Pauline Pantsdown ALSO Made A Graphic Novel For Asylum Seekers. Hers Is Much More On-Point.

Quick catch-up.

Earlier this week, the Department of Immigration and Border Security published a harrowing 18-page graphic novel, in an attempt to dissuade asylum seekers from traveling to Australia by boat without a visa. “The journey is hard and when you get here we will treat you terribly and then send you somewhere awful, where you’ll get homesick, depressed and probably ill,” it screeched, on your behalf. “Don’t even try it, guys.”

Specifically targeting the Hazaras — one of the most vulnerable groups of people on Earth — the comic was first published in November under the Rudd Government, as part of a campaign decried by the then-Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison for being taxpayer-funded propaganda. Which, yes, it kind of was.

But Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s evil twin, Actual Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, seems to disagree with him, adopting the strip under their own new campaign: ‘No way. They will not make Australia home‘.

The graphic novel has been received extremely coldly by most people everywhere. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young called it “fear-mongering propaganda” that “fails to even acknowledge that the vast majority of refugees are felling war, torture and terror”, and a local pair have begun a Pozible campaign to create their own counter-comic, explaining that seeking refuge in any country that has signed the Refugee Convention is not illegal, and that there are many Australians fighting for fairer treatment of asylum seekers.

Another critic of the campaign is Pauline Pantsdown, who you might remember as the 1990s’ favourite satirical counterpoint to Pauline Hanson — or, more recently, for owning up to sneaking gay sex soundbites into a 2004 John Laws commercial.

Pantsdown tweeted out her own version of the graphic novel, and allowed us to reproduce it here. Enjoy!

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