Yearbook 2012
Australia. On February 22, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd
resigned with the statement that he no longer had the
confidence of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. He also said he
did not think she could lead the Labor Party to victory in
the 2013 election. It immediately led to speculation about a
leader fight within the party; In 2010, Gillard had
outmaneuvered her representative Rudd and taken over the
Prime Minister post since winning the vote on the head of
government that she had initiated. The day after Rudd's
departure, Gillard announced a vote within Labour's
parliamentary group over who would lead the party. Rudd then
announced that he was running as a candidate. In the vote,
which was held on February 27, Gillard received 71 votes to
31 for Rudd and remained as party leader. Trade Minister Bob
Carr was appointed new Foreign Minister.
 In April, 67-year-old Bob Brown resigned as leader of the
Greens. Brown, who had led the party since it was founded in
1992, was replaced by Deputy Party leader Christine Milne.
Prime Minister Gillard announced in April that the
Australian force in Afghanistan would be withdrawn in 2013
instead of 2014, as the government had previously planned.
According to Gillard, the premise was because the area in
Afghanistan where most Australians were posted had become
safer. In April 2012, the Australian ISAF force consisted of
1,550 men and was scheduled to be taken home in 2012. Around
30 Australian soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan by
then. In August, another five Australians died during a
battle in Afghanistan. So many soldiers from Australia had
not died on the same day since the Vietnam War, according to
the government.
In May, a federal court granted a group of Aboriginal
Indigenous people a special title (native title)
to Australia's largest lake, Lake Eyres, in the southern
part of the country. The verdict, which came after a 14-year
legal dispute, gave Aborigines unconditional right to
fishing, hunting, camping and traditional ceremonies in and
around the lake. The indigenous people did not receive
exclusive rights to the area, which is just over twice the
surface area as Belgium. Lake Eyres is also an important
tourist destination and some locals feared that access to
tourists would be limited following the court's decision.
Aborigines regard Lake Eyres as sacred and some of them want
to ban boats in the lake.
According to
countryaah, the government announced in June that Australia would
create the world's largest network of marine reserves. The
country's 27 marine reserves would be expanded to 60, which
together would form a three million square kilometer marine
reserve. In the area, which accounts for just over a third
of Australia's water, there will be restrictions on fishing
as well as oil and gas extraction. The professional
fishermen would be compensated for lost income, but they
objected to the decision, saying that the compensation was
insufficient. The government continued to grapple with the
refugee issue during the year and also had talks with the
opposition to try to find a new solution to the problem
since the Supreme Court in August 2011 stopped a
controversial proposal on the exchange of refugees with
Malaysia. In August 2012, Parliament's two chambers approved
the re-opening of asylum seekers' centers in the Pacific
Islands of Papua New Guinea and Nauru. The opposition
supported the proposal. In the lower house, only the Greens
and an independent member voted against. The reopening of
refugee camps was one of the most important proposals in the
report on Australia's refugee policy made by an independent
expert panel, appointed by the government, which was
published in August. Prime Minister Gillard said the
government would also follow the report's proposal to
increase the country's refugee quota from 13,700 to 20,000 a
year, as well as develop a regional refugee strategy in
collaboration with Indonesia and Malaysia. The reopening of
refugee camps was one of the most important proposals in the
report on Australia's refugee policy made by an independent
expert panel, appointed by the government, which was
published in August. Prime Minister Gillard said the
government would also follow the report's proposal to
increase the country's refugee quota from 13,700 to 20,000 a
year, as well as develop a regional refugee strategy in
collaboration with Indonesia and Malaysia. The reopening of
refugee camps was one of the most important proposals in the
report on Australia's refugee policy made by an independent
expert panel, appointed by the government, which was
published in August. Prime Minister Gillard said the
government would also follow the report's proposal to
increase the country's refugee quota from 13,700 to 20,000 a
year, as well as develop a regional refugee strategy in
collaboration with Indonesia and Malaysia.
The decisions on the refugee camps resulted in a return
to the severely criticized "Pacific solution" and thus a
radical reversal of the Labor government's policy. The
"Pacific Solution" began to be implemented in 2001, under
the conservative John Howard government, and meant Australia
paid Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house some of the
country's asylum seekers in camps. When Labor was in
opposition, they were strongly critical of the detention
camps and shut them down when they came to power in 2008. In
November, the first refugees flew to the newly opened camp
in Papua New Guinea.
The number of boat refugees who arrived in Australia
increased in 2012. Up to August, around 7,500 boat refugees
had arrived, compared with just over 5,000 throughout 2011.
Since 2009, more than 600 refugees had drowned during their
attempts to get to Australia. In June 2012, at least 17
refugees were killed in a shipwreck off the Australian
territory of Christmas Island. In a previous shipwreck off
Christmas Island, in December 2010, about 50 people died in
a barely seaworthy boat. The three Indonesian men who drove
the about 100 refugees were sentenced in September 2012 by
an Australian court to five years in prison for human
trafficking.
In November, Australia signed an agreement with the
United States to develop a radar system to track assets and
scrap in space. The agreement meant closer military
relations between the two countries, according to the
Australian authorities.
Since December 1, 2012, all cigarette packages in
Australia look the same: olive-green packages with deterrent
images of injuries that may result from smoking. The
cigarette package law, which Australia is the first in the
world to introduce, was approved by Parliament a year
earlier. The tobacco companies had since tried in vain to
stop the law. The companies' names may only appear in
lowercase on the cigarette packages.
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