In a move that won’t surprise many, the Opposition’s venomous rhetoric has once again exacerbated the debate on Australia’s refugee policy.
On Wednesday 14 August, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told Sky News that Australia should not be accepting refugees from devastated Gaza, or, as he put it, “that war zone”. And the reason? Fears for national security, none of which Dutton specified.
The lack of detail is especially ironic from a man whose main argument against the Voice Referendum last year appeared to be concerns about a supposed lack of detail.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that a politician has converted human lives into political weaponry.
Former PM John Howard confected the “children overboard” scandal to harvest fear in a cheap bid to secure votes prior to the 2001 Election. Tony Abbott pledged his allegiance to “stop the boats”. Scott Morrison sent a mass text message to voters as they approached the booths at the 2022 Election stating that our Border Force had intercepted an illegal boat attempting to enter Australia, and therefore electors should ‘Keep our borders secure by voting Liberal’.
Based on consistent use of the messaging, the Liberal Party’s spin doctors view this as an election-winning tactic and are willing to demonise refugees for electoral gain. Dutton’s comments come at an especially interesting time, as the Government has had the power to call the next election since 3 August.
The Liberal Party’s position on refugees has never been about “national security”. It’s been about reinforcing toxic ideology that drives division in a reckless bid to snatch votes.
The Liberal Party picks and chooses where it accepts refugees from. We’re only the land of mateship and the fair go if you’ve won some cosmic lottery to be from countries approved of by the powers that be. These comments are especially painful to read when many of the tendrils of Australia’s identity are borne of migrant stories.
Of course, the Labor Party is by no means a sparkling example of decent humanitarian policy. The ALP has nurtured our callous refugee policy through disastrous detention centres and a reprehensible response to the crisis in Gaza.
The Government’s apparent allowance for, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts it, his “mistakes” has been nauseating. A mistake is saying you wanted a cappuccino when you meant a latte. A mistake is writing yesterday’s date on a form at the bank. A mistake is hitting send too early on a text. A mistake is not pummelling a city into flaming pieces.
Any argument that tries to intellectualise the barbaric destruction of Gaza, or attempts to justify the flat refusal of refugees, is devoid of humanity.
Both the Government and the Opposition are foolishly relying on extreme cognitive dissonance to relieve themselves of moral liability to support humanitarian causes.
I’ve had several conversations with friends recently about the sense of suspended reality we feel like we’re living in right now. The abhorrent vision of state-sanctioned murder pours across our phone screens every day and yet we go on sending emails and buying coffee and attending to our lives as if the geopolitical climate isn’t an inferno inflicting unimaginable torment on the other side of the world.
The tragic death of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi, who drowned as he fled to Greece, caused the world’s knees to collectively buckle; the horror of innocence lost cemented the trauma and desperation that those who are forced to flee home endure. Disturbing images of children like Kurdi and six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by the Israeli Defence Forces whilst fleeing to safety, remind us of why we need empathy to be the focal point of our foreign policy.
The public is turning; we cannot stomach the excruciating reality of witnessing the sacrifice of human lives for electoral advantage. To watch an atrocity and demonise its victims for electoral gain is cold-blooded.
“That war zone” and the tragedy of those trapped by heartless governments will define the next election. Their lives should not be shaped by political games.
The words of the lesser-known verse of our national anthem swirled around my head as I wrote this:
For those who’ve come across the seas, We’ve boundless plains to share; With courage let us all combine...
Advance Australia “fair”.
Imi Timms is a writer with work published in The Guardian, The Age, Vogue, The Sydney Morning Herald, Fashion Journal and news.com.au. You can find her on X @newyorktimms.
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