Just learned something: ‘Boat People’ arriving in Australia since the ‘concerns’ began (not sure of that date, missed it) : about 20,000
Immigrants settled in Australia during that same time: 3,500,000
Yep. Three and one half million against 20,000
That twenty thousand are people who’ve gambled everything on getting here (and often failed, lost the gamble, died, family and all, in the attempt).
That twenty thousand was overwhelmingly bona fide asylum seekers as witness the Immigration Department’s own statistics on percentage of visas granted: Check this here
What is going on? People on the run from a hostile, cruel world, driven to chance all on extortionately priced trips on leaky boats find themselves facing authoritarian, Kafkaesque brutality, hostility, intransigence, unfairness right here in Australia?
Knock it off. What bullshit is this?
It is the bullshit of the remorseless rise of authoritarianism. I’m no political pundit, nor even a social commentator and certainly not a journalist. I’m just me. A nobody. Happier in his own backgarden or out in the bush – but courtesy of this wonderful tool the internet able to take a look around the world at the kind of things that are happening without even having to put myself out so much as to purchase a daily paper…
So I look around. And I find these things.
And I call it a ‘rise of authoritarianism’ and that seems right to me but if some academic tells me I’ve got the wrong phrase then I apologise – please tell me what phrase to use.
What I mean is a rise in the number of people enjoying exercising ‘authority’ (I put it in quotes because I question its validity) over others.
I mean a rise in the number of transgressions one can be deemed to have made.
I mean a continual reduction in the safeguards and natural rights we thought we had.
I mean a rise in the distancing of the government and their offices from the people – so’s you can no longer talk to anyone but a machine on the phone, are on hold for hours, are fobbed off with this answer or that….
I mean all that kind of stuff. That is nothing like a comprehensive list of it all but it is certainly sufficient for anyone who cares to look at it all objectively to know exactly what I’m talking about.
We are being crushed. Our country is being crushed. It all began (here’s a bit of an aside) when they voted ‘Waltzing Matilda’ out and put in whatever you call it…. Gert By the Sea.
That was a vote to throw out the idea of a freeman battler dying rather than be oppressed by the rich and greedy and owners of the instruments of authority, pounced upon for only trying to keep himself alive by eating some ‘game’ that the fat pigs had in over abundance and which in common humanity they owed to the man (and certainly in mealy mouthed Christianity which we can be sure they professed every Sunday).
Throw out this idea. Too raw. Too real. Too ordinary the people in it. Too close to a fundamental truth.
Without doubt – I say “Without Doubt” the greatest national anthem in the World at that time. The Greatest.
An illustration of the triumph of ordinary man – beaten down by greedy bastards and unjustly thrown out of his own country, separated for the rest of his life from family and friends, taken in chains, beaten, tormented, trodden upon – and yet still built a free nation of healthy, proud, capable people with ‘fair go’ and ‘mateship’ as their creed.
That is what it illustrated. That is what it demonstrated. That is what it announced.
And the pusillanimous descendents of that viciously greedy and unfair squatter and his bribed and docile three constables voted it out and replaced it with a piece of sanctimonious emasculated garbage.
And this country started going to the dogs.
And now we see it.
The more you’ve suffered, the lower down the heap you are, the less you’ve got, the more we’ll tread on you.
Come here with your millions and we’ll find a place for you even if you’re known to be a filthy crook.
Fly in comfortably on a visa obtained by deceit and trickery, bribery, dishonesty, with cheating in mind, and you’ll be welcomed..
Come here penniless, starving, wrapped in rags, in the bottom of a foundering boat, sick with nausea and fear, cold, hungry, frightened, alone…. and we’ll tread on you…
Because you are not one of the chosen 3.5 million. Because you are not one of the 50,000 who stay without proper documentation each year… they are entitled to humane treatment when apprehended, if ever… no, you are not one of them… you are human flotsam, drifting in rubbish boats piloted not by humanitarians seeking to help but by scabrous criminals, the ‘lowest of the low’, ‘people smugglers’, who apparently constantly engage in the strange practice of smuggling people into Australia in leaky boats that nearly send all of the them to their deaths, including the ‘smuggler’. What a vile strange villain this is, that nearly dies with his victims..
I can see no sense or justice in any of it.
Let them be apprehended if you wish. But treat them well. Treat them right royally. For we profit by our immigrants.
Only one thing: One day Asia may decide to come to Australia. And if that day ever happens – maybe some ‘black death’ killing millions in Indonesia – maybe famine throughout China, I don’t know, but if it ever happens that Asia wants the open land of Australia then they’ll take it. By boat.
Then they will come in the boats. Then the boat people will come. Their governments in such a scenario would be keen to let them come, would do nothing to prevent them coming, may even help them.
Thousands upon thousands. Like Dunkirk in reverse.
Unarmed. Why use arms? No Asian country wants a fight with us. Why fight? Just let the boats come. We would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Without a doubt. Nothing we could do to prevent it. Swamped. Overwhelmed. The boats would come in dozens, then hundreds, then thousands….
Is it the anticipatory ghost of this that makes us act in this way?
Perhaps. But then we should see that our reaction is hopeless, powerless, ineffectual in stopping any such thing. Nothing we do now with the pitiful handful of people that come drifting our way will have any effect whatever on preventing such a mass Asian exodus from Asia and invasion of Australia. Nothing. No effect. Zero.
So lets’ stop it, eh?
Let them come. Welcome them.
Because we’re getting in such a mess. We don’t even welcome ourselves. We in fact banned ourselves, barred ourselves, when we turned out backs on Waltzing Matilda.
What if those people should jump in the water rather than be taken alive…..