Protest paranoia taken for a ride
COLUMNIST Paul Syvret ( C-M, Sep 1) was correct, to a degree, but perhaps he was a tad paranoid at the ham-fisted Australian Border Force stuff-up in Melbourne that may simply have been a memo slip-up missing two key words.
The two words I think that may have been missing from the poorly worded press release were “in taxis”.
The rabid Left in Melbourne only has to get the faint sniff in the air that the state is contemplating taking away copies of the Communist Manifesto from anyone it encounters and it will make you believe with loud hailers that a police state with brown shirts is just around the corner.
Where have the protests been from the Socialist Left about its comrades in the taxi industry who have been subject to racial profiling by government agencies?
For years there have been blitzes of the city’s taxi industry by every level of bureaucracy in Brisbane, targeting so-called “visa fraudsters” masquerading as respectable cabbies.
Yes, the event last Friday in Melbourne was farcical and made a nonsense of the new Border Force championed by the Abbott Government.
But the likelihood of this new agency becoming some type of Orwellian jack-booted police-state force looking for visa interlopers around the country is no more than the Left looking for a conspiracy over its schooners on a Friday afternoon at the pub. Paul Henderson, Wynnum
FOLLOWING the aborted Border Force operation in Melbourne last Friday we have seen denials and blame shifting from the police commissioner, the minister and the Prime Minister.
It seems the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility and accountability is dead, replaced with the Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” defence. David Price, Runcorn