This is a short but wonderful speech by Malcolm Fraser, and Ive been practicing my stenographer skills to transcribe it here. He speaks about how false this government is and what a tyrant Minister Morrison is, and and how the governments lies have created a class of Australians who believe the hate and falsehoods about Muslims and boat people. He speaks also about how it will take quite a while to turn things around, and that we all have an important role to play in that reform. The speech begins at 53.19 here https://youtube/watch?v=ae0YtIKAQUU The current legislation before the parliament represents a gross abuse of power giving to a minister powers that no minister should ever have; power of life and death over individuals and without appeal. Thats not a democratic power, thats a power for a tyranny, a dictatorship.. but it is not a power for a country where the rule of law is meant to be important, whee due process under the law is meant to be important, where the law is meant to apply to all people. There is no oversight of the exercise of those new powers, no accountability, the minister just exercises the power and thats the end of it and somebodys life is made by being allowed to stay here or more likely trashed by being sent back to a country he has been fleeing because of fear of persecution. The legislation does great harm to people not only because they are subject to that kind of arbitrariness but there is a robust testing procedure now which does apply. Its not easy to get past it, people are tested as to whether theyre true refugees or not. Now theres whats called a fast track process with no right to appeal, the minister just decides if there is an appeal or not. the fast track process is not a process at all, its just an excuse to say no and to send people back. Temporary protection visas are being reintroduced but in a harsher and more difficult form. The legislation destroys international law, destroys maritime law, and it destroys the principles that Menzies signed onto in 1954 in support of a refugee convention that was launched in 1951. And so for over 50 years weve managed to abide by these principles and abide by these standards but this government and this minister suddenly wants to tear all of that up. And why? Is he frightened? Does he really think Australia will be over run? Were often not even aware that were a very small part of a global problem. Last year 185,000 asylum seekers landed in Italy and the Italian navy instead of pushing people back was very busy rescuing people whose boats had sunk. An entirely different approach, a humane approach, doing what they could in much more difficult circumstances and we pretend as though all refugees from wherever they are are going to come to Australia and really Australia is a relatively small target on the world scale. The problem, and the way its been handled, by current politicians (because i dont think theres really all that much difference between them)... I thought we;d got to the bottom of the barrel a couple of years ago but then people keep getting a bigger barrel and this legislation represents an even BIGGER barrel and the government wants to play around on the bottom of it - to trash the law, to trash decency and to trash Australias reputation. Its not only the government because I think it has now done serious harm which is going to take efforts by people like ... the advocates and volunteers, both jobs are desperately needed. It shall take a while to turn things around because people have been taught to fear, to dislike, to believe that all boat people are illegal, and when you have ministers getting up and demeaning a class of people over several years there are obviously people in the community who take note of it. Well, theyre the government, they should know. Theyre not really going to lie about these things, are they? But they dont know that the government does lie about those things. And so, there are now a number of people in Australia who as a consequence of this kind of process, not only believe that boat people are terrible people by definition but also that Muslims are terrible people. They forget that extremism has been present in every religion. Not so long ago extremists from the IRA or extremists from the Protestant militias in Northern Ireland were doing the most terrible things.Things just as bad as anything done today by Islamic extremists. But they only represent a very small part of the Irish, the Protestant ...or the Islamic communities, which in Australia has a long and proud record of contributing to Australian life and to Australias diversity. I believe the government would play around with these kinds of issues and seek political advantage by demeaning one person or group of people or one class of people for a base political purpose. Its about as low as anyone can get. Such a government does not deserve trust; everything instead needs to be tested, because we know in relation to this issue that what they are saying is for the most part, false. So the more you can do to help guard and re-establish a record that was really a proud record, standing as high as any country in the Western world, in its treatment of refugees and the disadvantaged and its determination to uphold the rule of law as the rule of law is meant to be, I wish all strength to your arm in pursuit of those objectives...
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 07:05:59 +0000
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