Is our democratic Australian government missing a ‘sensitivity/transparency chromosome”? It’s fair to say that most Australians would expect and deserve a Prime Minister who seeks a reasoned and balanced point of view, especially when it comes to human justice. However, the reaction of our government to the recent allegation from asylum seekers-that they were ordered to hold their hands on hot pipes and their hands burnt, leaves me questioning the ‘reasoning’ power of our Prime Minister. In Tony’s words “the allegations should be able to produce evidence-and there is no evidence to back them up. But Tony, according to your Minister Scott Morrison --that is because you haven’t asked them to produce any statements or evidence before you made this comment. Our Minister for Immigration admitted that ‘the alleged victims had NOT been questioned’. In other words Tony is asking us to trust that our Navy should be taken on its word-- that they are always doing the right thing, but we know this has not been the case when you look at proven misconduct with Vietnamese refugees in the past where senior Navy personnel were discharged from the service. Why is the assumption that because they may be ‘braking our laws’ the benefit of the doubt must go to us? Why are these allegations dismissed out of turn without any effort to seek proof? Lets face it, we are not perfect and -- Its not as though we have an outstanding foreign affairs record. Lets look at the last year. Aren’t we up before the International Tribunal in The Hague over allegations that we have bullied and spied on Timor over mineral rights? We have 1,000 refugee children being held in refugee camps, some for a long time-- which doctors proclaim is not good for their mental wellbeing. We have human rights groups saying that what we are doing to refugees is illegal under our international obligations. We have refugees on Nauru, a country where the Executive has just done away with the Judiciary- so it seems we have essentially sent them away to a dictatorship and of course we now have all Australian Navy and Customs Personnel exempt from any personal liability under Operation Sovereign Borders. So where does the truth lie? Do we believe that because our Navy is meant to stand up and follow the rule of good against evil and the rule of law—they always will do the right thing? Well maybe so, but in the long run I and many others would expect a government in a democracy to be honest and transparent and at least look into the situation before asking us to ‘believe’ in their judgement. Because Tony, human frailty is a sad factor in life-- find out what happened, enquire about the matter and seek the exact truth, until then don’t comment.... it just makes us look like idiots!
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 21:11:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015