And doesn't that just look like a charming place to raise a family? Probably reminds those Afghanis of the blasted landscapes of their homeland...
So, in light of Tony Abbott's
announcement today that he is going to hinge his leadership on an all too familiar set of wasteful, dismal and unnecessarily cruel policies towards asylum seekers, I present to you a list:
Things I Cannot Fathom by Luke
Fucking magnets
How otherwise sensible adults can become readily and absolutely convinced that a boatload of poor, desperate and scared men, women and children pose a legitimate threat to national security to the point that it actively influences their vote.
How there can possibly be enough spare money in the world that making The Human Centipede seemed like a project worth pursuing.
How obviously intelligent politicians can sleep at night knowing that they are artificially inflating the risk posed by boatloads of poor, desperate and scared men, women and children for political gain. It seems absolutely beyond belief that people in the upper echelons of power, with thousands of educated humans working for them, could be so ill-informed as to actually believe the things they say on the topic, so I can only surmise that they have made a deliberate decision to mortgage their morals in favour of electoral success. Which is lovely.
What, in the name of all that is good and holy, could possibly be going on with this baby:
Why anyone thinks that shipping these boatloads of poor, desperate and scared men, women and children to isolated political islands at catastrophic expense to the country is a good idea. Last time through, the Pacific Solution ended up costing Australia
$500 000 per asylum seeker. $500 FUCKING 000! And 90% of those asylum seekers were granted permanent residency anyway. Hilariously, $500 000 is probably about 500 000 times the net worth of most of the applicants. So, hopefully they feel valued. I just can't help but think that there are better uses for a $500 000 pile of cash then flinging it at corrupt and vaguely despotic regimes in the South Pacific so that we don't have to look at a group of brown people for a few months. I dunno. Maybe you could buy them a house or something.
That there can still be people in the world who haven't seen Arrested Development. If you spotted the reference in the title, well done. You get a cookie. Just send me your address and I will despatch to you, via post, a cookie.
How we can still be so hypnotised by the image of boat people when the vast majority of asylum seekers arrive by plane.
Superfluous nipples.
How Tony Abbott is still in charge of a major political party.
How Kerry O'Brien is not in charge of a major political party. <3 U Kerry.
How the nation of Australia can have so little sense of its own history to not see the brutal ironies in this empty persecution.
How I can still be single. I mean, check out my dating video:
That there is the off chance that we will end up with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, trying to implement these vile, retrograde policies, and that if it does happen, it'll probably occur with the blessing of the Australian electorate... Although, that's not so much something that I cannot fathom as it is an all too fathomable concept that depresses me wildly.
That Kevin
"Cease the Processing of All Applications" Rudd is the only alternative.
...
As much as our elected officials might argue to the contrary, our policy towards asylum seekers over the past couple of decades hasn't ever really been a question of statistics, or comparative refugee intakes, or effectiveness, or popular opinion, or anything like that. Rather, it quite simply has been, and continues to be a cynical and ongoing moral blight on our political landscape that only serves to make us, as a nation, ugly.
And on that note: