Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has instructed departmental and detention centre staff to publicly refer to asylum seekers as ‘‘illegal’’ arrivals and as ‘‘detainees’’, rather than as clients.
The directive has been criticised as a ‘‘profound’’ shift by a leading asylum seeker agency, which says the new terminology is designed to dehumanise people.
In an email to detention centre staff, obtained by Fairfax Media, a department official writes: ‘‘The department has received correspondence from the minister clarifying his expectations about the department’s use of terminology. Accordingly we as [sic] that our service providers also adhere to the below instructions.’’
One wonders what ingrained G-gnome is at play here? Having watched the excellent program on Sydney’s Opera House history and the absurd philistine antics of Davis Hughes at the time and the display of similar sentiments by Scott Morrison today towards all that is ‘foreign and out of the norm’, I remain unconvinced that much progress has been made since the sixties and seventies. Are we to remain forever stuck in an old 78 LP record groove? .
With the building of the Opera House and the ultimate sacking of the architect Utzon, a rift existed between the European, specifically Scandinavian craft approach to architecture that Utzon so utterly embodied, and the less individualistic approach of the Anglo-Saxon model of construction widely adopted in Australia. Pragmatism always reigning above the creative.
It seems Australia remains struggling with the concept of accepting differences.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 