Remember when this guy saw this photo and went on TV
and told everyone that refugees were throwing their children into the ocean to get into Australia
and everyone was like, OMG they’re the worst people
except it turned out they were actually just drowning and Howard knew that but he lied anyway?
Good times.
Like, we had a PM who literally saw a group of human beings drowning in the ocean
and went, hmmm what shit can I make up about to turn the Australian people against them
and maybe help me win an election?
That’s some Frank Underwood shit. Best part is he won the election!
That was almost 20 years ago but thanks to Johnny
we’ve gotten so good at demonising asylum seekers that both Labor and the coalition do it on the reg.
Snazzy terminology does come in very handy
when you intend to leave men, women and children languishing on a prison island indefinitely
as Howard did in 2001 when he first opened Nauru
and Gillard did again in 2012 when she reopened Nauru.
So now we have a situation where fear of refugees and asylum seekers
is so ingrained in the national consciousness that the boats you stop
are the same ones you sail to election victory on.
Today marks six months since the last successful people smuggling venture to our country.
Funny though how at that same press conference
he refused to disclose how many unsuccessful ‘people smuggling ventures’ there were.
Because he knew full well he hadn’t really stopped the boats...
he’d just stopped them arriving into Australian waters
and if they weren’t in our waters they weren’t our problem.
It’s like rather than intercepting them when they get here
you just intercept them a few kilometers away and go ‘fixed it’.
And everyone goes, that man’s a legend.
It’s so genius that Labor actually adopted the policy themselves in 2015.
Having no asylum seekers anywhere in our vicinity might literally be the only thing those two agree on.
They’ve both tried to palm them off to various countries at various times:
Nauru, Malaysia, The US, Cambodia, PNG and New Zealand.
And our government acts like it’s so outraged that “these people” thwart Australian law and come here.
Meanwhile do they give a shit about those coming by plane and overstaying their visa?
I mean they’re here illegally!
You wanna know how many of them there are right now? 64,000.
But Peter Dutton reckons it's the 600 people on Manus Island that are the true flaunters of Australian law.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, yesterday the Manus Island Detention Centre closed
but around 600 asylum seekers are refusing to leave saying they’re scared for their safety.
Power’s been cut off, water’s been cut off, food supplies have been cut off and the men are...
But Peter is doing now what ol Johnny did 20 years ago.
Painting asylum seekers as deceitful individuals that would go to any lengths to get to Australia.
He said it himself just yesterday.
Yeah why would they genuinely fear for their safety?
It’s not like PNG’s national police chief has said he can’t guarantee they’d be safe.
It’s not like PNG soldiers fired bullets into the centre one time because they were maybe drunk.
It’s not like six asylum seekers have died on Manus Island under Australia’s watch.
It’s all just subterfuge right?
Look I’m not going to pretend there’s an easy solution to this issue
and if we’re being real the number of people who’ve died at sea (that we know of)
and the number of children in detention have decreased significantly under coalition policy.
And the fact is we can’t take everyone.
Even if we wanted to we just can’t.
But the cruelty, the unnecessary, expensive, non transparent cruelty of our off-shore processing policies
and the hypocrisy of our politicians when it comes to ‘illegals’ in Australia?
That we can help - but why would we when it’s won us votes for 20 years.