be a bad dream…

#6 Dave, “Hell on earth for sure”. You just reminded me of something my mother said when we arrived in South Australia as ten pound poms in Jan 1960. The Finsbury Hostel was an ex army camp, tin huts to live in and an extra large one for communal eating. Very basic believe me. It was in the middle of a heatwave, not a blade of grass to be seen, just dust - long queues for cold water despatched through a hatch each afternoon for 1 hour (in the blazing sun). My mother stood outside our tin hut and said “This is how I imagined hell to be”.  At least at Pontville I’m sure there will be heating/cooling and far more civilised living conditions generally. The money has been spent developing the place so I think it should stay.

It is kinda mad isn’t it. We as citizens allow our government to get away with it too.

Yet somehow the people with the least power, and who are essentially stateless, are to blame for our waste, fear, greed, bad political decisions, uninformed votes and anything else we can absolve ourselves of.

Whilst all this unfolds about “them”, it’s an interesting look in the mirror at “us”.

Keeping Pontville open is a start, and just the beginning of the changes that we need to demand!

Add your voice to the 375 who have already:

http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-for-immigration-and-citizenship-australia-keep-pontville-idc-open

Well,well,well.It only seems like yesterday that the locals were getting their underwear in a twist over this detention camp, and now there’s a petition to keep it. My, my, my but don’t circumstances change opinions?

#7. Maddie, I don’t know how they live inside at Pontville or any other gaol…fortunately for me I was born here and fortunately I’ve never been to gaol (I’m sure that would be my end should that occur).

As one of the wealthiest nations on the planet and now one of the most selfish, I’m sure we could do better.

We have many homeless up the north of the island and I’m sure many in the Hobart area who I’m sure would agree.

I don’t get the whole thing really.

Just add it to the list.

For the homeless?

As one of the richest smartest countries in the world we are foolish to believe we EITHER help asylum seekers OR the homeless. Only limiting variable is our capacity to care. After useing the homeless to feel good about hating asylumn seekers, do people actually engage the homeless?

I’ve worked with people who are homeless, and it’s naive to assume it’d all be ok if they could all congregate in dorms in a Pontville field. Never mind the mental illness, lack of meaningful occupation, violent relationships, addiction, lack of friendships, spaces where they belong or whatever issues co-existing with their experience of homelessness. 

I think the petition is simply asking Chris Bowen to recondiser and review based on current facts, not the hysteria or tired rhetoric.

http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-for-immigration-and-citizenship-australia-keep-pontville-idc-open

If some white knight provided the funding, groups of Australia’s underclass could leave their identities behind, buy an old boat, remove its identity, and sail up towards the north side of Ashmore Reef.

Thereafter they would be greeted by the Navy, given health checks, clean accommodation, three meals a day and look forward to resettlement with proper government support.

But while they are locals, can’t find work and are drip fed by CentreLink, their prospects are worse than for many foreign asylum seekers arriving for the good life.