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December 10, 2007
And so it ends. Or begins, depending on your point of view. The Pacific Solution sounded like the title of a Hollywood blockbuster and was introduced with all the appropriate fanfare. Tough men with big guns protecting our borders from incursions by displaced riff-raff. Global detritus trying to pass themselves off as a handful of the harmless homeless. Queue jumping opportunists travelling through several countries leaving shredded documentation and drowning children in their wake.
It was all very dramatic and Cecil B DeMille heroic at the time, and it certainly put Nauru on the map. So why are we not seething with outrage now that it's being dismantled? Where are the editorials warning of dire consequences like imminent hordes of wringing wet pretenders seething and flooding like a human tide over our northern borders with all sorts of nefarious intentions?
Why is this not front page news? Will a bleeding heart Rudd government close mainland detention centres? Will we see investigations of Tampa, Children Overboard or SIEV X?
Somehow I doubt it. As disappointing as it may be for some of us, it's more likely that asylum seeker issues will be dealt with quickly and quietly, as they should have been all along.
It takes a very, ahem, special mindset to blatantly make political capital out of human misery. Fortunately it's not all that common. Unfortunately, the success of the anti-refugee campaign lay not in discouraging further arrivals, but in its appeal to the fearful. Anyone wanting to repair our international reputation and still get elected would be best advised not to make a big deal out of it.
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Bit sad isn't it, the Fraser government had the balls to push for public acceptance of the Vietnam boat people, today for this lot, no-one except Bob Brown.