It’s amazing what nonsense Murdoch, and Murdochism, has taught us to believe. We are lately told that a journey that has any danger in it must not be embarked upon, and we must ‘stop the boats’ to prevent that happening.
But every car journey has risk to it, and fifteen hundred Australians die of that risk every year, and fifteen thousand are crippled, blinded, disfigured or made stupider than they were and become a burden on their relatives, a greater figure in one year than all the boat people victims put together. But there is no ‘stop the cars’ campaign, no arresting and imprisoning of anyone over the speed limit until they are ‘processed’ into becoming safe drivers.
We know a fair proportion of those who attempt to win the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race drown in the attempt, but every year we wave them off, whatever the weather. And no ‘stop the yachts’ campaign, despite hundreds of shipwrecks, has yet occurred.
We know full well that a sixteen year old puffing on his/her first cigarette is beginning a process that may kill him/her in his/her fifty-fifth year but we do not catch them, imprison them and bully them out of the habit before it is too late. Seventeen thousand of them die in middle age every year in Australia and yet we do not make illegal the selling of these lethal, addictive poisons, and that is very strange.
We know that many men murder their wives and their ex-wives yet we do not stop people marrying young, or out of their culture, or into Scientology or Shi-ite or Amish fundamentamentalism, or into those Hindu cults where bride-burning is frequent and a matter of family honour, and brothers murder their sisters for losing their virginity or kissing a foreigner or having a cup of coffee with him. We do not arrest those brides and young women and take them away for their own safety when logically we should.
We know that going into the army can result in death or gang rape yet we do not arrest and imprison young people who try to do it.
We know that entering the Catholic Church or staying in it can result in rape, madness and suicide yet their is no ‘stop the priests’ campaign. We think people have right to harm themselves in this way if they choose to and we let them get on with it.
So what are we talking about?
Do we really want, primarily, boat people not to risk their lives or do we just want them back in Afghanistan risking their lives — and their children’s lives — in another way, out of our sight and our mind?
When we see young women being killed in a public square for adultery in that country it’s hard to see why we’re saying anyone should stay there and they’re not ‘genuine refugees’ for wanting their daughters to grow up here, not there?
What are we really doing?
What?
Is it Murdoch’s will, or are we really as evil as it seems we are?
I invite discussion of this.
Name:
Whatever might be the ethical moral or humanitarian dimensions of our response to refugees seeking asylum, it seems absolutely clear to me that, as with several other issues, the current Coalition front bench, backed by Rupert Moloch, are only interested in the issue from the point of view of forcing an election before the electorate realise that the emperor has no budgie smugglers. This is neither loyal opposition nor holding the government to account; this is sabotage pure and simple. Throwing banana skins onto the stage and heckling the actors is not a substitute for play writing.
I would discuss but you banned me,
It’s one of life’s little ironies Bob that people are scared witless of flying in aircraft and yet statistically they’re safer than your bathroom.
The reasons for these fears don’t mesh with the stated logic behind them. Just as the stated reasons for every “stop the boats” argument made about asylum seekers are completely and utterly disingenuous.
Perish the thought that we have to go through to many more of these reasons before finally and at exhausting length by process of elimination we’re forced to confront the one fault that we least like to admit. We just don’t like sharing with little brown people.
I suspect we all know Marilyn’s views : take them as read.
Hello Bob,
First time contributor - have been eating up the pages of your blog wondering what took me so long to find it.
Two comments on this issue:
First, as you and many others have pointed out, this issue is political gold for Abbott. The last thing he wants is for it to go away.
Second, on the so-called this ‘turn the boats back’ diatribe (which will now be added to ‘stop the boats’, and ‘we will decide who comes here…’ in that pantheon of inspirational election slogans.) Ah, but we are now told the boats will be turned around “if safe to do so”. The result is obvious, predictable and deadly: in their desperation, asylum seekers will make their boats so unseaworthy that the Navy cannot turn them around. In other words, the policy will spark a surge in even less safe craft trying to cross the oceans.
Coalition policy exploits community anxieties and fears while being dressed up in ‘humanitarian concern’ drag - ‘we don’t want people to drown getting here on leaky boats’.
Could the ‘lamestream’ Murdoch media please finally call the coalition out on the biggest dog whistle of all time?
Bob says these people are risking their lives. That they are genuine. Fleeing oppression. Feeing murder. Fleeing insanity. That they are genuine refugees. Looking for a tendril of hope. That they are the real deal!
Then I read this.
“The source said the practice of premeditated distress calls only hours after putting off from the Java coast had spread after the Australians sought and were given Indonesian permission to rescue survivors of two capsized boats last month. “The people-smugglers tell them, ‘Just call the Australians and they will come and get you’,” the source said.”
In other words, call a taxi after only 80km from Java!
I’d say in the words of Kevin Rudd, “they are playing with your mind Bob.”
Or, “tell him, he’s dreamin.”
Well, what are they fleeing?
With respect, Bob, you have not really responded to the substance of this post.
The poster is suggesting that, as I read it, that the fact that this particular group of travellers called in a distress call so early means that they are not genuine refugees. This may well be refutable but you have not tried to refute it, merely cast a throwaway line.
Yes, the means by which they get to a better place than the tyranny they are fleeing may well be inconvenient to some naval personnel, but that is not the point. The point is what they are fleeing, and what would happen to them and their children, in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan or Indonesia, if they stayed.
It is almost certain some small craft broke the laws of the sea while ferrying soldiers off Dunkirk Beach to England in 1940. But it was right those laws were broken because of the 200,000 lives the small boats saved from Nazi persecution and, in many cases, execution.
Or perhaps you disagree.
Frank; A Japanese proverb loosely translated for you.
‘If you believe everything you read, better not read’.
How would a phone call determine the non-refugee status of a person?
Who made the call?
One of them?
All of them?
Was it the crew on instruction from their master?
I’d rather leave the determination of refugee status for each of these people who are asylum seekers in fact to the process as laid down by the UNCHR.
Adoption of the Ellis/Palmer and others solution would solve all this angst.
No boats, no smugglers, no drownings and much less hot air by the uninformed.
An Alan Jones listener where I work is currently receiving emails about how the Taliban are coming to Australia in ease and comfort and receiving luxury treatment on arrival. I think this is genuine insanity going on in this country at the moment. We do have a dark past and something has got to give sometime. There is that disconnected layer of cold, hard whitism that only manages a sense of belonging through force of will. This land is funny. If you don’t belong here, it doesn’t reveal itself to you. The cold, hard whitism is like a force in a box, just sitting on the surface. If it spills out and takes over on a fundamental level, what then? Matty Johns on the radio yesterday, after having being told that the reason they don’t teach Australian history in years eleven and twelve is because they get taught it in years nine and ten, said “well let’s hope Abbott gets in so we can be taught Australian history in schools”. I mean, what is the end of all this? Where does all this lead? How stupid can you get, how low can you go? Australia, I suspect you’re about to find out.
I have just read some of the whitist posts on the two asylum seeker articles. I think there many Alan Jones listeners out there. These posters seem to think all asylum seekers are all people who do not want to work, who do not want live in the country towns,who do not want send their kids to ‘normal schools (what are abnormal schools), their kids do not want to learn English…
I had to stop reading, I feel like crying, from where does this hatred come from?
I’m referring to articles on ABC Drum Opinion.
They actually think that the Taliban are being given the open door luxury treatment. The crime here is wilful ignorance. The righties are right in that sentiment used loosely in this context can just be a tool of saying or thinking look how compassionate I am. This is an evidence based issue and communication of that evidence to people who are psychologically habituated to a contrary narrative. These Alan Jones listeners I’m thinking of are perfectly nice and not racist in their everyday dealings. Sitting around bagging Alan Jones listeners is no better than ganging up on so called wowser feminists, whoever they are. It’s hollow and complacent. The left needs to do better than pap if they actually want to change minds.
No reader they don’t believe it. It suits them to regurgitate it, but they don’t believe it. They don’t care enough to believe it. They’re desensitised to care for people who they’ve come to see as others, somehow separated from their own humanity.
The evidence is there alright, but perhaps it matters that much less than the capacity to look into the eyes of a fellow human being and understand that this other person, a person like you, needs your help. That is all it takes. Really…
20,000 tomorrow wouldn’t hurt.
‘In Australia this means less obsessing over hordes massing beyond the horizon, and more thought for men women and children trapped in horror on our doorstep, today.’
this is johnsalmond says on the Olmert story, I agree.
this is WHAT
That’s just you sitting up on a cloud passing judgement on a nameless demographic. If you want to say it specifically to Phil or Harold that’s one thing, but there is no such thing as this general vantage point from which you presume to speak. Some people for whatever reason think the Taliban are taking over Australia. Real people. This is a fact. Unless you want to take each of them aside and regurgitate your little spiel to their face in the hope they all buy it, no one is listening. Everyone acts according to their own moral viewpoint. It’s only when faced with indisputable truth that any of us, I think, feel compelled to give any ground. It’s not an easy process dislodging an entrenched view, it needs a rent in the curtain. A shift. It doesn’t get passed down from on high like a tin of beans.
I disagree with your analysis of the way people think. It’s the way that troglodytes such as Jones push their buttons, but it represents only a small percentage of sentiment.
The rest of the malaise is brought about by sheer unmitigated ignorance.
The reason we should go to Indonesia and get the refugees who would otherwise risk losing their lives in boats is because we can. It’s 10,000 or so. 20,000 in the next year at most. It isn’t more. There aren’t thronging hordes descending upon us from the north.
The limits of our compassion would not be stretched even moderately by the actual numbers. And Australians are at their core a nation of immigrants with good hearts and a welcoming nature.
It is only our political class who are presently turning us into a version of the spectre of White Australia reloaded.
Whenever I speak to my mates Phil and Harold (how prescient that you know them), they hardly pontificate from on high about the subject they stand up as grown men of character should and tell racism to “go fuck itself”…. Wonderful command of the English language these Vietnamese people have
Hudson, I’m a leftie and even I’m vomiting. Is my Alan Jones listening workmate a troglodyte or a good natured peasant? Which is it to be?
Go forth and educate the peasant. Quickly it is a matter of urgency for us both!
Are there any statistics on the percentage of ‘irregular boat arrivals’ in employment or in education or on welfare?
Presumably a scientific evaluation of any such figures would go a long way towards resolving the arguments about the cost/benefit to the community of the refugee program.
“Are there any statistics…”
This is out there:-
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/archive/national-old/a-world-of-long-term-welfare-for-refugees/story-e6freuzr-1226050094427
“The greatest unemployment rate was recorded among new arrivals from Iraq and Afghanistan, with less than one in 10 finding full-time work and 93.7 per cent of households receiving Centrelink payments”
It has been a race to the bottom for a while unfortunately. And I get the sense that Jones may me leading it. I personally can’t bear him and never could so I find it difficult to understand what people see in him. I only hope it isn’t something truly odious in our national psyche.
Not only is he not much of a peerson, his arguments are irrational and have no logic. I think ‘rant’ is the appropriate way to describe his style.
Style? Not even.
I been in doctor’s waiting rooms where you are forced listen to his rants; one can’t go outside as your doctor might be calling you in…
My iPod has a volume control fit for that occasion.
Have you ever thought of Indonesia refusing entry of these people in the first place. I suppose that is too simple a solution. I am sure they would be only to happy prevent them country hopping to our wishes for the right price. They only allow it to happen as a political tool and a gravey train for their officer and politicians. Might as well pay the directly on a performance basis
Well the push factor just got a shot in the arm, after the head of MI6 says that their James Bonds’ managed to stall Iran from becoming a nuclear weaponered state back in 2008, however those dreaded Persians are on track for a 2014 atomic gala opening, for which MI6 seems to have no plans for stopping although JB has a number of tuxedo’s in his wardrobe.
The main thrust of this public announcement is to put the case, that it will be very difficult for the US and Israel to refrain from a military attack, and so we should all ready ourselves for this eventuality.
I suppose this is also in line with the US’s refusal to have Iran play a role in negotiating a solution in Syria. Either Iran is a player in the region or not a player, if it is important enough to attack, why is it not important enough to help broker a solution in its own back yard?
Is it incumbent on us to accept escapees from a possible nuclear congflagration?
Is the End of Days a check box on the Immigration application?
Truth is that the Leveson enquiry creeps relentlessly on, exposing, informing, charging…
Truth is that this is not ignored in USA, and processes may well unfold with due process there: rationally, logically, slowly,implacably, as with the impeachment of R Nixon.
Truth is that any such enquiry here would be over in a trice, with all “important, ie rich, hierarchical “names” automatically precluded from any wrong doing; and any key figu
We live in a very hierarchical country, where justice is not only hierarchical, but the population accepts that it is.
We kowtow to “influence”. there is more wrong in that than in Murdoch.
umm. any key figures exonerated because of their “memory lapses” which conveniently always cover the time of wrongdoing but simultaneously allow them to be competent enough to run corporations, and advise or run the government.