Sammy J’s New ‘Playground Politics’ Episode About Building A Detention Centre Is Horrifying

Despite the best efforts of both major parties, the people in Australia’s offshore detention centres haven’t faded from the public mind. On Q&A on Monday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was questioned by Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, who’s been held on Manus Island for more than three years. The New York Times has urged Australia to abandon its detention regime, young voters have listed asylum seekers as their most important election issue, and A Current Affair, of all places, was granted rare media access to Nauru in a story that aired on Monday.

But it’s a comedian who’s brought home the ongoing horror of Manus and Nauru to an unexpectedly wide audience. Sammy J’s Playground Politics, a daily Playschool-style election pisstake that airs on ABC iview, has aired episodes on minor parties, Malcolm Turnbull’s concessions to the Liberal Party’s far right and the housing bubble.

But it’s last night’s episode, ‘How to Make an Immigration Detention Centre’, that’s really making waves. In only 15 hours, it’s been watched more than 160,000 times, and with dark, immensely confronting humour like making barbed wire out of pipe cleaners and the need to be careful around sharp objects, it’s not hard to see why.