How good is the Australian government for announcing it will accept New Zealand’s offer to take 450 asylum seekers from offshore detention centres – a full nine years after the offer was made!! This cruel and unusual practice has cost almost half a million dollars per person per year, so why didn’t the Coalition didn’t jump at the offer back in 2013?
Perhaps the cruelty was the attraction. Had the government allowed these people to be resettled in New Zealand, they might not have suffered sufficiently to make them regret the trip, and wouldn’t be available to act as a living deterrent to any other would-be refugees. In brief, Our Leaders were thinking of the political and symbolic value of appearing tough on border controls, rather than the absurd waste of tax-payers’ money these detention centres represent, and the misery they have inflicted on those took the hazardous journey to Australia because they were fleeing for their lives.
Or maybe it was simply because The Boiled Egg felt it was better to keep awarding contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to little-known companies that have been allowed to sidestep the tender process. When there is no Federal anti-corruption commission such things can sneak under the radar, but hey, there might be a commission on the way.
This week we learned that independent senator, Jacqui Lambie, was inveigled into deal whereby she supported the repeal of the medevac legislation which would have enabled sick inmates of the detention centres to get proper medical teatment on the mainland, in return for a secret agreement to take up the NZ offer. She can never have imagined it would take so long to materialise, miraculously appearing in the lead-up to an election.
The deal allows the government to remind us how tough they’ve been on asylum seekers, and how generous they are in finally allowing them to leave – or at least allowing some of them to leave. There are still hundreds of the poor buggers left in limbo at vast expense to the taxpayer and vast profit to various shady organisations. Even when they (finally) do the right thing, Scummo’s gang have to turn it into another publicity stunt, as if a decade of sheer nastiness can be swept away in one moment of largesse.
For the second week in a row I’ve delayed sending out this newletter as long as possible, while I wait to see if the Herald will manage to publish one of the three pieces they have on hold. It seems as if we’re heading for another week of inertia, so I’m pushing on.
One piece I can publish right away is a special AFR feature in the 2022 Academy Awards. The paper has apparently had some fun with this, talking about “the Johnnies” rather than the Oscars. Personally, I’m not ready to be immortalised as a statuette, so my version is a bit more low-key. I’ve looked at the nominees for the four main categories and made my predictions. Nothing too controversial as it turned out. I’m starting to dread the Oscars almost as much as I dread the Archibald Prize. There’s simply no end to these things.
I’m also publishing the Peter Powditch obituary mentioned last week, which has now appeared on the SMH website. While I’m feeling frustrated that the newspaper is messing up the regular succession of art columns, I’m happy to give Peter Powditch a bit more prominence. During his lifetime no artist could have been more indifferent to whatever fame came his way.