Just when you thought the Australian government’s treatment of refugees held on Manus Island and Nauru could not descend any deeper into the slough of moral repugnancy, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces that he will accept for resettlement refugees from camps in Costa Rica.
At the same time, the PM gave fleeting mention to the 12,000 hand-picked Syrian refugees we were supposed to welcome months ago, but who seem to have become terminally enmeshed in security procedures more stringent than those of any other western democracy because, well, we’re precious like that.
The refugees we are accepting are the nice refugees, while those held captive in life-extinguishing misery are not nice refugees. That’s why they’re held in life-extinguishing misery: no punishment is too great for people who are not nice refugees, even death.
All those not nice people who wouldn’t queue.
Or people who are in general not nice, really. One should never underestimate the grip the white tribe’s middle-class value of niceness has on our juridico-political system.
We are now in the morally sickening position of torturing one set of displaced, stateless persons whilst offering sanctuary to another set of displaced, stateless persons, based entirely on the falsehood that we invited the latter and we did not invite the former. In fact, as signatories to the Refugee Convention we did invite the former, but that Convention is so last century I don’t know why I’m even mentioning it.
Australia, Turnbull assures us, is very generous in our acceptance of the world’s nice needy. This is undoubtedly true, however, it’s a bit like arguing that Hitler loved his dogs, or a serial killer was friendly to his neighbours. It’s the kind of cognitive dissonance seen in people who work hard to compensate for their dark side by convincing themselves and others that they’re really very caring. Turnbull strives on the world stage to talk up our humanitarian inclinations, even as human lives fester on his watch in steaming, fetid tropical dystopias.
This must be yet another blow for those on Manus and Nauru. If they needed further demonstration of their lack of worth in the eyes of their tormenters, which I’m certain they didn’t, they’ve got one, compliments of a prime minister with the principles of a bush pig.
The Turnbulls do not seem entirely at their ease, either hanging from straps on the New York subway or self-consciously posing for pics with the Obamas, Lucy clad in what appeared to be the shining black skin of a slain shark converted to a clinging sheath, more fitting in the wardrobe of the elegant Clare Underwood in the HBO production, House of Cards. Or perhaps she was wearing a wet suit. What do I know.
I realise I’m not being nice, but fuck it. It’s time to get the nasty on.
No Place For Sheep 
I will drink to the nasty, my revulsion and disgust with Truffles and his evil has no bottom.
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I keep thinking I must have reached the bottom then realise I haven’t.
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Oz has got their very own power couple; one in a leather jacket, two sizes too small, and the lady might be wearing a wetsuit , or something tight-fitting like Ms Julie, but the conservative Bowral bob (haircut) gives it all away, we are not so forward-looking and innovative as we like to be thought of…
I’d swap them to Obamas any time.
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LOL, the Bowral Bob, I like that.
I jus had my hair cut the same as Clare Underwood, so I don’t know what that means…..
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Jennifer, I have to be a bit careful with my hair cuts, grandsons would never forgive me going Lee Lin Chin (? from SBS), according to one of them she looked like a wild butcher bird ?
(now HE looks like one)
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I think Lee Lin is fabulous.
My grandkids aren’t old enough to notice haircuts yet. They just tell us we look beautiful 🙂
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Reblogged this on Townsville Blog. and commented:
Equality has a place among refugees.
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Thanks Shaun
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The myths of the conservatives are deeply cherished and resistant to all challenges of logic, rather like their religion.
It is an article of faith that Howard’s Pacific Solution worked and that the world therefore ought to adopt their “tough love” strategy, saving the lives of thousands by keeping them under the thumbs of their oppressors. Or in their graves; it’s all the same to them.
Those who had the stomach for it might have watched Howard’s mythologising of Menzies. Menzies, the man who sealed Australia into Britain’s war with Germany because he thwarted the Statute of Westminster (Australia was still a colony of Britain until the Statute’s ratification in 1942, under extreme pressure, when our government was told it could not make an alliance with the USA or anyone else because it was a colony).
Menzies, the man they called pig-iron Bob because he arranged to sell iron to the Japanese on the eve of war.
Menzies, the man who cared so much for Australia he spent half the war in London, plotting to supplant Churchill.
Menzies, the man who kowtowed to the British for another three decades.
Menzies, the man who exploited the reds under the bed scares to hold government as he carefully removed any internal threat to his own leadership. He was a man of the 19th century and the British Raj, and he wanted to keep us there. Just as Howard was a man of the 1950s and sought to keep us in his fondly imagined fairytale 1950s.
But excuse the digression. The myth that fences can be built to keep out the baddies, that those seeking to circumvent “orderly migration” are by definition undesirables, that myth is cherished and repeated until they believe it themselves.
Lately we have had the spectacle of Turnbull spruiking his myth to an almost empty United Nations General Assembly. Some people thought that Turnbull might be different, an enlightened, moderate, “liberal” conservative. But here he is spruiking not just “border protection” but almost every other Howard-Abbott policy and myth.
Those people who thought Turnbull had any principle other than to become Prime Minister are sadly disappointed. Abbott wanted it, chased it ferociously like a dog chasing a car; but like the dog, had no idea what to do with it once he caught it. Turnbull just wants it. Perhaps to complete his cv. He too has no idea what to do with it.
If it wasn’t so tragic it would be hilarious. But isn’t it always?
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doug quixote, I had expected some realistic comment from the UN concerning their treatment of these people. The L&NP hatred of “people” especially disenfranchised people and/or ‘pensioners’ or dole recipients and marginalized people get the swift backhander from these psychopaths.
These refugees are being held as an example to many more who may want to come. We say lil Johnny who should have been charged with war crimes at The Hague, walk free now we see yet another spectacle sadly meeting with the approval of 49% of the Australian population.
It feels like banging ones head against a brick wall, nothing changes except you get a sore head.
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I was astounded at that figure, Shaun, but I believe Lewis did the poll twice, so astounded was he and needing to make sure there wasn’t a mistake.
We’ll never see any of the bastards at the Hague.
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Jen, How do they get away with this behaviour? Do the rest of the world also not care what happens to 65 million people? Unfortunately Australia has a lot of ‘conservative’ people who don’t like change.
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The world has a lot of conservative, frightened, angry people, Shaun. They seem to be in charge right now, but the wheel turns
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Shaun & Jennifer
The poll was for only 1000 – although I am informed that such numbers can only be about 3% out give/take.
Still find it hard to believe. So little thought, so much reaction. I despair.
Seems hatred is created so easily…
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Lewis and the other pollsters use those online polls to stir up trouble, they are racist, unprofessional and disgusting and our racist pollies use them to abuse.
I want Lewis to ask if we should let in Jews, or Sikhs, or Buddhists.
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He won’t, because it’s Muslims everyone is after at this time.
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Thank god, the overnight visitors stopped me from watching the Menzies show, I slept well.
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Haha, Helvi, I re watched the West Wing, it was much more interesting
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I had no stomach for that Menzies thing, DQ.
In terms of men wanting to be PM then having no idea what to do when that desire is achieved, I’d add Rudd to the list. He also disgraced himself on the asylum seeker front.
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and Julia proved balls are not required to achieve prickdom,when it comes to ‘gobbing’ for the he right wing agenda..
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Gillard is a hard core racist and always was.
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I give her credit for establishing Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, but as far as asylum seeker policies, she should have been in the LNP.
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Yes, but she had her bad points too.
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I probably wouldn’t choose the same turns of phrase, Hypo, but I get what you’re saying.
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Tsk, Iconoclast Wilson says something not uncritical of nice Michelle Obama, I hear the skeletons rattling, hounds a bayin’ already. Michelle is the very paradigm of niceness- like Lucy on a grand scale.
The issue is the crass suggestion that we swap Nauru/ Manus problems for unwelcome US problems in involving a different set of ethnicities across the other side of the Pacific. The one possible positive could be that Latinos be settled quickly, since the the overthrow of Allende at least, many Latin Americans have done well here. and how would a few Asians hurt the US?
Alright, I know that is the last thing likely to happen.
Overall, all I get is the sense of a refinement of the worst of sneakish offshore processing, via an old concentration camp joke from high school days.
Commandant (addressing inmates):
“Today vee do unterwear change…
Hut B change mit hut A, Hut C change mit Hut D”.
You can almost hear CoreyBernardi, but do folk also recall a passing resemblance between Erica Betz and Colonel Klink.?
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Ha ha, PW, I’ve got my hands full demolishing our own sacred cows without starting on Michelle.
I think it’s fine to have Costa Rican and Syrian refugees here, it’s just that welcoming them underscores in the worst possible way, politicians’ hideous attitude to the Manus & Nauru people.
Erica Abetz is bizarre. I much prefer Colonel Klink.
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Not just a passing resemblance. Uncle Otto was the archetype. In more than just looks.
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I found the the sight of people like Turnbull and Kerry trying to explain away the bombing of Syrian army troops during a ceasefire to the advantage of ISIS fighters of all people, a bit of a strain on credibility also.
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The yanks chastising Russia was a ridiculous shot from the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ yanks who slaughtered at least 100,000 people. With the help of Howard and Blair on false pretenses. It seems as though all conservatives are evil.
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Shaun, They are certainly vile, which is evil rearranged a bit 🙂
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Just a variation on “look over there, they’re worse than us!”
(It has the added advantage of being true.)
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“One should never underestimate the grip the white tribe’s middle-class value of niceness has on our juridico-political system.” Nicely said.
Morality replaces Policy. Political Easy Street.
Turnbull’s main engagement in the U.S. was trying to resurrect the doomed TPP. Nine years of negotiation, clause by clause, word by word, phrase by phrase negotiation, and already repudiated by the two U.S. Presidential Nominees.
Nine years of painstaking negotiation and micro-management, in comparison to his take on the International Refugee problem being just too, too hard.
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The TPP is lipstick on a pigs dick, with no shortage of moist lips.
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Yep.You see why I usually enjoy allthumbs also.
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Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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So in the end it seems that everything we despised about Abbott was actually Turnbull hand up his yellow back.The whole time.
This country is a decade away from being a living hell.The rising exponential heat is palpable.
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I completely disagree with you here. Granting refugee status is a privilege not a right. It’s ultimately charity. We, as a nation, get to decide who (if any) we grant it to.
I may be happy to give a few dollars to someone begging on the streets, but if that same person pickpockets the same amount of money, I have a huge problem with that.
(That isn’t to say that I disagree that Turnbull is weak and ineffective.)
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Once we accept that a person is a refugee we are obligated to protect that person, under Australian law. Allowing resettlement and extending citizenship is another matter, and your source of confusion.
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“I completely disagree with you here. ”
Geez,what a surprise.
Get back to me when you have a justification for our govt willingly creating the refugees in the first place,and aiding and abetting the rancid regime in Syria 2 other wars in the ME, and fuelling violence on our home soil since Howard spewed out his toxic bile.etc.
Head up arse is what you are.
QLD epitomised.
Ad hom?
Yep.Although the ‘hom’ part is debatable.
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I don’t know that it’s a privilege. The Convention certainly frames it as a right to request sanctuary, refugee status is assessed according to circumstances a person has fled.
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When I fled my home, I was not thinking about “privilege” just somehow pulling my life back together.
I only fled one man, I was not in a war, I did not watch family and friends blasted by bombs or murdered by militia – OK I changed continents for a while, returned to Australia. Thankful I could get welfare, then a job and finally, a life.
Therefore, FA, people fleeing for their lives are NOT receiving a privilege in being assessed as refugees, they are given a fragile hope. Fragile, because those who hate them for their religion or the colour of their skin, FA, can fracture that chance of life.
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I agree with diannart: it isn’t a privilege to be granted sanctuary, it’s a human right. We aren’t being generous benefactors when we offer it, we’re being decent human beings.
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FA, are you one of Pauline’s Muslim haters?
I give generously to many charities, but if I would see you at a street corner with your begging bowl, I’d give you nothing.
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This attitude always falls over because our resources are finite. There’s a supply and demand problem, especially when you look at the population projections of many developing countries for the coming century. Nigeria alone is projected to have a population of over 400 million by 2050.
I’m not a “big Australia” person. The idea of an Australia with a population of 50 million terrifies me (largely from an environmental perspective). That was one of the major things that turned me off Kevin Rudd. (I also think this was one of the many things that John Howard screwed us on. By concentrating on the relatively small number of boat arrivals, he gathered enough political cover to dramatically increase Australia’s overall immigration intake. Tony Blair did something similar in the UK, and that’s one of many reasons behind Brexit.)
There are simply more people who would like to live in Australia than Australia can possibly hope to support and still be a country that the majority of us would want to live in. We therefore must have some system to control numbers, particularly as this century moves on the problems only get worse. That said, I also dislike Australia’s skilled migration program because I believe it is unethical. (Taking the best people from developing countries robs those countries of the chance to get better.) I’m not wedded to any particular solution, but, as a nationalist, I believe Australian citizens and their future interests must strongly be prioritised over non-citizens.
I voted Sustainable Australia, actually. One Nation didn’t run any candidates for the Senate where I live, but I would have preferenced them ahead of the Liberals, Labor and the Greens, if they had.
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That is a bit more reasoned as a posting, FA.
I sympathise with some of that, derived of a sense that resources are badly mismanaged and that while we can theoretically carry a much larger population, it wont happen because of the way pol economics operates here and across the world. The Goose killed for the Golden Egg by boorish capitalist peasants has always been my take.
I’ve previously hesitated to support large scale population increases in the forlorn hope that ecological and economic rationality might prevail, that guidelines and measures be in place to support an increase in population if necessary, could be handled productively for a zero sum result, but it hasn’t happened…too much ignorance and greed.
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Yes, FA is way too harsh for me also.
DQ is much safer as to duty of care, from that point let things proceed without hysteria, if past history is any guide many of the current wave of newcomers would be likely settle quickly enough, well enough.
What’s needed is the end of grubby right wing incendiary politics and dog whistling, pandering to baser instincts for selfish political purposes, at the expense of, quite likely, people who are as at least as good if not better than Australian are.
Without a return to the notion of the fair go Oz is just a hollowed out shell of what it could have been.
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What we’d like to happen and what will happen are two different things, paul. FA’s latest post may be better reasoned, in the long run. But in the long run we will all be dead, as JM Keynes observed.
We can only do the best with what we know now. Earth’s long term carrying capacity is between one and two billion people. How we get there within a hundred years or so won’t be pretty. I’m glad I won’t have to see it.
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Yes.I guess so.
I was just a bit perplexed at FA’s sort of defensive, reductionist comment that we must give ourselves precedence over others, to me there is some sort of binary of syllogistic problem here.
I don’t know if it is necessarily so that we can’t do more for others and not protect ourselves.
Like yourself, I realise we live in a real world. I think we are relatively fortunate, including to be in the situation where we can talk in a detached way about people movements, global poverty etc in the abstract, ought we to be grateful?
What makes it sad is the sense or feeling that in the best of all possible worlds it would not need to be this way.
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I totally agree. It gets to a point with the government’s treatment of refugees where we are unable to be nice, unable to simply let it unfold in front of our eyes without getting angry, in fact, getting furious. This whole notion of ‘only those who wait their turn may enter our country’ completely disregards how most people are desperate and fleeing for their lives. Why are we so cruelly rebuffing those in need? This is a national disgrace, and a black mark on our history. What do you think would be the best way for the government to fix this mess?
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First of all, I think we should hang the refugees on Manus & Nauru to settle here.
Then I think we should set up a regional processing centre in Australia where refugees can stay until resettled here and in partner countries.
That’s my ideal world.
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Hi Jennifer,
Just came back from a longish trip overseas. Now, every time I open a “No Place For Sheep” article I get this pop-up “Security Alert” which says “The identity of this website cannot be verified” and “The name on the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site”. It’s hard to get rid of. Any suggestions?
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Well, that’s interesting, Arthur.
I really have no idea what that’s about. Nothing has changed in Sheep’s settings, certainly not the name. Just to make sure, I’ll check everything this morning, but my guess off the top of my head is that it’s to do with your virus protection perhaps?
If anybody else reads this and has any ideas please join in.
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Actually now you mention it, I did renew my annual Trend Micro subscription the other day. Perhaps I accidentally changed some settings. Now the annoying little pop-up seems to have disappeared, touch wood.
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