People have been coming to Australia in boats for tens of thousands of years.  Up until the last twenty years, there has been no problem about this.  Which, in itself is a problem.  Not that people should not be allowed to come to Australia by ship.  The fact that some short while ago, navigating to Australia suddenly became a selective process IS both a trivial and a terrible problem – simultaneously.

OK for some.  Apparently not OK for others.

Do you remember when the Australian navy dispatched a crew of brave sailors to the dangers of the Southern Ocean – to save a lone sailor.  Who was participating in an around-the-world race.  A bloody race !  For fun and for fame and money.  A bloody race.  Apparently it cost the Australian taxpayers several million dollars to fund the rescue.  Not the once did they perform the feat.  If memory serves me correctly, we also footed the bill and risked lives in rescuing the French woman Isabelle Autissier –  1,700 km south of Adelaide in 1995.  Footnote: This woman was also saved when she had another go at upside down sailing 3,100 km west of Cape Horn in 1998.  That time she was saved by a fellow competitor.

But rescuing sailors and others in trouble in Australian and international waters is both morally correct and what we are obliged to do under international maritime law.

So, it’s clearly OK for Australia to pick and choose who may come and how we treat them.

I would like to think that nearly everyone who makes the life and death trip to Australia – is welcome – especially in circumstances where this trip is no game.  When  people are fleeing certain persecution and death in their home countries, they are particularly welcome.

In fact we had a great track record welcoming such people to Australia – fleeing the hellish destruction of Europe in the Second World War, the civil War in Lebanon, the Vietnam War, the junta in Chile, famine AND war in Africa, War in Sri Lanka, War in the Middle East, War in Afghanistan.  Over and over and over.

John Howard said WE will decide who can come and under what circumstances.  He meant, “ONLY white people of whom I approve” can come.  The rest, we’ll fuck around like they count for nothing.  Disgraceful.

And his heir apparent has taken up the mantra.  WE will stop the boats.  We.  That’s you, Tony and your mates.  Not WE, but YOU !   Arsehole.

The SS Oronsay, 1951

After the Second World War, Australia was particularly accommodating to one class of economic refugee.  These were our Ten Pound Poms – former Prisoners of a devastated Mother England who paid the princely sum of ten quid as their contribution to the Australian government’s cost of shipping their sorry (but none-the-less welcome) arses out from Blighty in (as Gez has said) rather comfortable cruise ships.

As opposed to paying tens of thousands of dollars or kilos of gold to the (now deemed as the lowest life form) people smugglers for the dubious privilege of setting to sea in a massively overloaded fishing boat of dubious provenance with gunwales less than a foot above the drink – for the privilege of facing indefinite detention and possible deportation back to the disaster from which these refugees fled.

Now I think it’s reasonable to imagine that a former refugee might be quite sympathetic towards current refugees.   Say someone whose family had fled a ravaged England after the Second World War.  But not one particular chap whose family sailed on the SS Oronsay in 1960.

Who is that chap ?  Non other than our Leader of the Opposition.  Dr No.  One Tony Abbott – who has raised the bar on hypocrisy to an unimaginable height.

Still, Tony probably has a point.  When he arrived it was a Terra Nullius crying out for immigrants of all kinds.  But these days, after sixty years or so of generous immigration – Gordon O’Donnell, we even used to provide English classes back then – lifeboat Australia is suddenly discovered to be chockers.  Bulging at the seams, we have no other choice but to take a hard line and protect our borders from these almost piratical queue jumping scoundrels.  The 3% who attempt to sail in as opposed to the 97% who fly in and overstay their visas.

So, for saving us from more of his type, we should respond in kind and send Tony back to a post Thatcherite England – a place where he is bound to find a nation willing to embrace his values, speak his language and provide a climate as bleak as his spirit – or apparent lack thereof.

Tony Out NOW !