There’s Only One Way Left To Fight Australia’s Illogical Cruelty To Refugees

Australian politics in recent times has been nothing more than a patina of grubby mediocrity; the outraged squeaking of jumped up middle management running in circles around petty nothings, as the real concerns of government tower far above their abilities and ambitions.

It’s gone on so long we’ve become inured to daily incompetence and trivial wrongdoing from the so-called leaders of our nation. But the latest attempt to distract us from the government’s failure to govern is sphincter-loosening in its cynical debasement of human lives in the pursuit of a paltry moment of internecine success.

The Government Wants To Ban Asylum Seekers Who Arrive By Boat From Ever Entering Australia

–

From Moral Failures To Pure Evil

Turnbull’s announcement of the lifetime ban on asylum seekers being granted any visa entry to Australia has nothing to do with the functions of government or any immediate threat. It was nothing more than a ham-fisted attempt to find a single policy behind which he could unite his fractured Coalition and an increasingly disillusioned electorate.

His press conference yesterday, was nothing but a pathetic attempt to reanimate the boat arrivals bogeyman and drive a wedge into one of the areas in which Labor is struggling to decide between political pragmatism and moral governance. And Labor is no innocent victim here — this is a demon of their own making.

Labor’s asylum seeker policy has always been chasing the electorate down the s-bend of Tony Abbott’s politics of fear, rather than accepting the role leadership has in challenging and maintaining public debate. Shorten nailed his colours to Abbott’s mast years ago, and has never had the courage to resile from that. Moral turpitude has a price, and the light on the hill has long been nothing but a sickly neon glow on this issue.

Despite Labor’s undoubted failings, the Abbott/Turnbull governments have taken asylum seekers well beyond moral failure and are now deep in the territory of pure evil. Turnbull’s claim that he was making this announcement in response to the threat of people smugglers jars hard up against Abbott’s monotonous songsheet of how he stopped the boats (and axed the tax). If there are no boats, why do we need to further deter people smugglers? The answer is, of course, that we don’t. But Turnbull does need to deter the malcontents of his own party and stave off the ever-present threat of revolt over marriage equality.

And that is the most revolting aspect of an entirely revolting announcement.

–

Power And Senselessness

There is no reason for this, there is no moral, legislative, governmental or even ideological motive. It’s barely even a political move; while it might unsettle Labor, we are (probably) years away from an election, there’s no great need to throw a cat into Labor’s policy pigeons right now. This is grinding down already blighted human lives to gain nothing more than a short breather from the attacks of his own slavering right-wing.

Even the marriage equality shenanigans and blatant disregard for vulnerable LGBTIQ youth were less jaundiced than this.

It’s not difficult to believe that the likes of Cory Bernardi or George Christensen, quiveringly tumescent in their fear of homosexuality, could convince themselves that they are righteous warriors of God in opposing marriage equality. The attacks on the poor, the sick, the elderly, people with disabilities and their utter disregard for women and children victimised by family violence have some basis in the ideology of entitlement. It is possible to have some despairing belief that they have a reason, no matter how misguided, for what they do.

This soulless challenge to the few shreds of humanity left in the Turnbull government might serve to keep the rabble quiet for a day or so, it may even settle the feeding frenzy of the Hansonites for a few minutes. But in the long view, for the Liberal party’s base, the doctor’s wives and quiet accountants of the leafy suburbs, it will do nothing but confirm their suspicions that the twinklingly principled Turnbull of his pre-prime ministerial days was nothing but an illusion. He is Abbott without the moral compass, Rudd without the charm, and Gillard without the brains.

This slow drip of relentless viciousness is not going to stop. The Coalition government is not a united party; they are a collection of individuals who serve nothing but their own self-interest. So the only thing we can do to make it stop is to ensure it is no longer in their interest to torture people in our name. Write, email, Facebook, tweet and turn up on the doorstep of your local member, and every member of government you can find. Go to rallies and sign every petition. Convince your parents and grandparents to do the same. This is not about convincing the government to do the right thing, not only do they not care about that, they barely understand what the right thing is. It’s about making sure they know that basic humanitarian concern is not a leftist conspiracy; it’s a vote-winning policy that will win the favour of the majority of the electorate.

We need to tell Turnbull, in no uncertain terms, that using anguish as a political tool will hurt him, in the only place he has left that has any feelings: his power centre.

–

Jane Gilmore is a Melbourne based writer and editor. She blogs at janegilmore.com and tweets at @janetribune