Posts Tagged refugees

We are all Bill Murray now

Sep 8

Posted by Ross Sharp in Immigration, Media, Politics, Society | No Comments

5.30 on Channel 9′s “Today” show this morning opens with the headline story, “They’re here! More boats headed for our shores carrying potentially hundreds of asylum seekers and they could be here as soon as today!”, it’s Groundhog Day, I punch the mute button on the remote and wait for it to go away.

Lordy, lordy, won’t you help me please, for I was about 41 or 42 when this conversation about refugees became the Australia’s Cup of political footballs, and I am almost 53 today, and this conversation continues, and it surely does exhaust my tired ol’ mind sumfin’ awful and wearies my chalky ol’ bones to the marrow, yes’m, indeed it do, amen to that and praise this day.

For I have worn out my last pair of rubber underpants and peed my last panicked puddle of despair over the dire straits of it all, I can pee and squeal no more, I’m plum all peed and squealed out, looks like they’re here and they’re here to stay and they’re coming, more of them, every day, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of whacked-out dingbats in bomb-laden dinghies to blow us all to that great brick shithouse in the sky, fuck our sheep and fill our pies with felafel.

By God in the almighty heavens above our tender heads, it is a sad truth today that the fabric of our society is indeed a torn and ragged rag of a thing now.

Yes, Sweet Jesus, it is but a pair of ol’, piss-streaked y-fronts on the spindly and spotted frame of an 80 year old digger with its arse all hangin’ out to buggery, and the people of this fair land ain’t havin’ none of it no mo’, they’s a souffle of social unrest a-risin’ in the heartland, all angry cheese and righteous dustings of outraged flour over the changing state of this nation and these seemingly endless series of vile upheavals that have seen our shores swarm with murderin’ beards and their murderin’ ways, smokin’ hookahs and bakin’ flatbreads and those little jelly sweets that are dusted with sugary shit, I quite like those and I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth.

…

Sorry, where was I?

Oh.

Yes …

Tags: asylum seekers, Channel 9, Groundhog Day, refugees, Tony Abbott

Brown people: expensive

May 9

Posted by Spock... in Immigration, Society | 2 Comments

The Herald Sun is being outraged at brown people again:

Taxpayers to shoulder Julia Gillard’s ‘Malaysian Solution’

Taxpayers will fork out more than $50,000 for every refugee the Federal Government plans to bring to Australia from Malaysia under its new plan to stop illegal boat arrivals.

But they will have to pay more than $90,000 for every asylum seeker the Government now rejects.

I’m already have one cost cutting suggestion…

Sue Bolton from the Refugee Action Collective has another,

The costs of processing asylum seekers could be reduced, Ms Bolton said, by allowing some low-risk applicants to live within the community while they are assessed rather than mandatory detention.

So let’s say 5000 asylum seekers arrive by boat, 90% are accepted so 500 are found not to be refugees. Using the Herald Sun numbers if we just let to 500 found not to be refugees stay in Australia anyway, I just saved the Australian government $20,000,000. I imagine another several million could be saved by allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while being processed too.

Economic management!

Of course Scott Morrison was available for comment,

“Labor’s open borders and rolling detention crisis is consuming staff and resources at an insatiable rate, with taxpayers forced to write a blank cheque to underwrite the Government’s failure,” said Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison.

This was, and never will be, about money, Scott. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did I am sure the deepest, darkest circle of it would be reserved for you.

And Gillard is spending money to stop Asylum Seekers coming to Australia! (Outrage, etc…)

Australia is using Prime Minister Julia Gillard to spearhead an international advertising blitz with the slogan “don’t do it”, telling people smugglers and passengers in Indonesia, Afghanistan and Pakistan about its new plan to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, where there are 93,000 people already in the queue.

The PM’s warning – “the truth is if you spend your money, you get on a boat, you risk your life, you don’t get to stay, you go to Malaysia, and you go to the back of the queue” – has been translated into Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Arabic and Bahasa Indonesian, and already broadcast.

As fellow Groupthink-er, Brides said on Twitter this morning,

s_bridges
Looked for the back of the immigration queue down the back of the couch. Found 20 cents and a crust of toast.
9/05/11 11:01 AM

And don’t forget the poll:

YES/NO

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ILLEGAL REFUGEE, YOU FUCKING IGNORANT AND/OR DISINGENUOUS ARSEHATS!

In Herald Sun, Julia Gillard just can’t win. She spends money to stop Asylum seekers coming and she is criticized. She spends money on allowing them to come, she gets criticized.

This isn’t about money, it was never about money. If it was about money Tony’s plans to drag boats back to wherever they came from would have caused more outrage than anything. This is just the Herald Sun using not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia to play dirty politics.

And all the while the public debate in Australia forgets that there are real people, with real lives and genuine fears for their life fleeing to Australia in the hope of a new life.

This is a fight the ALP can’t win. Torn between their progressive base and the conservative votes they need to win seats in NSW and Queensland. No matter how “tough” they talk on “illegal immigration”, Tony Abbott can (and does) talk tougher. No matter what crazy, expensive and inhuman scheme Gillard concocts to discourage asylum seekers traveling to Australia via boat, the News Ltd tabloids find a negative way to frame it as being too soft on Asylum seekers, or too expensive to the tax payer.

With the terms of the debate being set by Tony Abbott and the News Ltd outrage machine, Gillard doesn’t stand a chance.

But the alternative is to present a vision which cuts through the agenda driven ‘journalism’ of News Ltd, which seeks to inspire and educate. N0t to just cater your policies to the lowest common denominator of Australian society, but to present a compelling and persuasive vision that can win the hearts and minds of voters.

And I gave up on Australian politics providing anything like that a long time ago.

Tags: asylum seekers, Herald Sun, Julia Gillard, refugees, Tony Abbott

Scott Morrison, a petseleh in a shandhoiz

Feb 15

Posted by Ross Sharp in Foreign matter, Immigration, Politics | 12 Comments

He should die of cancer. A shtunk, er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd! …

Seven survivors of the Christmas Island boat tragedy will travel to Sydney today to bury family members. Among them, Madian El Ibrahimy will bury his eight-month-old daughter, Zahra and Hussein al-Husaini will lay to rest his three-month-old son Sam.

Both men’s wives drowned, or are missing.

The opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, yesterday attacked the government for flying 21 detainees from Christmas Island to attend the Muslim and Christian funerals at Rookwood and Rouse Hill for victims of December’s horrific boat crash.

Family members of 12 of the victims live in Sydney and requested they be buried here.

But Mr Morrison said transferring detainees to Sydney raised security issues and showed the government ”doesn’t understand the value of the taxpayer’s money”.

Mr Morrison told radio 2GB: ”If people wanted to attend the funeral service from Sydney, for example, who may have been relatives of those who wanted these funeral services, well, they could have held the service on Christmas Island and like any other Australian who would have wanted to go to the funeral of someone close to them, they would have paid for themselves to get on a plane and go there.”

Scott Morrison, a crusted cum stain on the fabric of the universe, this bloated, block-headed bucket of thrush from out the communal washbasin of a heizel, a kuppe drek, this plyoot karger, this farkakte proster chamoole, it k’vitsh’s “Tzufil!!”, “Too much!! Too costly!!”, the money we spend to bury the children of these “niggers” from across the sea, these invaders, these illegals, their foreign ways they bring to these pristine white shores where pristine white people go about their pristine white ways, and now we, the “taxpayer”, we pay our shekels to bury their rotting dead?

“Gai feifen ahfen yam!” it whines, such a yatebedam it thinks it is, such a man, counting our pennies for us, counting, counting, counting, bed bugs I have seen with more character than this yukel, this shtunk, this fat-faced tamaveter with its crooked beaver teeth, its dead man’s eyes, a feier zol im trefen!! … Such a grober is this boy, this shtik drek, his words are like the loose bowel movements of crazy old grandmothers that carry on the breezes that brush over a field of unburied corpses.

Kish mir en toches, groisser potz!! Me ken brechen!!

…

Feh, fuck him, his testicles are sultanas, his penis is a noodle.

Scott Morrision, zolst zein vi a lomp-am tug sollst di hangen, in der nacht sollst di brennen!!

Gai trenz ich, Morrison, gai trenz ich!!!

…

Farshtaist?

Tags: Christmas Island, Liberal Party, refugees, schlubs, schmendriks, Scott Morrison, various ways of calling a person a shithead in Yiddish

Stop making the link

Jul 19

Posted by Spock... in Federal election 2010 | 5 Comments

I am really quite sick of this.

Why must we link population growth to immigration? What does immigration have to do with population growth in Australia? Scott already discussed this in April. Why do these two discussions need to be linked when they so clearly aren’t? Australian politicians should stop using population as a smokescreen for discussing asylum seekers, and the Australian media needs to stop letting them.

But they are still at it. Stories like this one over at The Australian, that link the two discussions are part of the problem.

In an address to Brisbane think tank The Eidos Institute to launch the Building Better Regional Cities program, after a visit to a Welcoming the Babies function with Wayne Swan, Ms Gillard said that while urban dwellers faced traffic congestion and had trouble accessing doctors or finding seats on public transport, many regional areas were desperate to attract more workers. Her government would back them, she said, and in doing so relieve pressure on cities.

Let us ignore, for one moment, the fact that these problems in cities aren’t caused by population growth but by years of under investment in infrastructure from our governments. There is nothing wrong with discussing the population limits of our cities and there is nothing wrong with discussing population distribution. But in the very next paragraph is if it is somehow related:

The comments came as Tony Abbott – after a visit to western Sydney, an area under pressure from population growth – said the asylum-seeker issue was making Australians feel they were losing control of their own destiny. He promised annual reviews of immigration intakes and guaranteeing a Coalition government would ensure infrastructure development kept up with population growth.

They have nothing to do with each other! Abbott should stop insisting they do and The Australian shouldn’t re-enforce the connection by putting it in the same story.

Also, having Tony Abbott promise that a Liberal government would invest in infrastructure development is like hearing Joe Hockey promise he won’t eat all the Cheezles. He might mean it, but I wouldn’t want to leave him alone with them.

Tags: asylum seekers, Julia Gillard, population, refugees, The Australian, Tony Abbott

Wilson’s Lament

Jul 16

Posted by Ross Sharp in Foreign matter, Immigration, Politics | 6 Comments

(With apologies to John Cooper Clarke)

Bloody wogs on bloody boats,
The bloody border’s a bloody joke,
Bloody Rudd was a bloody clown,
The bloody cunts should bloody drown,
Bloody Turnbull was bloody fucked,
No one had the bloody guts,
To bloody do what needs be done,
And bloody shoot the bloody scum.

I’m bloody sick of spicks and wops,
And bloody chinks who eat their dogs,
The bloody coons and bloody gins,
Should have their bloody heads bashed in,
I’m bloody Wilson bloody Tuckey,
The bloody Party’s bloody lucky,
To have a true blue Aussie ’round,
Who’ll grind these bloody bastards down.

The bloody feminists are bloody Nazis,
The bloody greenies are bloody arses,
The bloody weather’s not bloody changing,
It’s bloody hot or it’s bloody raining,
To bloody build a bloody town,
Bloody raze the bloody ground!
This bloody country’s bloody lucky,
To bloody have Ol’ Ironbar Tuckey.

Our bloody miners are bloody legends,
Bloody Gillard should pull her head in,
Her bloody tax is a bloody shocker,
She’s bloody off her bloody rocker,
She’s bloody got no bloody children!
What bloody world do we bloody live in?
The bloody country’s bloody stuffed,
And I’ve bloody had e-bloody-nuff!

These bloody terrorists on bloody boats,
They’re bloody proof shit bloody floats,
I’d bloody bring the bloody Navy,
To blow their bodies to bloody gravy,
It’s bloody them or bloody us,
Never bloody mind the fuss!
The bloody bastards can bloody starve!
Now where’d I put that old iron bar?

Tags: Andrew Bolt, asylum seekers, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, refugees, Wilson Tuckey

Compare and contrast

Jul 5

Posted by Spock... in Politics | 3 Comments

People

Cockroaches

See? They are quite different. So can we please, please, PLEASE stop talk about them as if they are the same thing?

Thank you in advance,

Spock…

Tags: asylum seekers, Australian politics, cockroaches, refugees, stop the country I want to get off

Moron of the week attacks Australian of the year

Feb 10

Posted by David F in Politics | 7 Comments

When I was approached to contribute to this blog, I was asked to avoid the low-lying fruit. I can see the rationale for that, but I couldn’t resist commenting on this venomous little piece of spittle. It appears at the new (and ‘leading’) blog for centre-right Australians, called Menzies House. When they’re not live-blogging the Young Libs’ conference, or spruiking the virtues of free markets and virginity, some of them are attacking asylum seekers.

Patrick McGorry is a youth psychiatrist in Melbourne, who was named Australian of the Year for 2010. He made some criticisms, earlier in the years, of the Government’s policies regarding detention for asylum seekers, pointing out (not unreasonably) that they are likely to exacerbate mental illness.

Enter Menzies warrior James Darby.

Professor Patrick McGorry, newly appointed Australian Of The Year has said asylum seekers had experienced severe torture and trauma in their home countries and that people in detention needed to be processed quicker and while living in the community.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: A conservative intellect that would make a bucket of pigshit appear scholarly in comparison, asylum seekers, Australian politics, Mental Health, refugees, Rightists say the darndest things

The Animus of the Pusillanimous

Oct 30

Posted by David F in Politics, Society | 11 Comments

There’s a motif in Homer that one finds repeatedly – it is honourable to show kindness to the wanderer, noble to greet strangers with an open palm. This is the code of the free spirit, of the warrior. To fail to show kindness and generosity to a traveller is to lapse into dishonour. By living like a bug, hostile to strangers, and fearful that every passing footstep may spell doom, one not only renounces honour, joy and courage, but humanity itself.