How low can we go?

The past few weeks in Australian politics has been one of the most disturbing I can remember. In the 38 years I've lived in this country.

The refugee debate sank to it's lowest point since Paul Keating introduced mandatory detention back in the early 90's. The purpose of that strategy was to ensure that people who arrived on our shores as refugees, no matter what way they did so, would be detained until their appeal for asylum could be processed.

During the Howard years it was turned into a form of punishment for daring to request help for a better life from those who arrived on our shores by boat from Indonesia. The most disgusting policy of all was the excising of Australian territories and islands. From the mainland to attempt to prevent "Those people" from reaching mainland Australia.

It eventually developed into a policy of off-shore processing with people arriving by boat being declared "illegal immigrants and queue jumpers" when those making these claims knew the fact is that it is not illegal to seek asylum and there is no queue; they demonised these people as potential terrorists and fed the post 9/11 fear by pandering to a national undercurrent of racism and xenophobia that has no place in the world of 21st century Australia; a country made up of immigrants and refugees from all parts of the globe.

This appalling mindset was even given voice in the Australian parliament by an ignorant red-neck redhead who used her maiden speech to decry the Asian invasion and the ungrateful aborigines who were only interested in a handout; it smelt of McCarthyism at best. She has since graced the KKK hall of fame and is a pin-up for the neo-Nazi movement

The fact that the prime minister of the day did nothing to denounce such unacceptable garbage became a modern example of Dr Martin Luther-King jr's proclamation that "evil things happen when good people do nothing." the fact that those who courted her support in the senate would not speak against her has become an example of some of the dirtiest politics in this nation.

The long term detention of families with children in on-shore detention centres and eventually in centres built on Christmas island and Nauru has left a legacy of broken people suffering with mental illness; dehumanised, treated as criminals by the very people they sought asylum and sanction from.

The clean broom of the Labor government which took office in 2007 made short shrift of righting many of the hate-filled policies of the Howard years by releasing asylum seekers from detention and providing a more humane approach to refugees. The rhetoric appeared to change for a while.

Over the past 12 months the current government has been "in a race to the bottom" in an attempt to shore up the very policies that they decried whilst in opposition. They have sought to pander to the lowest common denominator being driven by polling that is both biased and unbalanced; as Sir Humphrey Appleby would like to remind us "you can make a poll provide you with whatever result you want. It's just a matter of how you ask the questions."

In recent weeks however, the government has sunk to a new low in this contentious debate attempting to shore a policy of off-shore processing that has been demonstrated to be illegal according to the laws of the nation and the international conventions to which this country is a signatory. They have sought to demonstrate a level of political muscle that has taken a step so far to the right that they have left the consummate hypocrite, Tony Abbott in their dust; trying to do a run around the law to appease the bigoted minority who will never be satisfied with the facts as much as they are with their opinions.

Or, this minority is presented what they will think by the opinions they are fed by the self-serving shock jocks in this country like Alan Jones, or the swill presented as news by the Liberal party broadsheet, "The Australian" and the other newspapers in the News Ltd and Consolidated press stables as well as the commercial television stations who treat the parliament like one more episode of "Big Brother" or some other form of 'reality' TV where you get to vote someone off the island each night of the week.

This appalling attempt to disregard the human rights of these people was even further undermined by the well known bigot from the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) their CEO Jim Wallace who when passed the question on the ABC show Q&A on Monday night voiced one of the most despicable things I've heard him say about other human beings.

His response was that: "most of these people arriving by boat have had the money to pay these people smugglers and when they get here they are successful because they are  entrepreneurial. We should be stopping the boats to ensure we get those who are the most needy."

This was his great opportunity to demonstrate his so frequently flaunted 'Christian' credentials; to say that these people are entitled to seek refuge in this and other countries around the world. they are entitled to seek a better life for their children and their families because they see the opportunity available in countries like ours. Instead he chose to slam the door closed in the face of those in need because these people have the ability to come here and opportunity to develop businesses that not only provide for their families but for other Australians as well; not burgeoning the state; the accusation levelled most frequently at these human beings. Instead, he made the word 'entrepreneur' a dirty word.

How quickly we forget the war ravaged Jews who fed Europe at the end of WWII. How many of them took everything they owned and sold what they had to be able to get passage to places like Australia and the USA. They came in their thousands; huddled on ships we didn't turn them away. Is it because these people are not European but from the Middle-East and war torn countries in Africa? Is it because they are in many cases Muslim?

The old red-herring of "they don't integrate with the rest of society." they want to hold onto their values that don't fit with ours. Is despicable when you consider the ghettos of English immigrants in this country like Rockingham in WA and the Jewish enclaves of Melbourne, or the Italians and Greeks who have been in Australia for 30 - 40 years but still don't have enough English to get by because they chose not to learn it.

Let me reiterate that it is not illegal to seek asylum. It is not illegal to be a refugee. There is no imaginary queue out there in Asia for these people to join to be able to find a safe and easier way to get to this country. There are no Australian embassies for these people to go to where they come from. They take whatever option is available for them to come to this country. We should be rewarding their ingenuity instead of treating them as criminals.

Most importantly let me pull back the curtain to reveal the wizard's trick; the slight of hand that gets you distracted from what is really going on. There are somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 people in this country who have arrived by plane and overstayed their visas; funnily enough they are not being rounded up and put into detention. Instead the few hundred that have taken their lives into their own hands and placed their. Very survival into the hands of people smugglers who send them to sea crowded and huddled in craft that are poorly designed for the journey they face. They are singled out by the media who drive the despicable feeding frenzy which is the excuse for asylum seeker debate in this country.


If the government truly want to break the people smuggling then let them provide sufficient efficient processing of claims from refugees at the point where they set sail. put processing of people in Indonesia and Malaysia. Then if there are still boats (which would be very few and far between) process them on the mainland. The joke about turning boats around is a macabre one because it puts these people at even greater risk. It is time for this process to dive into a more humane direction; Australia needs to reclaim its humanity.

Otherwise time will mark this as a dark period in the history of this nation. Let the light now shine.