Racist government, racist opposition, racist debate

Bob Brown said it on the 7.30 Report on Monday, July 5, 2010.

There are at least 50,000 people living illegally in Australia.

These are not asylum seekers who arrived on boats. These are the people who’ve overstayed their visas. They’ve got lost in the general population. Some of them may even have worked out a way to fraudulently claim welfare payments.

They may be thousands of them in the western suburbs of Sydney, or in Queensland.

These 50,000 “illegals” are queue jumpers. That means they’ve ignored the proper processes legitimate migrants have to go through before they can call Australia home. They haven’t made their application and waited their turn in the line.

They shouldn’t be here. They’re taking Australian jobs, for less pay than Australians, no doubt, because it’s all in cash and under the counter. They are deceitful and disobedient, and they are living in hiding from the authorities.

They’re unlikely to do much good for the country because they can’t live a legal life here. They can’t build community. They can’t pay taxes. They can’t make any worthwhile contribution at all. They can only take.

Hardly qualifications for good citizenship. Hardly the type of person we want in our country.

These 50,000 illegals aren’t eligible to call themselves asylum seekers, or to apply for refugee status. They are lifestyle illegals. They’ve decided to stay in Australia because they like the life here better than the life at home. They paid for their airplane tickets, and they showed their passports. All they escaped was a climate they didn’t like, or social mores they didn’t fancy anymore.

Until the problem of these 50,000 illegals is acknowledged and addressed by the government and the opposition, as loudly and indignantly as is the issue of boat people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, or anywhere else for that matter, then our politicians are engaging in, and promoting racism.

It is racist to single out Afghans and Sri Lankans as public targets for deportation, and as the only significant threat to our borders, while publicly ignoring the 50,000 illegals already in the country, and no doubt with more arriving each day even as we speak.

It is racist in the same way as the Northern Territory intervention was and is racist. There are thousands upon thousands of white Australians who mistreat their children, yet it was not considered necessary to manage their incomes, and intervene to prevent the abuse and sexual abuse of their children. Only our Indigenous population came in for that singular attention.

There have been many calls for an “honest” debate about asylum seekers. There will never be an honest debate until the issues are honestly aired and we have yet to see any politicians other than Bob Brown and the Greens, attempt to honestly air all the issues.

Why isn’t Julia Gillard doing anything to protect our borders against the 50,000 illegals and queue jumpers who’ve already poured into the country, are living off it without contributing anything, and who will no doubt continue to do this?

The answer is because this entire asylum seeker and border protection rhetoric is everything to do with racism, and nothing at all to do with common sense, logic, and rationality.

Julia Gillard says nobody should feel intimidated and silenced by the demands of what she calls political correctness. Everyone can express their fear of a breakdown in our border protection and what that could mean. I completely agree.

It isn’t racist or redneck to express fears about border protection, she says. I totally agree.

So let’s talk about the 50,000 over-stayers. Why aren’t the people who are so concerned about our borders bringing this up for discussion? It isn’t politically correct to leave them out of the debate. They’re a threat. They’re criminals and they’re bludgers, and nobody’s raising the slightest objection to the country being exploited by them.

I want to know what the government is going to do to address this criminality, and protect our borders from illegals who arrive on planes with passports. For what purpose do they continue to go un-remarked by this government?

If we only frame the boat people as a threat, and allow the 50,000 illegals to remain without protest because they aren’t boat people, we are being redneck and we are being racist and we are being hysterically ignorant.

No matter where the next offshore detention centre is, no matter how much the language politicians use is tweaked, it does not change the inherently racist nature of the so-called “debate” on border protection and asylum seekers.

No matter how often and how vehemently Julia Gillard tells us “we are better than this,” until we treat every person who is an “irregular” in this country in the same way, rather than singling out certain ethnic groups and their manner of transportation to Australia for our special attention, we will remain rednecks, and racists, and hypocrites about it to boot.

Actions speak louder than words, and Julia Gillard needs to, very quickly, put her money where her mouth is and address this invasion of over-stayers before it gets even more out of hand than it already is.

As it stands, Gillard’s border protection policy singles out boat people and so does nothing but reinforce racist and red-necked attitudes. If she wants us to be the best we can be, she needs to lead by example and present a policy on over-stayers that addresses how to get rid of them, and how to thwart them at their point of origin so we don’t have to put up with them.

Is that going to cost much more than yet another detention centre?

Nauru. Woomera. Baxter. Port Hedland. Christmas Island. And now, Timor. We’ve already got more detention centres than you can poke a stick at for a mere few thousand boat arrivals, and now we’re going to build another?

How many millions are we going to throw at the manufactured problem this time around? While ignoring the 50,000 illegal bludgers swanning around under our very noses?