Last weekend I was really bored. The American hip hop video clips with all those bikini women on Video Hits were making me a feel a bit funny so I’d turned the television off, I’d eaten so many tomato sauce sandwiches that I was starting to feel sick, and the linen cupboard suddenly had a child-proof lock on it so I couldn’t make a cubby house. Susan was starting to get really grumpy with me moping about the house and was threatening to call the electorate office to see if there was anything I could do to help out, so I called up Nick Xzennophone to see if he could play. Nick’s wife answered the phone and said he was out, but after I asked her why I could hear Nick in the background whispering that he was out she put him on the phone.

Xzennophone told me that he’d love to play but was too busy researching the asylum seeker issue because it was going to be a big one this year. I asked him what asylum seekers were and after he told me I was overcome with sympathy for the poor sods. But after Nick suggested a coalition with the Greens who hold a similar position to us I instantly decided that I was anti-asylum seekers, or anti-immigration, or anti-whatever it is the Greens are for. The Greens can pass around the friendship bong with whoever they want but I’m going to maintain the intensity of Australia’s borders.

With my thinking on the matter clear I decided that I too would do some research on the issue, but better research than reading reports, statistics and other one-sided information like Xzennophone was. The only way to see all of the both sides of the story is to go to the source of the story and see it for yourself, so I asked Nick where these “asylum seekers” (I do the inverted commas thing around my head every time I say it now) come from, and he told me it was places like Sri Lanka and the Middle East. I then went to talk to Susan and said that my zone one and two Metcard would definitely be okay for the Middle East given that we live in the middle of the eastern suburbs, but is Sri Lanka outside the city and would I need a V-line ticket? Susan suggested instead that I go to Christmas Island which is where the “asylum seekers” go to be processed after arriving in Australia.

Because I’m a doing kind of guy instead of a talking kind of guy, within 24 hours I had booked my flight, packed my warmest clothes to ward off the North Pole chill, and had instructed my office to send out a media release. Two days later I had landed at Christmas Island and, arriving at the detention centre, I introduced myself to the boss who looked me up and down and asked who I really was. I told him that I was really Senator Steve Fielding, accountant and engineer, and my office had been in touch. He humbly apologised and said he expected a politician to be wearing something a little more official than a woollen jumper, tracksuit pants, and ugg boots.

I was then taken on a tour of the facility and what I saw shocked me. There are rooms with beds, clean sheets and fluffy towels; there are relaxation areas with chairs, tables and televisions; and there are books, newspapers and board games. I mean, Australia is supposed to be an igali eggaly egalar equal country but I’m not allowed to have a bunk bed or unlimited TV hours at home so why should a bunch of queue jumpers who aren’t even Australians have them? At the end of the tour I had lunch with the “asylum seekers” in the dining hall (nice metal cutlery and ceramic crockery, I might add) and when I saw that they are allowed to put their own salt and pepper on their food I was furious; when I called Susan to ask permission she told the boss to put only a small pinch of each on my mashed potato.

In the evening I went back to the recreation room to talk to some of the “asylum seekers”. One of them told me he had spent over $8,000 on getting to Australia! That’s more money than I have in my Commonwealth Bank Dollarmite account! When I asked him how many Sri Lankan dollars that was he said they don’t use dollars. I asked him if they used stones or cows or something instead and he just glared at me and walked away. I tell you what, if these people can afford $8,000 for a boat cruise I can’t see how they could have it so bad at home.

But the absolute icing on the cake of this “asylum seeker” and detention centre rort was sitting in the corner of the recreation hall: a brand new Apple Mac computer. I’ve been asking Susan for ages if I can have an Apple Mac and she keeps refusing, saying that our two-year-old PC can do everything that we want to do perfectly well and it’s just a waste of money. I tried sulking but that didn’t work, with Susan angrily pointing out that there is no way her family is going to spend $2,000 on a new Minesweeper machine for me just because I don’t like the colour of the one I’ve got, and that $2,000 could be spent on much more important things like food for the kids or textbooks for their schooling. I interrupted her and pointed out that Macs don’t even have Minesweeper and Susan sarcastically asked me what on earth I’d do with a Mac then given that it took me 18 months just to learn how to play that.

Sitting there watching these non-Australians with access to an Apple Mac made me burn up inside with jealousy and a fierce determination to bring to an end the government’s unfair Macs for Boat People program. After a while I went up to the machine and asked the “asylum seeker” sitting nearest it if I could have a turn. After he helped me turn it on, and showed me how to hold the mouse, and showed me how to open a program, I jumped on Twitter to reveal this injustice to the world. The boat person asked what Twitter did but I told him he wouldn’t understand. The boat person then opened up some program called “Microsoft Word” and I asked what it did but he told me I wouldn’t understand.

So, I’m back in Australia now, Parliament is back this week, and I am going to make sure that fairness and justice will be brought to bear on “asylum seekers” and their rorting of the Australian taxpayer for extraordinary luxuries as rewards for their criminal queue jumping. Apple Macs and televisions belong in airport passenger lounges, not detention centres, and airports are where real asylum seekers should arrive. And as part of my research here I called up Flight Centre and asked how much a ticket from Sri Lanka to Sydney costs and I can confidently report that it’s much less than $8,000. This case is closed.

Until next time.