The Biggest Bastards in the Bastardry Competition

Dear Major Australian Political Parties,

Refugees are real human beings fleeing awful and terrifying things. You seem to have mistaken them for child molesters, people who don’t turn their phones off during live performances, and Nickelback fans.

It is not okay to threaten/promise that, if elected, you will ensure people who are desperate enough to risk their lives to escape persecution, will be, variously, shipped off to developing nations which have their own issues, towed back out to sea to drown, or denied access to the protection of the legal system against wrongly decided administrative decisions (because “too many” people are being found to be genuine refugees). It’s not okay to bung them on Temporary Protection Visas, force them onto work for the dole schemes, and put more families onto unseaworthy boats because family reunification is impossible under legitimate means.

It’s not okay because we as a nation agreed to obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees to not be a douchebag of a global citizen, and it’s not okay because it goes far beyond what should decently be done in the names of an Australian public that can be better than this - that can be generous and kind to those in need, that believes in at least the rhetoric of a fair go.

If the best way to judge a society is by how it treats the least amongst it - how it treats the poor, the frightened, the huddled masses - then the politics played with refugees in the belief that it will score votes is an indictment on us all.

After all, if you wouldn’t do it to a Nickelback fan, why should you do it to a member of an ethnic minority, or a child whose parents risked everything to send them somewhere they would be able to grow up safe?

Enough racing to the bottom. No party that is determined to sell itself as being biggest bastards in the bastard competition when it comes to kicking some of the most vulnerable and defenseless people in the world deserves to win government and lead this country.
 
Yours sincerely,
CisforCurmudgeon