Comment

There’s no doubt the populist backlash over attempts to deport a Tamil family from Queensland has caught the government by surprise. All of a sudden the perceived advantage for the Coalition in the areas of national and border security was slipping from its grasp. This was all the more of a shock to the minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, who has been assiduously attacking Labor on the issues since the election.

According to our prime minister, ‘If you have a go, you get a go.’ As it turns out, this maxim doesn’t apply to everyone. This truth became catastrophically apparent after Priya’s visa expired on March 4, 2018. Since that day, the members of her family have been denied their basic human rights.

Announcing the Religious Discrimination Act at Sydney’s Great Synagogue on Thursday, Attorney-General Christian Porter was at pains to stress the bill “does not create a positive right to freedom of religion” … There is no doubt this bill exists almost solely as a counter to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Australia – a balancing of the scales, of sorts, an offering to those who fear the advancement of LGBTQIA rights will threaten their freedom.

At the very time the world’s most powerful democracy is locked in a trade war with the planet’s biggest authoritarian state, Australia’s reputation as a free nation is under severe strain. And nothing highlights this more than the independence celebrations in Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor.

Political drift doesn’t offer any substantive response to the ‘great disruptions’ now bearing down on us. It just capitulates to them. That’s why it’s now urgent to re-engineer our national imagination and paint the picture of a different future for our country, and then to choose the type of Australia we wish to become.

Every young protester is worried about being critically injured by police who use excessive violence. They fear being arrested and charged, of facing a possible 10-year jail sentence for rioting. But if they choose to remain silent, they may lose this last chance to help Hong Kong maintain its autonomy from Beijing.

Tim Fischer died this week, aged 73. The former Nationals leader was sick with an acute form of leukaemia. Many remembered him as idiosyncratic. It was a way of acknowledging that his graciousness and civility is uncommon in politics. Perhaps, even, it was out of place. Fischer stood out because he was so tall but also because he was so scrupulous. He understood service and made a life from it.

The week belonged to the Parrot, the hero of Struggle Street. He was up to his old attention-grabbing schtick: vile remarks, followed by public fury, doubling down, a tight-lipped “apology”, then threats from management that this was his “last chance”. There was a special twist on this occasion – Jones complained the ABC’s Media Watch didn’t broadcast all of his comments about Jacinda Ardern. If there’s anything the Parrot likes, it’s the full context of his unvarnished misogynistic diatribes.

In a frank admission – rare for prime ministers, who like to impress they are confidently in charge – Scott Morrison has revealed what keeps him awake at night. That is the feud between our biggest customer and our closest friend. The problem for him is he doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what to do about it, and as such it is a nightmare for the nation.

Oceanic peoples, my peoples, are threaded through the backbone of the British colony’s economic success in Australia, and Scott Morrison’s recent actions at the Pacific Islands Forum in Funafuti, Tuvalu, only reinforce how they continually attempt to sever our tongues. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack’s comments after the forum, which reduced Pacific peoples to nothing more than labour for Australia’s economy, were similarly hurtful and unsurprising.