There are even more revelations to the immigration scandal that began with the detaining of an Australian resident in her own immigration system. We now know that there are at least another 200 more bungled cases. Can that be excused?! I don’t think so. All these proposed ‘amendments’ to a morally dead system are a waste of time. Putting on two extra psychiatric nurses wouldn’t be needed if they weren’t in a centre that fosters depression and other severe psychological effects. As the saying goes, prevention is better than a cure.
The private member’s bill proposed by Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou is a promising sign that the party allegiances are falling apart due to the inhumane system. Howard has reacted angrily to his proposal that is backed by a few other Liberal party members. He is trying to use his power to stop his members making their own choices. It’s when your own members start going against you that you should be worried Mr. Howard.
I did expect Kim Beazly and the Labor party to back the bill, or Beazly to at least allow his party to have a conscience vote. But he has acted with contempt and disappointment, sighting that the bill will be voted on according to the party line. He backed the concept of the detention regime. After all they were the dickheads that brought it in. Then, Beazly made a major blunder. He said that the detention system was a deterrent. He said it was there to deter other Asylum seekers fleeing to our ‘decent and compassionate country.’ Most will not understand where this blunder lies. To detain someone for the purposes of deterring future boatloads, would be detaining someone arbitrarily. Arbitrary detention is illegal under the Australian constitution. The Liberal party has maintained that their detention regime is for the purpose of having the Asylum seekers available for processing. Considering that Baxter detention centre is in the middle of freaking desert and there are no phones, it makes it very difficult for an Asylum seeker to access legal advice, something they are entitled to, and considering there are so many cases that have been gathering dust for years. I really don’t see this as any logical excuse.
Though most rational people can see the injustice of mandatory detention, there is still a proportion of people who are driven by xenophobic hysteria and Liberal party scare tactics. Such as, if we let them in then they will come in droves. This is simply false, the highest number of boat people in anyone year was in 2000, 8 years after Labor put the detention system in place. Asylum seekers come because they need to, because their lives are threatened. They did not jump queues, simply because in most countries there are no queue. If people would look past the lies and hysteria they would see that these people are people and not animals. To make them see, the people who can already see the gross negligence need to fight back. No more of this complacency to the lying little rodent who we call our Prime Minister.
