In what is perhaps a sign of the times, a Liberal backbencher in the Australian Federal Parliament has drawn fire for describing a series of ‘dissidents’ in her own party as ‘political terrorists’. Ignoring the obvious contradiction in terms, participating in politics is what terrorists usually avoid (or are barred from doing, hence the attention getting behaviour), trying to even broadly equate a little democratic agitation for change with those pesky Al-Qaeda’s is insane.
As I’ve no doubt said time, and time, and time again, one of the characteristics of the current age will in all likelihood be this type of stereotyping of opposing political views as siding with the forces of evil, in much the same way as they used to talk about ‘the commies’. But it’s even more alarming when the label is applied not to the Parliamentary Opposition Party, or to marginalised interest groups, but to members of the Government itself.
As Tim over at The Road to Surfdom points out, it’s a sad day when being at odds with the Caucus is effectively seen as a ‘bad thing’. And, as The Australian reports, it is enough to ensure that preselection in your seat is offered to someone else.
To make a very long story short, Petro Georgiou has been a backbencher for a very long time, which means that you can interpret his willingness to put forward a couple of private members bills in two ways. Either, he’s sick of never getting access to any Cabinet portfolio’s, and decided to kick up a fuss, or, he realises that he has nothing to lose in doing so, and might as well do some decent conscience politicking before he gives up and retires.
The media coverage of his actions over the last few months suggests that it is the latter. After all, there really isn’t much room for ‘small-l liberals’ in the Howard Government. But problematically for Howard, Georgiou has decided to get a little traction on the issue of mandatory detention of refugees, a noble endeavour, considering that maintaining an aggressive and some would say excessively hard line on this issue has kept the Coalition in power since 1999 (and won the election in 2001).
So, while Howard has tried over the past few weeks to engineer some kind of consensus over the issue, things just keep getting worse in the immigration portfolio, with a report recently published condemning the operation and culture of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
And in my opinion this is a good sign. As it stands, the current policy allows persons to be detained almost indefinitely, for women and children to be held in what are in effect low-rent prisons (for the crime of wanting to live in Australia), for a number of Australian citizens to be forcibly detained if they are deemed ‘illegal aliens’ by poorly informed Departmental officials with excessive powers, for babies to be born in these prisons and not know freedom for the entire span of their young lives (a recent case had a three year-old seeing her first days outside a detention centre), and the list of abuses goes on.
In a nutshell and from the relative safety of New Zealand? The system is a really, really big mess. Unfortunately, the only person willing to stand up to Howard et al is now being condemned as a ‘terrorist’, even if the accuser is taking a lot of flak for the comment, and the Federal Labor Party is dithering on whether to throw their weight behind the proposal. Although one of the above links has Beazley asking for debate over the Bill to at least be allowed, comments from a few weeks back had him stating that he was behind mandatory detention.
I think the lesson to be learned from all this bile is that immigration isn’t really one of those footballs that should be kicked around for short-term political gain. What extremists in this area all too often refuse to accept is that the people they’re demonising, incarcerating, berating or laying open to actual physical abuse are often just ordinary people trying to make a better life.
Sure, I’m being a little to airy-fairy on portraying immigrants, but there is no way in hell you’d want your own country to become anything like what Australia has turned into. And that is to sort of place where speaking up for the rights of a very small number of people, in the countries leading democratic forum, leads to vilification.