You could call Andrew Bolt a lot of things – but a serious man who treats complex political issues fairly and reasonably is not one of them.
What to say about his latest effort to blame Kevin Rudd for asylum seeker deaths? Like his and the Liberals’ attack on Rudd for the deficit – as if the Australian Labor Party were to blame for the global financial crisis – it relies heavily on the reader being wilfully ignorant (or at the least disturbingly incurious) as to what has been happening to refugee numbers globally over the last few years.
But that’s alright – if they’ve been relying on the Herald Sun and Andrew Bolt for their news and views they could well be that ill-informed.
The central thesis, that a change in a policy like dragging a boat out of Australian waters to sink rather than letting it sink here “causes deaths” by encouraging people to think we’re less than monstrous, is fundamentally flawed. Taken to its logical extreme it would justify any act of bastardry – the nicer we are, the more humane we are, the softer a touch we look. If we want NO-ONE to try the trip, obviously we should threaten them with feeding their kids to crocodiles at the end. That sort of threat – with some kind of monstrous follow-through – would dry up the refugee numbers quick-smart.
But that’s not really how we want the world to see us, is it? To be fair, it’s not even how Andrew Bolt wants the world to see us – he wants us to LOOK like humane people to those people in whose eyes we judge ourselves, but be known to be steely unsympathetic bastards to the people who we just wish would go away. That’s what the “Pacific Solution” was about – treating refugees badly enough that it would “deter” them from coming, whilst portraying the meat of that treatment to the world at large as little more than slightly onerous bureaucracy.
But that position is obviously inherently self-contradictory.
Anyway, if we accept Andrew’s line that the main determination of whether a policy is the right one or not is whether it deters asylum seekers, then Howard’s subtle bastardry was not strong enough either. He didn’t stop all the boats coming, after all. On the other hand, if the issue is whether the policy is fair or not, then the fact that (in an environment of increased refugee numbers globally) a slight increase in the number of boats that have made the trip recently is fundamentally irrelevant. You can’t have it both ways.
Andrew Bolt is not a stupid man, and he knows all this. You draw your own conclusions as to how he can write a post like the one today, or the column from April to which it links, trying clumsily and disingenuously to use asylum seeker deaths for his own political capital.
27 Comments
Missing Water
Can somebody please explain to me why asylum seekers are a bad thing, and why it is that tactics which demonise such desperate people are considered such a good thing? In which parrallel universe do such perverted thoughts exist so naturally?
No, Bolt is not a stupid man, just an unsubtle partisan. His fans, on the other hand…
I couldn’t be bothered reading this tenth or twentieth reprinting of the same article he’s been writing this last year, but let me guess, he hasn’t mentioned anything about the correlation between the downturn in the number of boatpeople in 2001/2 and the international security clampdown after 9/11, has he? The launching of the war on terror had one immediate effect on our shores (literally) and said effect doesn’t exist in AB’s mind.
Well, at least he isn’t going to win any new converts to his POV just because he writes this article another hundred times.
Oh come on confessions – these people are all murderers and rapists. Baby eaters. I mean, y’know, they’re BLACK, and all. We don’t want them here.
Very good piece Jeremy. One of your best.
Holland must be such a lovely place.
lol @ bertus!
but seriously, when did compassion for disadvantaged and displaced peoples become the sole province of the left? it was Fraser’s conservative government that accepted vietmese boat people after all.
These poeple are not refugees by the strick definition of what a refugee is. They are looking for a better life and that is understandable. However they are jumping the immigration queue. The question I have is, what are we to do. If we don’t have a regulated immigration system, it is open slather. You can’t have a little bit each way.
Until they have been “processed” by our Immigration Dept they are merely asylum seekers or unauthorised arrivals (take your pick). The fact that the vast majority of boat people who arrived in the last decade or so were found to be refugees puts a bit of a dent in your argument PeeBee.
Oh, and PeeBee, while I’m here, can you point me to anybody who has seriously advocated an “open slather”, unregulated immigration system?
“These poeple are not refugees by the strick definition of what a refugee is.”
Well, we don’t know that until their applications are processed. The problem is that we don’t make it straightforward for most people to apply overseas, so they need to do it when they come here.
As for “queue jumpers” – The vast majority of those fly in on aeroplanes and simply overstay their visas. Only for some reason they don’t scare the boltites like the ones who have the bravery and gumption to try coming out here when their circumstances are obviously much more difficult. I wonder what that reason is.
The reason the ones who fly in on airplanes aren’t so scary is they can prove their identity.
And there is no “bravery and gumption” in attempting to smuggle yourself into a country. It is a criminal act, enabled by really ugly criminals.
I reckon this is who Bolt is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)
And even more so some of his followers. He has this relatively narrow list of obsessions – AGW, Teh Evil Left, the biased lefty MSM, boat people, a few others – and he just goes on and on, and on, and on about them. And nothing will change his views.
I’m ashamed to admit I have a brother who has mild tendencies in this regard, and one of his pet topics is the the moon landings were faked by Hollywood. He’s seen the film, he’s seen the footage of the flag waving (there’s no wind on the Moon!) the multiple shadows of the astronauts (there’s only one Sun around here, isn’t there? Look at that extra shadow!) etc etc, and nothing will convince him it’s not so. You can patiently knock down all his arguments, but it doesn’t change anything. He’s quite normal in most respects, just a very mild crank about moon landings and a couple of other things, which we have agreed not to talk about anymore.
I reckon Bolt has a baad-ass version of the same thing.
Sort of like those darlings of the left… 911 truthers, eh!
Zoot@8. No one is advocating open slather, but by Rudd’s action, he has once again unplugged the bottleneck. Some of these ‘boat people’ had attempted to come to Australia before and had set up businesses etc in Lombock (and paid an allowance by the Australian Government). They were in effect stuck in the pipeline and were waiting for an opportunity to continue their journey when conditions became more favourable. When the first 19 people came here after Rudd’s election and they were accepted, it was predicatable that the conveyer belt of illegal immigrants would crank up again.
Yeah sure Pedro. A crank is a crank is a crank in my view, whether they are a Lefty or a Righty. The difference between the 9/11 truthers and Bolt is that none of the 9/11 cranks are employed by a major news organisation (as far as I know) and thus have the opportunity to disseminate their irrational and unhelpful views to a large audience.
Mods: with this “comment awaiting moderation” bizzo, have you considered instigating a “trusty” system, so that if a person submits a certain number of posts without breaking any rules, their comments are allowed to go straight in? I’ve noticed quite a few of the people who comment here never seem to break any of the rules, yet I bet they still get moderated.
And there is no “bravery and gumption” in attempting to smuggle yourself into a country. It is a criminal act, enabled by really ugly criminals.
this type of ugly comment is how the Right deludes itself that turning away desperate people, demonising them and denying their circumstances is actually the humane response to asylum seekers. “oh, but the people smugglers.” Piss. fucking. weak!
It is this type of response that is pathetic and cowardly. Australia has treaty obligations to deal with refugees seeking asylum, it’s only the ignorant who would try to deflect away from this by focusing on people smugglers and not the actual people seeking asylum. Again, what is so wrong with people wanting to come here to escape dire circumstances in their homeland? Wouldn’t we do the same if faced with same conditions?
Confessions, Agree I would want to come here too if I were in their circumstances. Whether I was a genuine refugee or just someone seeking a better life. But the trouble is there are literally millions of refugees (according to the UNHCR there are 9.5million) and other, who would be refugees if they knew it was easy to get into Australia and could manipulate their circumstances in their own country to become a refugee.
Australia already accepts a number of refugees, but the question is how many can we take. How do we weigh up the boat people compared to the refugee who come by legal means. Should we reject the same number that come through offical channels by the same number?
PeeBee: there will always be more refugees than can be accommodated through organised immigration programs. that is a fact of life that is often conveniently overlooked. I do not agree that turning people away before even assessing their claims, demonising them or turning them into political footballs is either humane or adult way of responding to the issue. It also shows a degree of ignorance about the impact of world affiars on the domestic circumstances of individual countries, eg if you start a war in iraq you should expect an increase of asylum seekers from that region. the economic crisis and climate change are also issues that could trigger an increase in asylum seekers.
I also do not believe asylum seekers to be the big problem that many in the MSM think it is – we get so few arrivals compared with other western nations. but it seems to me that in playing the turn away game, we don’t have to answer the question of how many – convenient isn’t it? maybe we need to approach this issue as a responsible nation and as adults instead of playing silly culture war games about potential terrorists, people smugglers, official channells and so on.
I agree, they have latched onto demonising people smugglers as it is not PC to demonise the refugees.
Here is a hypothetical for you: ‘Is there ever a time when you would turn away boat people?’.
Let’s assume we accept them as genuine refugees and start accepting them into Australia (as we are obliged to do). Do you not think this will turn into a flood?
Obviously the reverse is the case. When you make it hard, the flow dries up.
So I expect and we have seen that the flow has started again. It is miniscule at the moment. But we can only expect it to increase as we accept more as refugees. There will have to become a point where this is unsustainable.
Do you concede that this could happen?
‘turn into a flood’ is another culture war talking point i forgot to mention – apologies.
PeeBee: “think” and personal opinion is the problem with this debate, rarely is opinion and peoples thoughts ever cased in evidence or hard data.
Fact: australia has treaty obligations to investigate the claims by asylum seekers and accept genuine refugees. those who are not found to have valid claims can rightly be turned away. Fact: australia receives far less so-called illegal asylum seekers than other western nations. Fact: australia receives far less boat people than visa overstayers, something that is rarely mentioned in debate about asylum seekers. If you want to go hard after boat people, you owe it to your argument to acknowledge that for each resource that is placed in turning away boat people is a resource that is lost to the fight against policing people who are already here. Illegally.
As for your hypothetical i would imagine there would be times it could be legitimate to turn away boat people (suspected disease, suspected terrorism etc), but i suspect what your trying to do is use the 1 in a million case to generalise to the rest and i’m not interested in those arguments as they are not grounded in reality.
Gimme a break!
Did Bolta blame John Howard for the SIEV X deaths of hundreds of children, women & men?
I’m waiting for him to blame Rudd for the continued drought in the Continent’s south; the massive & continuing storms & floods north of Newcastle; the Victorian bushfires etc etc … After almost 12 years of backing Little “It’s not my fault, I know nooooothing!” Johnny’s equivocating innocence …
Bloo#y hypocrite!
Ozpol….. did you get the wrong thread?
Confessions, ok ‘flood’ is a tainted word for ‘increase beyond what we can cope for’. It was my way of describing something sincinctly.
I also asked you your opinion of what will happen to the number of arrivals, if arriving by boat is seen to be a way of gaining asylum. Do you have one?
There are many people in refugee camps etc who are also seeking asylum in Australia and we are ignoring them (or at least only letting in a miniscule trickle). Basically, becuase they are in refugee camps ‘over there’ we can.
Put them in a boat, sail into Australian waters and we can’t ignore them and we are obliged to accept them. The question I have is how many can we accept? There has to be a limit as there are that many of them (refugees that is).
One other point, virtually all of these boat people come without documentation. Yet some of them have flown into countries on their way here.
I would have thought this would be their most prized possession, which would without doubt qualify them for asylum?
I know of poeple who have been through far worse (concentration camps, burma railway) and have managed to keep their identity papers. It was seen as important and therefore carefully kept.
I just can’t believe that it is a coincidence that so many boat people don’t have any.
I also asked you your opinion of what will happen to the number of arrivals, if arriving by boat is seen to be a way of gaining asylum.
I don’t have a position on that principally because the evidence varies so much. other countries with hard-line positions on asylum seekers (italy eg) get so many more arrivals than us, therefore i’m yet to be convinced that simply taking a hard stance does anything to deter people seeking asylum. in fact it seems to defy logic in a way when you consider that the greatest impact upon people seeking asylum are issues that impact them domestically.
There are many people in refugee camps etc who are also seeking asylum in Australia and we are ignoring them
yes that’s true and i’d love it if we could process people quicker and efficiently. having said that, the answer is not either / or in my view – as i said, there will always be asylum seekers regardless of the organised processes for immigration. we need to find a way of dealing with people humanely when they do seek asylum.
“Virtually all”, “yet some”. which is it? this is the kind of language that isn’t helpful, and I want facts, not suppositions or truthisms that generalise without saying a great deal. I can’t comment on whether people have identity papers or not, or the reasons as i simply don’t know.
So how many asylum seekers do you think we should accept? All of them? half of them? Only boat people? Just the 32 a day we let in normally?
I think when we can work that out. It will be easy to organise.
Even then it will not fix the situation. As ecological disasters and associated political upheaval etc will create more.
If you have a limit of the numbers you can accept, then you have to work out strategies to limit the number claiming asylum.
What would be your strategy?
PeeBee: given we have so few, why is it not acceptable to take all those whose refugee status is legit? Why must we keep coming back to this number vs that number when you must already acknowledge that refugee numbers are not a static figure? This keeps coming back to my original point: why are asylum seekers so terrible, and why do some australians fear them so much?