As news came out yesterday evening that a Syrian refugee passport was found next to one of the terrorists in the Paris attacks on Friday, predictably the media pounced, and all the right wing refugee-demonisers came out in force. Our very own stop-the-boats-fetishest, Tony Abbott, spoke with his media team – the Daily Terrorgraph, sorry Daily Telegraph – who today published
Read more
Australia’s Minister for Saying-We’ve-Stopped-the-Boats – one Mr Peter ‘PDuddy’ Dutton – was out and about this morning defending what he and his government believe is the best and most successful immigration policy EVER. I decided to check out PDuddy’s claim against the following officialesque list… The Top 5 signs your Refugee Policy is a disaster Number Five: Refugees would rather
Read more
Nauru was described by The Economist in 2001 as a hotbed of incompetence – as “Paradise Lost…..an enormous moth-eaten fedora: a ghastly grey mound of rock surrounded by a narrow green brim of vegetation“. That same year, Nauru became a cornerstone of one of the LNP’s favourite policies – their refugee policy. In the heady days of the Abbott PMship, barely a day went
Read more
Geoffrey Robertson’s recent appearance on Q and A reminded me of the value of considering a situation through the eyes of another via a hypothetical situation… Here’s one to have a go at by: Reading the Hypothetical (and extremely fictional) story. Considering the three options. Checking out the ‘Things to consider’ section. And then…. Voting for the option you would choose if you were
Read more
It’s something we take for granted isn’t it? That each of us has a country – a place to put our feet – on a planet where 71% of the surface is covered by ocean. Like having air to breathe, we assume that having somewhere to stand, to walk – is a basic right of existence. Our bodies aren’t exactly ocean-friendly – not for
Read more
As most people know, laws came into effect on 1 July this year making it a crime for an ‘entrusted person’ – such as a doctor – to talk to the press about what’s going on in detention centres like Nauru or Manus Island, with a threat of two years imprisonment if they do. Having put up a shroud of secrecy
Read more
Unless you’ve been on a desert island or in a coma, you’ve heard Tony Abbott boast over and over and over again that: “We’ve had a lot of really significant achievements over the last year: We stopped the boats. We scrapped the carbon tax. We scrapped the mining tax“ These three issues were a key part of Abbott’s 2013 election
Read more
Listening to Tony Abbott speak can be confusing. One day he’s saying something like “Let me be as categoric as I can, the GST won’t change, full stop, end of story“. Then, in the very first budget brought down by his government, the GST is immediately put under the spotlight – leading up to last week, where he praised the States for
Read more
Aussies like to think we’re a reasonable people. We don’t torture. That’s something they do elsewhere. But what if we do torture? What if torture is being done in our name?
Read more
Last Monday, when questioned about the UNHCR’s report on the torture of asylum seekers in our care, Tony Abbott dismissed the report, saying that rather than lecturing him, the UN should be congratulating him because: We have stopped the boats, and by stopping the boats we have ended the deaths at sea. It’s a phrase we’re all familiar with now. And
Read more
Progressive Conversation 