Yesterday I had a Twitter conversation about Kathryn Bigelow’s movie, Zero Dark Thirty, which was shown on SBS last night.
Many angry critics have described the film as CIA propaganda advocating torture, and accused Bigelow of making an immoral argument that torture works. That wasn’t my reading as I argue here.
This revisiting of the film and the arguments surrounding it made it obvious to me that the message “torture works” is precisely the message the current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison before him, and several former Prime Ministers including Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have sent to the world since the indefinite detention, off-shore and previously in the hell holes of Woomera and Baxter, of waterborne asylum seekers began.
They are not even particularly subtle about conveying this message: forcing women, children and men to live in circumstances in which they are tortured will deter others from attempting to seek asylum in Australia. It’s that stark.
To dissuade attacks from rusted on ALP supporters: Paul Keating built Woomera. I went there. It was one of Dante’s circles of hell. So please don’t come at me with the usual defence of your political party’s position on asylum seekers. There’s a bee’s dick of difference between the major parties.
Every time politicians insist that bringing refugees from Manus and Nauru to Australia will “start the drownings at sea again”, he or she is arguing, to the world, that “torture works.”
Frank Brennan, John Menadue, Tim Costello and Robert Manne have here proposed a solution to the current ghastly impasse. Their proposal retains the turn-back policy:
We believe there is no reason why the Turnbull government cannot do now what the Howard government previously did – maintain close intelligence co-operation with Indonesian authorities, and maintain the turn-back policy, while emptying the offshore processing centres and restoring the chance of a future to those we sent to Nauru or Manus Island three years ago or more by settling them either in Australia or, if any are willing, in other developed countries. Like Howard, Turnbull could maintain the offshore processing centres in case of an emergency.
Boats are to be turned back to their point of departure, usually Indonesia or in the case of Sri Lankan refugees,southern India where they continue to live as stateless people with few, if any rights.
The proposition put by Brennan et al would at least thwart the message that torture works, to which our politicians seem alarmingly attached. It’s by no means an ideal solution, but it could be our next step in addressing a situation that in its current manifestation is hideously wrong in every possible way.
Critiquing their proposition is a post in itself, and I won’t do that here.
As I argue Bigelow’s film demonstrated, the proposition that torture works is in itself a terrifying premise for debate.Who are we, that we would engage in such a debate in the first place?
It isn’t about whether or not torture works. It’s about torture even being considered, and then implemented as an option. You might argue that no politician foresaw or planned the circumstances that have evolved on Manus and Nauru, and you’d likely be correct. So we have come to torture by accident, rather than by design. Having arrived at that point, even accidentally, we are culpable and every day we reinforce the message that torture works, we add to our burden of culpability. What was initially accidental, thoughtless, ignorant, uncaring, politically self-seeking becomes, in the maintaining of it, deliberate.
Which puts us in the company of the CIA and its propaganda, does it not? Not to mention Donald Trump.
No Place For Sheep 
I’m not sure which is worse.
Where we are.
Why we reward the ‘torturers’ politically ,therefore fiscally.(complicity)
Our national denial(complicity)
Our national apathy.
Our >unwillingness< to care (?)
I think how we have treated indigenous people for 200+ years goes a long way to connecting the dots.
In the end 'we can't have different coloured folk either getting a slice of our pie'.
Success is for the dominant.
Nor can we have 'them' in line of sight.It looks messy or makes us squirm in our seats.
The fact that we used to have Royal Commission to regain or endow accountability, and that we now use them to diffuse and delay and create the space to hide,shred or run shows how the even law is no longer the rescue it once was.
Police forces are now politically encumbered.
Labor is worse than the LNP, because they went tag team for the racist vote.
In short, the shite has seeped into every room in the house.
The only thing I know is that on this issue and all thing 'other races' the solution is not within our borders.
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The premise is fraught with danger. Does torture work? The answer is a clear “it depends”. And it depends on whether you have the right ones being tortured – over many centuries torture has been used to obtain names of fellow conspirators from persons caught in the act trying to carry out capital crimes. That is, they are already dead men, facing execution for their undoubted acts.
It won’t work if you have people who know nothing and are basically innocent, or at least ignorant of the true principals.
Of course, this analysis ignores the ethical question of whether torture is acceptable under any circumstances; that is a whole different argument.
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DQ, I’m working from the premise that it isn’t.
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Well torture certainly sent 30 million more refugees fleeing torture, war and persecution since we started ‘saving lives” at sea.
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DQ, the Atheist Society is revoking your licence.
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I don’t think ‘proper’ atheists should believe in societies,either.
: )
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In what way is religion an issue here?
I take the position that there is no deity whatsoever. The gap between knowledge and the unknowable has become vanishingly small. Over the recent centuries the onus of proof has passed from “prove that there is no god” to “prove that there is any room for one.”
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Can’t comment for not having seen the movie..Jennifer is saying Bigelow’s work is that of a detached observer? She is saying that madness is the norm, like in the Dark Ages any deviation from abnormal becomes life threatening for the perception of lunacy. eg acts of kindness, etc.
Ive come to the conclusion re the USA that Trump is akin to Abbott, Clinton; Shorten or Turnbull. Clinton is more believable, but I no longer think any more honest. May be even worse liar as to some issues because she knows better.
Trump is gone, so obvious, but to mind also the Democrats, who cloke their madness in a fine coat of rationality and treacly self deceptive nonsenses but erupt in anger when you point out the contradictions in their position..eg Obama refusing to employ his own power of veto against abitrary detention, surveillance secrecy censorship etc.
And try to get a fair representation concerning Julian Assange even from otherwise rational ones and you will be in for a nasty shock.
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When the majority of your country is armed to the teeth, and of that share most are prepared to carry them at all times, and invoke a bastardised amendment to justify their use of them, and the NRA controls the agenda, Presidents don’t act on their conscience.
Obama was as close as America and the world will get to moderate action.
Trump is closer to the psyche of those who hate all that Obama stood for.
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yes.
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PW, I’m actually arguing against the requirement often imposed on film makers that they are obliged to use their medium to convey a moral position. And if they don’t do that to critics’ satisfaction (which essentially means furthering the already accepted dominant moral position ) they’ve supported whatever it is the critics are against.
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I think you’ll find a tangible crossover of connections in the ownership of Hollywood (propaganda) and the armament industry.
The critics therefore know whose arse to tongue.
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Like, how long is a piece of string?
Of course they should not tub thump. I can hope they are accurate and fair in the presentation of facts and interpretations, but haven’t seen the movie, as I said above.
Apparently they couldnt do this with the US movie about Assange, against the brilliant telemovie here starring Rachel Griffith here and there is no doubt them (allegedly) adopting a “moral position”, perhaps the wrong one, perhaps deliberately, as to t hat effort at least.
We could indeed draw equivalence to Hanson, Dutton etc re refugees, certainly no “moral position” observed to be drawn there.
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We are entering a new dark age, an age of cruelty, greed and deprivation.
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It’s just the usual suspects re-stamping their library card.
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I want to know how Jennifer knows what a bee’s dick looks like. I’ve seen some fetishism in my time, but really…..
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You should get her to show you her pic of a duck with a dick many times longer than the duck..
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Ah, I’d forgotten about that PW! I’ll try and find it.
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Duck duck dick. Dining at the Literary Gourmet. Where everyone gets to be put in the picture.
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No kidding FG, it is that long in comparison to the duck’s body that if it were human, it would need a Double B to get around.
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Are you still talking about that duck’s dick? I’ll have to try and find it for you.
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/remeepatel/can-you-guess-which-of-these-animals-has-the-biggest-penis
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can-you-guess-which-of-these-animals-IS-the-biggest-penis
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PW! THE DUCK! http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/lake-duck.jpg
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Under the double helix: Canards in philosophical mass debating and the Heston Blumenthal take on game.
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Ok,
I guess the duck is just looking for a wheel barrow,
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Torture can be a necessary evil, in context. This is hardly a valid context. How we deal with the current refugee problem is a vexed question. How we treat asylum seekers, as human beings, ought not be. Yet, we’ve made it so.
What is the surest and fastest way to perceive and treat people as something less than human? It’s pretty simple – be afeared of them. Politically, and now culturally, that’s what we’ve achieved. At the risk of invoking Godwin, it’s not all that different to what 1930s Germany did to the Jews, initially.
I don’t know what the answer is. I’m afraid something even more terrible than what has transpired will be necessary for us to see things as they truly are. The Guardian’s recent revelations are highly significant, yet only being pursued by that publication. No-one else seems to care overly much.
This country is in a bad place on so many levels. It’s really quite depressing.
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Don’t agree with you on torture, Dan. Apparently it doesn’t actually work that well.
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Torture has never proved a thing, the catholics used it to rid the world of protestants yet protestants are still around.
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“It isn’t about whether or not torture works. It’s about torture even being considered, and then implemented as an option.”
Our leaders can implement torture as an option when people are dehumanised. That way they at not guilty of torture these ‘boat people’ brought it upon themselves. Our leaders are in no higher moral position than the everyday bully at school, work, or online; bullies who, at the very least call others names, at worst cause physical harm.
To see a bully, look in a mirror and have a good think. I know I have bullied others – not often, but enough to know, mea culpa. Of course, admitting to any weakness is foolhardy, honesty can and will be used as weapon in future by other bullies 😉
Therefore, our leaders, can not and will not admit to being wrong – ever. Way too fraught, unless they in a secure position where the awful truth about themselves will not harm them; Malcolm Fraser? Yes, he did. John Howard? Not likely. Kathy Jackson? Only if there is a book in it. Tony Abbott? Wouldn’t understand the question. Malcolm Turnbull in late old age with a book deal…
So it goes…
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I have been trying all afternoon to NOT think about Nauru and Manus Island, not think about those in power making such decisions, denying any hope.
By denial of hope, I am not thinking only of the detainees, but the ripple effect of our government’s decisions. As a nation, is Australia now a little less hopeful, a little more harsh?
How often do we hear the admonishment to “toughen up or get out”?
If toughen up means becoming more like Dutton or Abbott to Bishop (either one or both), or Trump or that online troll, then a big resounding “NO” can be the only alternative, right?
So then where do we go?
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Dutton has painted us all into a dreadful corner with his intransigence. It can only get worse for the refugees, unless Turnbull has the sense & decency to sack him and his vile vengeful plans.
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Yes also. It is depressing thing to contemplate and it is corrosive over years. I once saw an expert describe the affect on Israelis for Palestine as “corrosive” and this troubling of the nation’s conscience is of the same species.
Dutton’s claque is Bernardi and Hanson and co, lesionhorn, Erica Betz, Day, Abbott and the noisiest component of the tabloid commentariat. All in all, a harsh conservative rump within and at the periphery of the Coalition. I really believed they were gone after 2007 but the cancer is outliving the patient.There also seems to be soc cons sprinkled amongst Labor and even the Greens.
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Is the use of force ever justified? If someone comes to your house and asks for charity, you may be happy to give. Suppose another comes. And another. At what point do you say no more, so that you have enough to provide for yourself and your family? For each of us, there is always going to be a point where we would call in the state to enact force on our behalf in the face of persistent requests for aid that we simply can no longer afford.
It is simply a fact of history that those who were not prepared or able to use force to protect their property, would lose their property and their lives. And indeed, sometimes just the reputation of being over-the-top is enough to save people from having to use force in the future.
To me, this argument is always one about where the line is drawn. Sure, there’s no problem with a handful of people. But hundreds of thousands, millions? There are simply far more people who would like to live in Australia than Australia could hope to cope with before we become just as much of a shithole as the places they’re trying to escape.
The trouble with having the state enact force on our behalf, of course, is that we can distance ourselves from the need for it, and pretend that we’re better than that on an individual level. Make no mistake, however, the only reason we are able to live to the standard we enjoy is because we are able to defend our commonwealth. That we can pay others to enact force on our behalf is also an example of our privilege, but the day we can no longer afford to do that is the day we lose everything.
Do I think we need to torture people? No, probably not. But, we certainly need to demonstrate that we are prepared to use force. I just don’t think the line is as obvious as many pretend it is.
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I don’t think the line is obvious either, FA.
However, in this specific matter, I think Brennan et al have suggested a workable line, from which we can free ourselves from the hideous impasse we’ve brought upon refugees, and then consider our next step.
Of course we can’t accept everyone who would like to live here. But we can do a lot more about setting up decent regional processing and co-operative resettlement with other countries.
Instead the government behaves like apes.
I’m sorry. That insults apes.
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Those racist old fools should be fucking ignored, fancy thinking we can commit another set of crimes against humanity in an attempt to ameliorate the previous crimes against others. Menadue and Hughes are two of the old time trash who helped Fraser with the lie of by invitation only and Manne and Brennan make me puke.
Their lazy reasoning is that because we have tortured 2,000 refugees to near death we must turn away all others so that we don’t get to torture them too.
It’s the most depraved and illogically irrational load of bullshit I have ever heard.
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I think they’ve suggested a circuit breaker which will get refugees off Manus & Nauru to Australia or another developed country.
As for the turn-backs: I don’t agree with them on that. We need a regional centre, preferably in Australia, where people can be assessed and resettled here or in other countries such as NZ, who have offered many times.
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Re: Turnbacks
Am in favour of a regional centre based in Indonesia, thus preventing any need for leaky boats, while aiding Indonesia and neighbouring countries.
Still cannot get over Dutton’s vetoing of NZ’s offer to accept Manus & Nauru detainees – nothing more than spite. Nasty piece of work that he is.
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diannart, Dutton is vengeful & power crazed
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The whole tenet of your argument is moot without arguing for stabilisation of the global population and admission that growth is a myth and that capitalism is reaching the end game.
To sit back and watch every single human and ecological problem balloon exponentially and not admit our sheer numbers are driving the negatives is bullshit of the highest stench.
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^My reply was to FA’s post.
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You have to put names when the convo gets this long.
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Sorry JW, were you talking to me?
: )
Yep you’re right.
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So, you’d argue that the Green Revolution was one of the greatest crimes of the previous century?
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Notwithstanding the loaded question, I would argue that we should breed less and live within the capacity of the planet.But I would also argue it’s more than likely, far too late.
So enjoy (or not ) the ride.
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Piss off, I do get so tired of the fucking bullshit yarn of ”but millions might come”, well they fucking well have. The population grows by 1 million every 3 years
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Poignant, just poignant.
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I’d rather be a hammer than a nail . . .
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Yeah, I got that straight away.
With this govt Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ may be more apt.
Tools , whichever way you look at it.
Flaccid, when they should be upright, and vice versa.
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In other words, DQ, you don’t give a shit that kids are being tortured, because it’s not you.
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You have no idea, have you.
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No. YOU put up Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.
I’m wondering what others made specifically of Jennifer Wilson’s mention of the proposal by Frank Brennan et al, as to an immediate assumption of responsibility for the couple of thousand worn out refugees currently under (basically) our direct control?
Is it a chance to open a middle door based on compromise from most sections of a polarised public, one way or the other? Sweeten the pill for the public eagerly aroused by hard right nonsenses promulgated in the bad taste joke that passes for our MSM, through an orderly influx?
Just a quick scan reveals Marilyn perhaps feels that the proposal is not ambitious enough, but will post any way.
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The proposal is bullshit Paul, everyone has the right to seek asylum and they are allowed to come on fucking boats without being tortured because they do.
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Everyone does have the right to come on boats. Brennan et al haven’t addressed this in terms of rights. They’re triaging, I think.
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Marilyn is right, it isn’t ambitious enough, however, we have to take what we can get at this point and work from there imo.
Not that there is much hope the government will implement Brennan et al’s proposals. None at all, actually.
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There is a certain dark irony in the triaging motif. In this incident it is located at multiple levels, from image management to management of their own personal traits and the banking up of legislation from the odious 2014 budget.
Health is just one of many issues the public is eyeing Turnbull for bait and switch… the irony.
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It’s time the old goats stopped putting up fucking proposals and said quite frankly it’s time we lived up to the law we wrote and ratified. It’s not hard.
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Yes, couldn’t agree more Marilyn.
But while we’re waiting for them to do that there’s people in hell on Manus & Nauru.
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From the United Nations High Commission on Refugees regarding Australian policy:
“There is no doubt that the current policy of offshore processing and prolonged detention is immensely harmful. There are approximately 2000 very vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru. These people have already been through a great deal, many have fled war and persecution, some have already suffered trauma. Despite efforts by the Governments of Papua New Guinea and Nauru, arrangements in both countries have proved completely untenable.”
Frank Brennan concludes:
“Turnbull thinks refugee advocates are being misty-eyed. That’s better than being willfully blind.”
It is beyond time that this farce was concluded.
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Not to mention it was all illegal and the waste of $2 billion of our money for torture and crimes against humanity is monstrous. But Frank’s ludicrous suggestion that we keep breaking more laws to ”solve” this non-problem is just as ludicrous.
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Marilyn, yes, it’s ludicrous. The whole thing is mortally ludicrous. And it keeps getting worse.
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Maybe a bit harsh though. Are people sure that Brennan’s objective is to “break more laws” to maliciously injure asylum seekers?
Perhaps there is another motive, to do with a log jammed politics?
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I think Brennan et al are attempting a circuit breaker. It’s an immoral circuit breaker & I guess they’re looking at what they perceive to be the lesser of two evils.
However, I don’t think for a minute that the government is going to act on their recommendations & bring refugees here, so it’s all academic, really.
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The problem with the circuit breaker lie is that they supported Nauru and Manus as a previous fucking circuit breaker and giving those arseholes in the ALP/LNP cartel an inch means they will take a million miles.
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As Marilyn says, the sheer cost over time IS (also) an issue. This is a government always crapping on about “budget repair”, that never addresses the most obvious sources of wastage .
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NZ has become everything we used to be.They even have a treaty.How sad an example of humans we became.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/australians-youre-being-ds-our-closest-neighbours-are-turning-on-us/news-story/62977faa268506998e3121c9ce4fb328
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You can’t have a Treaty unless there is a sovereign nation to have a treaty with. The Maori were a fearsome foe in NZ, and their chiefs effectively formed a sovereign nation. The Koori on the other hand were isolated, disunited and somewhere in the stone age.
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Kooris are from Victoria and NSW. There are the remains of stone houses around Colac in Victoria, and evidence of farming.
Dark Emu, written by Bruce Pascoe is the result of many years of research.
Also
The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, by Bill Gammage explores the complex land management used by Aboriginals pre-white settlement.
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Thanks, diaanart, I just wrote the same thing without seeing your recommendations.
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The minefield that is nomenclature:
Click to access pub-terminology.pdf
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‘No treaty because timid’.Yep that’s the ‘genocide justifying’ spin I think the nation has heard for 200+ years.
Sooner or later the international pressure will win.Even in the face of the bullshit excuses like that.
You can’t have a treaty unless you are willing.Only one side is.The other has it’s hands on its wallet, and shitting bricks.Goodwill could save a lot of money for the invaders..
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DQ read Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu. That Indigenous people were in the stone age is a white myth.
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Not as big a myth as “If you don’t look fierce ,you get no treaty”.
White man, white law, white gun.
The excuses have run out.Unfortunately the supply of dumfux peddling them has not.
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What fucking racist bullshit, honestly DQ do you ever think before you engage your fingers. They were not in the stone age, they had sophisticated farming practices and land management that puts Europeans to shame.
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Such racist ignorance is the gutter dwelling Ross Lightfoot (Julie Bishops ex ****er) view of anthropology.
I’d be pissed and ashamed to be aligned with his parliamentary privilege bravery.
Weasely sycophantic chest beating for his ‘fishnet wearing’ toadwart mates.Grovelling for relevance in the dregs and dross of political irrelevance.
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Believe it or not, people farmed in the Stone Age. I suggest that those so ready to criticise do some reading of their own.
And please don’t play the racist card whenever faced with criticism of your cherished positions.
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The truth is somewhere in between. People have been living here for fifty thousand years and it has been enough for some to suggest that indigenes have evolved better peripheral vision and lateral movement making them successful at sport, transferring from the hunt.
Btw why the adhominems re dq.. he’s only suggested a couple of things.
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The excuse you gave comes from a place of repeated stereotypical myth spread by dominantly racist positions.With cave man motives or base load greed/hate/power.What other category would you put such dried up foul smelling bullshit in?Wilful and or ignorant are the two available baskets for such piffle DQ.
The woman who got caught red handed lowering her AFL support network to a filthy racist act,called .momentary lapse of reason’.So now she gets a ‘poor her’ card.Despite that fact that her language and behaviour and those of her group were witnessed for weeks on end.Despite that she brought the known tool of sports racism along for a sole purpose.
This is a 200+ year campaign to wipe out all hope of dignity.So your observation is not new,but IMHO telling others not to play the race card is as predictable and weak as the father of the brain dead racist come-stain who threw a banana at Betts and then had the gall to try to lie her way out of the social media shit storm she knew she would generate.The white supremacists will soon rear their grotesque heads, and now Betts and his family and friends will suffer a lifetime association with this vile act outside of his control.It will wear him down and impact an all around him.She will fade away and or make $ money form this and become a pinup girl for Hanson fans,Bolt etc.
Sorry?As if.
Lecturing others about history and anthropology? Nah.
How about starting with an honest look at the rapes,murders,water hole poisonings,burnt alive episodes,hunted for dog food incidents,hung in cells,cooked ,kicked to death, etc etc.Why? For being indigenous.No other reason.Then on top of that our dominant culture destroys as much of their history and culture as possible,and denies the rest.
The First Australians were a structured complex and intimately intricately Australian centric culture.They ran rings around us then, and spiritually still do now.That they have survived in any form is a miracle.Almost as amazing as the fact that their sustainable culture endured for ~ 50,000 years and they had subtle recording tech that kept a (almost magical) data set for that period of time.
When people dribble about the holocaust they get crucified.When people regurgitate poisonous anti indigenous spin, they get famous.Yet the indigenous holocaust is ;
over 200 years old,occurring on their homelands,still going,perpetrated by those supposed to protect and uphold the laws of this land, and perpetuated by a self serving history fed to (repeated by) the majority of the non indigenous populous.
All this feeds into the local audience cheering for locking up refugees and throwing away the key.We are gold medallists at racism.We have a local supply of targets when the boats stop.
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There is no excuse for racism and no excuse for the behaviour of the people you reference above.
There is much that is good and worthwhile in Indigenous culture, and there is no doubt they have suffered and have been oppressed for over 200 years.
That does not affect anything in my posts. See things with clear eyes.
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There is no excuse for racism , or repeating racist content thereof, and no excuse for the behaviour of the people I reference above.
There is SO much that is good and worthwhile in Indigenous culture, and yet increasingly less in mainstream society,it seems.There is no doubt they have suffered (do suffer) and have been oppressed for over 200 years, (still are) and yet the 1st PM to acknowledge this by way of a formal apology is howled down,(even by ALP tragics. Most on the right of the pendulum want all things indigenous marked as null and void.”Move on.”etc.
That does not affect anything in my posts. I do see things with clear eyes, just not yours.
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But is it all “racism”?
Can it be that the attitude toward refugees and aborigines is just one facet of a general conservative misanthropy?
http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/turnbull-government-cuts-policy-principles-along-with-welfare-20160822-gqy1s9#ixzz4I78Ipphs
I fully expect the opposition parties and indies to rise up and clout down this latest piece of Tory meanness.
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“I fully expect the opposition parties and indies to rise up and clout down this latest piece of Tory meanness.”
A few might.Most will see the almost touchable image of a gravy train and vote for tracks and rails.
Hope is a rare commodity, but not as rare as accountability and integrity.
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Yes. It’s hard not to be cynical. I can’t believe what an idiot Mitch Fifield is.
From where and whence does the oxygen of reason flow ?
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He and Nash are buckets of offal.They have comprehensively destroyed internet communication in this nation forever.Neither uttered a word during the election.
They still have ministries.
Nash is another token woman with no talent and less integrity.
Fifield is a buffoon.The spoilt unpopular chubby kid at school who paid for friends.
(Yes all you finger wavers out there,I went there)
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Again you ask, if Nauru is the earthly paradise people like Dutton say it is, why are folk not allowed to visit to investigate that claim?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/nauru-bans-greens-senator-sarah-hansonyoung-from-visiting-refugees-20160824-gr05oh.html
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It seems the Greens have decided to relieve Sarah Hanson Young of the Immigration shadow portfolio.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/25/sarah-hanson-young-will-keep-fighting-for-refugees-despite-losing-portfolio
The Greens claim this is to bring her over to an economics portfolio, to widen her set of job skills, others claim it is about the Greens trying to lessen conflict over asylum seekers.
Nick McKim, a former Tasmanian Greens parliamentary leader, is the new spokesperson on asylum seekers. The question is, how will he deal with the issue, can he bring some thing new to the debate that SHY some
how missed, or have the Greens finally given up on asylum seekers as a high profile, no win issue?
I do not think the issue will go away that easy.
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“have the Greens finally given up on asylum seekers as a high profile, no win issue”
yes when it hits mainstream they drop it.Then scour the unis and social media for a trend.God knows they would not no a tree if they tripped on a forest.
Marriage equality will be their football till they do.
Maybe SHY has some ‘blot on her resume’ with the leaks the LNP are chasing down from Nauru.Watch this space.
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More on SHY here, a similar article to the Guardian but includes a couple of tit bits about SHY on superannuation and also something on SHY crossing the Greens leadership over preferences for Fred Nile before a progressive liberal (oxymoron?).
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/im-disappointed-greens-leader-richard-di-natale-strips-sarah-hansonyoung-of-immigration-role-20160825-gr161x.html
Strange days, indeed.
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An in-depth analysis of the Greens:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/04/10/a-labyrinthine-maze-of-factions-greens-staffer-slams-his-colleagues-in-funny-post/
🙂
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Its always cute when an insider does a job on confrateres. I miss Ellis for his ability to do the same with the Coalition and he and one or two others have done good satire on the peculiar internal machinations of Labor.
As for the junior wing of the Coalition, the Nats..’scuse I!
Now, back to an article on Corbyn and the right faction of the Brit Labour.before heading off to the latest edifying reports on the US election.
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I miss Ellis.
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Yep. Same here.
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This worth a look. Credit where credit is due for those who sought to find this sort of thing out.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-12/eagles-afl-perth-stadium-fears-dismissed-by-minister-mia-davies/7836196?section=sport
Wait, that can actually stay.
Her is the link I wanted.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/09/12/the-incredible-15-3-billion-asylum-seeker-cost-and-it-s-human-t/?utm_hp_ref=au-homepage
And they think this is a conservative estimate.
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It always take a lot of other peoples money to wash the blood of genocide off the hands of the perpetrators.(But the stains will always be there)
Ask the the first Australians
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