Labor plays a game of deceit
LABOR has now weakened our border laws just to give the selfie generation another fake fix to a fake “crisis” to prove their “compassion”.
The untruths and exaggerations used to hype this fake crisis are extraordinary.
And what a deadly price we may pay. The last time Labor weakened our borders, it tempted 50,000 illegal immigrants to sail here and lured 1200 to their deaths at sea.
Yet Labor, the Greens and independents have now rammed through a rortriddled scheme to let doctors, not the government, have the final say on flying in illegal immigrants from Nauru and Manus Island.
But let’s fact-check Labor’s hype.
Yesterday, for instance, Labor’s shadow attorneygeneral, Mark Dreyfus, claimed this new Labor law was just “about getting medical treatment for the 1000 people” on Manus Island and Nauru.
But the illegal immigrants on Nauru already have access to more than 60 medical staff provided by Australia – one medical professional for every seven people. Name a single Australian town or Aboriginal community that’s so lucky.
Further, the Morrison government has already flown hundreds of illegal immigrants to Australia for extra treatment.
The trick, though, is that once here they take legal action to stay here – and they are never sent back.
That, in fact, is what this is about. It’s a rort.
Then there was Labor leader Bill Shorten’s claim that this law was needed “to see the kids off Nauru, kids who need medical treatment”.
But then it was pointed out there are actually no kids left on Nauru to treat. The government has found them new homes.
Labor’s activist backers then stepped up the hype.
Paul Bauert, representing the Australian Medical Association, claimed this week the illegal immigrants were in a worse spot than Jews in Auschwitz because people who knew they were going to be gassed by the Nazis at least “found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening”.
That is sick. Auschwitz was a death camp that deliberately murdered more than a million people.
Nauru is an island where illegal immigrants – and Nauruans – live freely. And they can just as freely go home.
Now GetUp!, backed by trade unions, is running a commercial in which a doctor claims Labor’s law is needed because “12 people have died” on Manus and Nauru.
Independents backing the law have made the same claim. Andrew Wilkie urged: “Twelve people have now died in Australia’s offshore detention centres, all avoidable.”
If Labor’s law – giving doctors the final say on medical transfers – really would have prevented 12 deaths, I’d be for it.
But this claim, too, is incredibly misleading.
Those 12 deaths on Manus and Nauru include two men who drowned while swimming, two men who died in vehicle accidents, one man who was found dead on the morning he was to face court over the statutory rape of an 18-year-old, one man who died in a violent riot, one man who had a heart attack and three men who committed suicide, one in a protest.
That leaves just two, and both died in a Brisbane hospital – one man after suffering a seizure and hitting his head and the other after having his infection misdiagnosed on Nauru and treated poorly in Port Moresby.
Oh and notice that not a single one of the dead was a woman? Don’t women also flee deadly oppression back home? Don’t women on Nauru also get sick? Or is something else going on – not real refugees and not a real medical “crisis”?
Then there’s the final deceit: Labor’s claim that it’s not actually weakening our border laws because its change applies only to the 1000 people already on Nauru and Manus.
First, it is indeed a weakening, which is why ASIO believes those 1000 people will almost all be flown into Australia very shortly. It is too easily rorted.
Second, what will the millions of people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are looking for new homes in richer countries conclude about our will – or Labor’s will – to turn them back?
Labor has just shown it will eventually buckle. The boat people here have just waited them out.
That said, I doubt many boats will now start landing. Not while the government keeps turning boats back.
But these turn-backs are a Tony Abbott policy that Labor used to claim was immoral and would not work and which it only recently supported amid protests from its Left wing.
How long before a Labor government weakens that policy, too? Watch Andrew Bolt on LIVE 7pm week nights