Photo by Nick McKim
Australians are a very imperfect people and the fact that mistrust of refugees and asylum seekers in Australian society is now ubiquitous is disappointing. But not even this truly accounts for the malicious hatred of these people that exists within certain sections of the Liberal Party. While most Australians may be unperturbed by what is now happening in Manus Island, they would be similarly unperturbed if the refugees were resettled in New Zealand. Or held in detention centres in Australia. Or perhaps even if they were quietly released into the community on protection visas. They are not so vindictive as to insist that they remain on Manus.
There is now no electricity for the refugees on Manus. The generators have been switched off. The refugees are housed in tents. There is insufficient food, water and medicines. There are no functioning toilets, the refugees are routinely harassed by locals. We have to believe at some point something will give, but if things continue along their current trajectory, soon, people are going to begin dying. A more graphic account can be found at The Guardian Australia’s website here.
For years we have been sold a “cruel to be kind” explanation of offshore processing, that by subjecting refugees and asylum seekers to a controlled amount of suffering we would deter others from taking deadly boat journeys to Australia. This position was controversial, but there was a degree of utilitarian logic to it. What is the logic behind the current situation? They are being left to die agonising deaths.This is not controlled suffering, it is murder. There is no logic in using death to prevent death. This cannot be spun as utilitarian, this is a moral void.
This perfect storm of cruelty has had many culprits, including the Prime Minister. I’m not denying their role in bringing about this crisis, but they are not my focus here. My focus is on the nativist flank of the Liberal Party that through gritted teeth permits itself to be led by a moderate figure despite the fact that he has yielded to their every demand since they begged him to rescue them from electoral oblivion in 2015. In 2015, I entertained the notion that these men and women had turned an ideological corner, that they had, perhaps grudgingly, come to see the Neoconservative agenda to be exhausted and seen the need to modernise. In the two years that have followed it has become clear they thought anything but.
The position these people take is thus: If the government does anything that might tangibly improve the lot of asylum seekers currently stumbling towards horrible deaths on Manus Island, they will take the extraordinary measure of removing a Prime Minister from office. The level of hatred contained in taking such a stance is extraordinary. It is something not quite human to be so incensed at the idea of helping these people.
John Howard was no friend of asylum seekers and was a textbook nationalist for sure, but the Howard government would generally bring the refugees in Australia after a short, traumatic spell on Nauru. He didn’t like helping them, but he didn’t exude this insatiable hunger to harm them. This hard-right insurgency aren’t just over-the-top jingoists, they are sadists. They are highly represented among the No Campaign in the Same Sex Marriage plebiscite. In both instances, there was a startling brutality about the way in which they went about their way, seemingly deriving pleasure from inflicting hurt and suffering. They’re the same crowd that saw nothing wrong with taunting Julia Gillard about the recent death of her father. There is something very wrong with them.
The Liberal Party as we so often hear is a broad church and there are many members with whom you or I would share many values. But this particular block, this faction if you like, which seems to comprise somewhere between ten and thirty percent of the party membership is not quite human. They aren’t content that the boats have now stopped, they want to grind the life out of these refugees. They are consumed by hatred and malevolence. They wear with pride Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” epithet, but in truth deplorable is far too kind a word for them. They are savages.
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