‘Yes’ vote not a sign the country is any more humane

Marriage vote not a sign Australia is becoming more humane, explains Greg Barns

THE victory for marriage equality last week — long overdue — should not be thought as indicating that Australia has become a more humane nation. It hasn’t. This country has merely brought itself into line, a decade after Canada, for example, with other civilised nations in recognising that same-sex relationships should face no discriminatory hurdles.

But at the same time on Manus Island and Nauru the Turnbull Government, in lock step with the ALP, is inflicting daily cruelty on asylum seekers. And indigenous Australians are jailed in record numbers by governments and courts across the nation. The marginalisation and demonisation of those with mental illness by measures such as a capricious welfare system continues unabated. Our education system is one of the most unequal in the world because we allow taxpayer funds to be diverted to private schools.

When Australia deals with these running sores, when it enacts a meaningful and enforceable human rights law at the federal level, and when it dismantles the collective psychopathy of the Department of Immigration and the bovver boys in the Border Force, then it can celebrate equality.

It was truly nauseating to hear one of the cruellest of ministers in recent years, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, say last Thursday that he does not believe in discrimination. He said this in the context of rejecting his fellow hardline Right types in the Coalition who want to undermine the clear vote in favour of marriage equality.

No, this is not a transcription or editing error. Peter Dutton, the man who deliberately (as opposed to turning a blind eye) presides over inflicting mental and physical harm on persons exercising their lawful right to seek asylum in Australia, said on Thursday last week; “I don’t support discrimination in any form against any person.”

George Orwell would be turning in his grave. Mr Dutton is the architect of discrimination. It is this. If you seek asylum in Australia and arrive on a boat to exercise that lawful right, you are given a number, detained in a gulag on Nauru or Manus Island. And that’s not discrimination?

This is not an isolated instance of the abuse of the word discrimination, Politicians across Australia pledge racial equality.

They profess their commitment to cultural diversity. But at the same time they deliberately pursue policies that ensure indigenous Australians are the most jailed group of non-Europeans on earth.

As Thalia Antony of the University of New South Wales recorded on The Conversation on June 6, “In 2015, the adult imprisonment rate of indigenous Australians was still higher than that of African-Americans. In that year, 1745 per 100,000 African-American adults were incarcerated, compared to 2253 per 100,000 indigenous Australian adults (by 2016, the indigenous Australian incarceration rate had risen another 4 per cent, to 2346 adult prisoners per 100,000 adults”), she wrote.

Then there is the discrimination against welfare recipients. Again, our politicians like to trumpet their view that the welfare

system is not discriminatory but is about fairness. The reality is different. Those with mental illness are forced to participate in taxing and meaningless exercises by Centrelink and if they miss appointments they are plunged into even deeper poverty through suspension of their payment. There is an undue focus on so called Centrelink fraud and harassment of Centrelink recipients by debt collectors while the rich and their corporate vehicles hide their wealth in global tax havens.

The Turnbull government — and its Labor predecessors were not better — regularly plant stories about so-called hot spots where there are ‘dole bludgers’ and ‘welfare cheats’ residing.

In education too we see daily discrimination. The disgraceful fiscal largesse doled out to rich private schools while state schools get by with teachers digging into their own pockets to buy educational resources is commonplace. A recent report by researchers from University of Melbourne, Macquarie University and Curtin University found 70 per cent of students with a disability suffered barriers and resistance to enrolment in schools.

Australia’s same-sex marriage win means little in the broader context of serial human rights abuses that this country perpetuates.

And remember there is no federal human rights law to protect the vulnerable. Australia is the only nation in the developed world without such a law.

Worse than that, when the champion of human rights former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs stood up for the vulnerable she was bullied by the Abbott and Turnbull government and their media friends.

So let’s take a sober reality check please. Australia remains a human rights pariah, a racist, mean nation that threatens its more compassionate neighbours like New Zealand.

These policies and this mindset are pursued by both major political parties supported by many in the media and are endorsed by millions of voters.

The same-sex marriage win was simply an acknowledgement of reality. Unfortunately the nation has not been reborn.