John Oliver warns his new season of Last Week Tonight may skewer Australia’ detention centres

TV comic John Oliver has warned he’s turning his focus back to Australia and our refugee detention centres in the new season of his news talk show.

John Oliver says he plans to target Australia’s immigration policies. Picture: HBO

US comic John Oliver has warned he will turn his show’s spotlight on Australia’s refugee detention centres in the new season of his news satire program, Last Week Tonight.

The five-time Emmy Award winner, who previously shamed Americans over their gun laws using former prime minister John Howard’s post-Port Arthur gun amnesty, told News Corp he plans to tell American audiences “how horrific those [detention] camps are.”

“There are so many things in Australia that are interesting, from your offshore detention camps, which I think America is about to become aware of — just how horrific those camps are.”

“There’s nothing that I don’t enjoy about Australian policy, even though [former PM Tony] Abbott is no longer with us,” he said.

Oliver has previously had fun at Mr Abbott’s expense, with one take-down generating more than four million online views.

John Oliver has Australia’s immigration policies in his sights. Picture: Getty

At last year’s Emmy Awards, where he won the outstanding variety talk series category, he also challenged Channel 10 entertainment editor Angela Bishop over Australia’s immigration policies, after she questioned his previous pooh-poohing of a Trump presidency.

During that exchange, he mocked: “I don’t know what the point of Tony Abbott was, but it was fun while it lasted. It was like taking heroin, it was incredibly exhilarating, and it was right that you stopped.”

The British-born comic, who got his start in the US with regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, also got mileage out of Barnaby Joyce’s “war on terrier” when the deputy PM threatened to euthanise the dogs of actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

He turned the international quarantine incident into a skit, giving the Federal Government “50 hours to get everything Australian out of [the US] or else” including Fosters beer, Silverchair and Vegemite.

In another tongue-in-cheek rant, the comedian - whose sister briefly lived in Melbourne - described Australia as the “most comfortably racist” place he had been, telling a UK website it was a “coastal paradise surrounding a rocky hell.”

He told The Bugle podcast: “Australia turns out to be a sensational place, albeit one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been in. They’ve really settled into their intolerance like an old resentful slipper. You can say what you like about Australian racism, it is undeniably specific. I had a couple of Australians - more than one - complain to me about all the Lebbos in the country, referring apparently to the Lebanese. Who the f-- is annoyed by Lebanese people? In a way you have to admire the attention to detail. Not just all those Arabs, but the Lebanese.”

While Australia remains on his radar, Oliver promised he would not be delivering a year’s worth of programming on President Trump.

Australia is set for the same treatment John Oliver gave Donald Trump. Picture: HBO

“I guess the focus now is more on wrestling with the consequences, than necessarily looking back to the campaign, because that’s gone,” he said.

“Now we have to see the extent to which he meant what he said, and I think the extent is probably pretty high.”

A former journalist, Oliver also played down accusations by some commentators that the actions of liberals such as himself of making fun of the billionaire, reality-show-star turned politician had contributed to an erosion of trust in the media and aided Trump’s ascension.

“I didn’t take him as a joke. I took him very seriously. That’s why I found what he said so horrifying,” he said.

“I would argue that we make jokes about important stories but we have always given a full throated defence of journalism.

“I think one of the most immediate threats coming out of the White House is devaluing the currency of journalism.”

In addition to planning a story on Australia’s immigration policy, Oliver said he planned to focus on post-Brexit Europe and the rise of nationalism.

“There is so much in Europe this coming year which is going to be much more important than people understand,” he said.

John Oliver isn’t a fan of Tony Abbott. Picture: AAP

“You don’t need to be a history buff to understand that nothing in Europe happens in isolation. There are serious consequences to each nation’s actions, and when there is this surge towards the right, it’s bad news for everyone.”

He also revealed that as an immigrant in Trump’s America, he is fearful about his future there.

“It’s multifaceted, my fear,” he said.

“There’s no reason for immigrants to feel comfortable in this country at the moment, and I’m an immigrant with a lot of luxury attached because I have a company behind me. But I am still swimming in the same pool of jeopardy. It’s just the consequences are less bad for me.

“I think that is why I find these things that he has done on immigration so viscerally offensive, not just because it flies in the face of everything the country is supposed to be, but also it’s insulting. It’s insulting to immigrants who make this country what it actually is, so that is why its enraging to see the kind of shit that he’s done.”

* Last Week Tonight with John Oliver screens on Foxtel’s The Comedy Channel

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