July 6, 2010
So we are back to the Pacific Solution to asylum seekers with the Gillard Government, only it is not a Pacific Solution ---it is a regional processing centre in East Timor. From where I stand the effect is the same-- to send asylum claimants to a handy and none-too-appealing offshore destination to await processing.
The appeal to the xenophobic voters in marginal seats in western Sydney and elsewhere, who are demanding a hard line on those asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat, is the same as Howard's. Apparently the public or political debate on asylum seekers is somehow being constrained by political correctness that is equated with self-censorship. Isn't that what Howard used to say?
Gary Sauer-Thompson, watching for the boat people, Victor Harbor, 2010
Victor Harbor is definitely John Howard's One Nation conservative territory. It's Anglo-Saxon, white and very Christian in a fundamentalist sense--in the sense that the evangelical Christians believe that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs, talk a lot about Intelligent Design, are anti-science and want their creationism taught in classrooms. They are frightened by economic insecurity, threats to moral purity and the gradual disappearance of a national white Christian culture. They want to restoring the nation to some moment when the country was white and safe and to protect the family from “worldly dangers.”
The poodles and I have been doing our bit each morning for the nation since we've been down at Victor Harbor this week.We are out before dawn walking along the cliff tops checking for the boats that the press say are coming. I have to report that we ain't seen no boat people. We've seen the fishing men in their boats, but no patrol boats protecting us from the nasty people whom the Murdoch Press constantly tell us are out to destroy all that we hold dear and true. But we do hear the many dog whistles and they are loud and clear in the still morning air. There are so many, its kinda confusing.
Labor is definitely rattled, even though it is going to take a long time (20 years) to fill the MCG with asylum seekers at present rates of arrival. They are less than 1.5 per cent of new migrants. That's not the point though is it. It's the spectre of the White Australia policy that haunts us.
The asylum seekers arriving by boat are the Other. They threaten us because they are not like us. They--the Hazaras---are from Afghanistan while the others--- the Tamil Tigers---are from Sri Lanka. They don't adjust into the Australian way of life. We've lost control of our borders. We need to close the borders by whatever means are necessary. This Islamophobic narrative in western Sydney says that Australia needs to close the borders to the Islam invasion and to defend the Judao-Christian heritage that is the sturdy foundation of our constitution.
The bottom line of the two ''solutions'' is the same: install a deterrent by taking all boat arrivals to another country. The irony is that the return to Fortress Australia is coming from a Labor party that once condemned John Howard's Pacific solution.
|
No signs of leadership here. It's pandering to the pathetic, trembling xenophobes. Plain and simple.
Of course the asylum seekers are the Other... that's because the self-serving politicians keep on reminding us!