 Political Corrections
with Mungo MacCallum
Two Leaders and a Funeral
At least the events of the weekend have stripped aside any last pretence that the Howard government is treating asylum seekers as asylum seekers.
They are to be seen, quite unequivocally, as criminals who have to be kept in prisons in the same manner as baby killers, child molesters and terrorists – which is how the government still seeks to portray them in the wash up to its children overboard lie.
Should they manage to escape, they are to be pursued as dangerous fugitives and charged in the same way as convicts who break out of high security jails. Anyone aiding and abetting such escapes, or harbouring the escapees, is guilty of a serious criminal offence and may be imprisoned in a genuine high security jail for up to four years.
Governments mightn’t be able to do much about drug smugglers, street gangs, home invasions and corporate crime, but by golly they know how to get tough with boat people. They make almost as satisfactory victims as unemployed kids who fail to turn up for an interview at Centrelink.
In the circumstances one can only marvel at the bravery of the demonstrators who made their way through the desert to Woomera at the weekend and defied state and federal police as well as the private army of the American Wackenhut company that manages the prison camp. In seeking to free at least some of the inmates they have made themselves criminals, and Howard and Ruddock are obviously in the mood to make a terrible example of them.
The irony is that the detainees they set free were not themselves criminals until they crossed the razor wire; even under Australian law it is not an offence to seek political asylum, with or without an entry visa. It is, however, a serious crime to try to set the innocent free.
It is almost possible to feel sorry for the hapless Kerry Chikarovski, deposed last week as the NSW Liberal leader by yet another gang of young Turks keen to join the swelling ranks of failed state opposition leaders.
Chika never had much going for her, politically, but she could at least have expected some shreds of loyalty from her own NSW conservative faction and in particular from its most famous and influential member, John Winston Howard. Howard had, after all, backed her to knock off Peter Collins in the first place, and had continued to make supporting noises throughout her decidedly unspectacular period at the top.
But when the plotters informed him, as a matter of courtesy, that they were ready to move against his protege, Howard did exactly zilch; not only did he fail to lift a finger to try and save her, but he didn’t even warn her that the knives were out. Given that there was only one vote in it, Howard’s intervention could easily have made a difference, but he chose instead to stick with his now customary see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, know nothing, do nothing stance.
This is a little curious because the new leader, John Brogden, represents everything Howard hates: multiculturalism, tolerance on drugs, euthanasia and republicanism, to name just a few. His elevation can only be seen as a slap at Howard in Howard’s home state. However, as he has little prospect of becoming premier at next year’s election – the last for which Howard will be around – perhaps the Prime Minister doesn’t mind that a liberal, rather than a reactionary, has finally got a foot in the door.
For the rest of us, there is the welcome prospect that Brogden may stir the smug and increasingly torpid Bob Carr to at least a modicum of reform. Nothing else has.
Shareholders in Gilbey’s distilleries and Ladbrokes’s betting shops wept uncontrollably at the weekend when told of the death of the Queen Mother, who had poured untold amounts of taxpayers’ money into their various enterprises in the course of her long and largely useless life.
The only bits of it that anyone can recall with certainty are that she came with her husband to open the Australian Parliament in Canberra in 1927 and that she stayed in London during the blitz of World War II. Her husband smoked himself to death in 1952, and for the last 50 years, she regularly overspent her extremely generous allowance and ran up huge and embarrassing debts on clothes, jewels, horses and above all grog.
She was arguably the most self indulgent of the royals since Charles II, famous for gluttony, sloth, greed and pride – in her latter years at least she did not have time for lust, envy and anger. However she smiled a lot, especially when drunk, and was therefore much loved by the Poms, who don’t have much to be cheerful about.
For that matter nor do we these days, so let’s hoist a glass to the royal boiler. At least it’s another one off the public payroll.
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