So, there were a couple of major items in the Australian news this morning, sending very worrying signals of what is to come in our country.
First up was the Federal government using their parliamentary numbers to stop a debate into and investigation on our immigration tactics.
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A brief background on this for those unaware. Australia has mandatory detention for all ‘illegal immigrants’, ne. refugees (and by this we mean boat people for the most part. Those that have taken the long and potentially deadly voyage across the sea to our country and gotten caught. After all, they might be terrorists don’t you know?). This detention is served in barbed wire encased camps in remote regions of Australia (and sometimes other countries, like Nauru), run by private organisations who have only limited reporting requirements to the government. There has been any number of tales of mistreatment and degradation, even if you ignore the basic degradation of their position. Oh, the detention includes women and children by the way.
In addition to this, the government has both a tendency to politicise the detentions (look, we’re tough on probably innocent civilians, vote for us), and also a wonderful tendency to fuck up. Recently two tales have come to light. First an
Australian citizen of German origin with Schizophrenia was found to have been detained for a year or so before the truth was discovered. Then another
Australian citizen was found in a hospice in the Philippines, after having been deported in 2001.
So basically after these fairly serious problems, our opposition is calling for an enquiry into what the hell happened and how it can be fixed (obviously there are political considerations, but the idea is still valid). And apparently our wonderful government doesn’t like that plan. They’re already able to this before they take complete control too. When they gain their majority in the Senate in July (from the election last year), they will have a majority in both houses of parliament.
Another quick background note. Australia’s parliament consists of two houses, same as America, but there is no true executive, the leaders still being members of the Senate and the House. Party loyalty is very rigid here though and it is very uncommon for a member to vote against the party line on anything. So a complete majority is pretty much a rubber stamp
I was particularly saddened by this as there were some rumblings from Liberal back-benchers recently that they were out to challenge the government on mandatory detention and would cross the aisles (vote against their party) to do so. Looks like that’s been shot down, or at least severely weakened.
In addition to this, John Howard is going back to his political roots in an attempt to screw people over. ‘Sweeping’ Industrial Relations laws are set to come in which limit unfair dismissal claims to companies with over 100 employees. Now quite when employees stopped getting shafted by small to medium business I’m not quite sure, but there it is.
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In a wonderfully Orwellian turn of phrase, Howard claims that this will protect the interests of workers, because currently businesses don’t want to hire more workers due to fear.
Oh I can see it now…You know, we really are short-staffed and we can’t fill orders, but I just really can’t risk the potential that someone might file a valid unfair dismissal claim against me. What ever shall I do… Oh right, I’ll fucking hire someone because the chances are low and my business needs to grow. Right. Silly me. Erm, anyway.
So it looks like refugees and a large percentage of workers are getting screwed all in one day down here. And that’s before this goverment takes complete power. *sigh*
