Dog-whistle politics and déjà vu

John Pilger, in his City of Sydney Peace Prize lecture early in November 2009, drew attention to Rudd’s new Afghanistan rhetoric, saying:

Last July, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said this, and I quote: “It’s important for us all to remember here in Australia that Afghanistan has been a training ground for terrorists worldwide, a training ground also for terrorists in South-East Asia, reminding us of the reasons that we are in the field of combat and reaffirming our resolve to remain committed to that cause”.

Rudd had been standing outside a church on a Sunday morning when he said this. Pilger’s comments were scathing: “There is no truth in this statement. It is the equivalent of his predecessor John Howard’s lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” But (so far, at least) the Coalition in Opposition fulsomely reiterates the same rhetoric, and Rudd echoes their lines. During a visit to the war zone early in November, Rudd emphasised Australia's commitment to remain in Afghanistan for “the long haul”. It all sounds depressingly familiar and specious.

The policy debate (or lack thereof) on the “handling” of refugees, fleeing mainly from strife-torn Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, is also depressingly familiar. So much so that in a media release at the end of October 2009, the Edmund Rice Centre (ERC) called for a definitive end to the sort of debate that treats asylum seekers as political footballs, tossed around with the sole aim of gaining a team advantage in the game of politics. ERC Director, Phil Glendenning, stated:

This stand-off in Indonesia [over Sri Lankans refusing to leave an Australian Customs vessel for Indonesian refugee camps] demeans Australia in the eyes of the world, and diminishes us as a people. It is ugly politics that under a discourse of “deterrence” uses vulnerable people to send a message to others who simply are not listening.

Glendenning commented that “The whole issue throws up a crisis of moral leadership in Australia”, and put his finger on the reason for feeling this:

The current political debate is wrong because it demonises the vulnerable, it employs the ugly tactics of petty partisan race-politics. This is dog-whistle stuff which summons up the darkest fears that reside within Australians' hearts historically.

John Pilger, in his Peace Prize lecture, made similar criticisms. He compared Kevin Rudd’s praise, in an essay titled Faith in Politics (October 2006), for both the parable of the Good Samaritan and the UN Convention on Refugees, with his words in October 2009: “I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia … a tough line on asylum seekers.” Pilger commented:

Are we not fed up with this kind of hypocrisy? The use of the term “illegal immigrants” is both false and cowardly. The few people struggling to reach our shores are not illegal. International law is clear - they are legal.

He went on to say: “Rudd, like Howard, sends the navy against them and runs what is effectively a concentration camp on Christmas Island. How shaming. Imagine a shipload of white people fleeing a catastrophe being treated like this.” Glendenning and Pilger are strongly supported by Malcolm Fraser, former Liberal Prime Minister, who appealed in November 2009 for a return to the bi-partisanship which in the 1970s led Australia to fulfil its moral and legal obligations and accept large numbers of Vietnamese refugees. Fraser commented:

I think it's unfortunate, I believe both political parties have demeaned Australia by trying to say, you know: “We're the toughest, we're the toughest. We'll keep boat people away.”

The third major area of dog-whistling is the current lamentable “debate” about climate change. Some of the rubbish being peddled in the media is only exceeded by that peddled by the politicians.