“Again I keep making the point the only question that matters is, is this government prepared to do what is necessary to keep the boats stopped, the answer is yes.” Prime Minister Tony Abbott when asked about alleged payments to people smugglers by the Australian government.
There is never only one question that matters. When the leader of the country reveals this conviction as his bottom line, you know he has abandoned the basic the principles of liberal democracy.
Abbott has now publicly confirmed that in his world view the means absolutely justifies the end. If you believe he will only apply this conviction in order to “stop the boats” you’re dreaming.
What it sounds like to me is that Abbott is constructing rationalisations, minimisations and justifications for misappropriating taxpayers’ money in order to engage in the illegal act of bribing people traffickers to find a destination other than Australia, in preparation for these allegations being confirmed.
The levels on which this is corrupt, degenerate, and potentially lethal to human life are myriad, but Abbott hopes to reframe these acts of bastardry as the necessary means to the noble end of keeping Australia safe.
If it is Abbott’s creed that the means justifies then end, he is without doubt crazed. It’s a belief that can be, has been and will continue to be used to justify every kind of violence, genocide, repression, oppression and suppression, and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
There is, in the Australian abhorrence for waterborne asylum seekers as represented by both ALP and LNP governments, more than a tinge of racism. The vicious punishments meted out to them, such as indefinite detention in off-shore hell holes, demonstrate a disregard for humanity other than our own that is but a few steps away on the continuum of contempt from murdering them.
Let’s not forget that Abbott once memorably and bizarrely observed that Jesus didn’t intend everyone to come to Australia, so not only do we have the means to an end conviction in Abbott, we have the religious fanatic’s belief that he knows what God wants and is carrying out his wishes.
“The only question that matters” is a phrase favoured by those who have something to hide. It’s an avoidance phrase, and it’s a phrase intended not to inform but to obfuscate. It’s up there along with “the details don’t matter.” As soon as someone tells you the details don’t matter you know those details are central, and someone desperately doesn’t want them revealed.
It is not for a politician to determine the “only question that matters,” at least not in a western democracy. That’s the language of dictatorship. If Abbott is using taxpayers money to pay off people smugglers that’s a question that damn well matters. Apart from that, nobody thinking straight wants to be at the mercy of a government that is so flagrantly prepared to use human beings as a means to their own ends.
No Place For Sheep 
I cannot see why Jesus thought we are so privilege that we should be free not to share this wonderful country, that we have been lucky enough to be born I into. There us ample enough to share,
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You’re not going to get too many complaints about that comment around here 🙂
I’ve always put it that an accident of birth should not be the main determinant of privilege in the world today.
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I find it interesting that although both this matter of paying off Indonesian boatmen and detaining children, as raised between Bronwyn Bishop and Gillian Triggs on Q&A last night, actually may have occurred under Labor we’ll never know because this government will not brook the subject in a way that concedes that there’s anything wrong with it no matter who the culpable parties are.
Coalition members are thoroughly outraged at Triggs’ report not because they’re principally in the firing line but because their principles are being attacked. The mantra seems to be that the mere suggestion that you aren’t utterly heartless in your attitude towards asylum seekers would be the worst insult possible.
It goes beyond merely being accused of being a bit soft on free-loaders to entertain the hypocrisy of denying that turning back the boats involves failing to arrest people smugglers for their crimes when they’re intercepted at sea. Who did we think was piloting the boats back to Indonesia?
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By this we are all sustained: a belief in human nature
and in justice and parity…all we have is the faith to carry on.
Imperceptible the change as our votes become mere gestures
and our lords and masters determine to cast us
in the roles of serfs and slaves
in the new empire’s name.
Yes and every bloody emperor claims that freedom is his cause
as he buffs up on his common touch as a get-out clause.
Unto nations nations speak in the language of the gutter;
trading primetime insults the imperial impulse
extends across the screen.
Truth’s been beaten to its knees; the lies embed ad infinitum
till their repetition becomes a dictum
we’re traitors to disbelieve.
With what impotence we grieve for the democratic process
as our glorious leaders conspire to feed us
the last dregs of imperious disdain
in the new empire’s name.
Yes and every bloody emperor’s got his hands up history’s skirt
as he poses for posterity over the fresh-dug dirt.
Yes and every bloody emperor with his sickly rictus grin
talks his way out of nearly anything but the lie within
because every bloody emperor thinks his right to rule divine
so he’ll go spinning and spinning and spinning into his own decline.
Imperceptible the change as one by one our voices falter
and the double standards of propaganda
still all our righteous rage.
By this we are all sustained: our belief in human nature.
But our faith diminishes – close to the finish,
we’re only serfs and slaves
as the empire decays.
Peter Hammill
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I applied the search engine to this song; Hammill was still doing in 2005 what he did in the 1970s. I was a big fan back then. . . but the lyrics are very apposite.
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Australia didn’t get a mention in the Bible or the Koran, so it follows that God knew anything about us.
And it’s a pity it didn’t stay that way.
A god-botherer-free zone would have been wonderful.
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“… did not know…” urk, I may have caught Helvi syndrome 🙂
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