Dutton's lie a test for our real values
How Dutton's cruel assessment of refugees could scuttle Turnbull's swap deal with US.
THE ugliness of the comments was staggering, almost beyond the imaginable in their cruelty and deliberate misdirection.
They played to an audience that has been so appallingly misinformed that it has become a proud chorus sprouting nonsense at every turn, indifferent to fact and almost gleeful like schoolyard bullies or extras in a Brechtian performance.
The malicious stupidity came after Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, a courageous man who calls it as he sees it, described the transfer of the first refugees from Manus Island to the United States under an agreement President Trump has called a bad deal, as a T-intersection for a decision on what to do with the rest.
There are still 2000 people held by Australia in offshore detention, 1780 of whom have been identified as refugees under the 1951 agreement to which Australia is a signatory, all who have well-founded fear of persecution in the countries from which they escaped and have no chance of safe return.
Mr Broadbent laid bare the nonsense that has dominated the Australian political landscape since John Howard's disgraceful exploitation of the arrival of the Norwegian vessel Tampa in 2001 with 433 refugees, mainly from Afghanistan, rescued from a distressed fishing vessel.
Howard's introduction of the Border Protection Bill was pure politics, the treatment of the malnourished refugees as enemies of the state a portent of the treatment others were to face in the years to come.
Broadbent, at a book launch a week ago, called it for what it is.
"Because of our political situation and the narrowness and nearness of every federal election that I've ever been in ... these people, unbeknownst to them, become the football in the contest," he said.
"It's going to take a very strong leader to turn and say enough is enough."
Peter Dutton is clearly not that.
Instead he plays to the gullible or wilfully ignorant who choose to believe living standards on Nauru and Manus must be gold-plated because of the billions of dollars governments have paid to contractors to be the armed guards for this national deceit.
His ears are closed to advocates who do all they can to retain the spirit of proud men - writers, engineers and architects among them - being driven to self-harm and suicide by their interminable incarceration and his mind dismissive of report after report from international agencies that call these prisons for what they are.
Instead, as the first group of men headed off to unknown futures in the United States, Dutton chose to mock.
Commenting on their appearance, understandably dressed for a long journey and joyful to finally feel hope, he said:
"We have been taken for a ride, I believe, by a lot of the advocates and people within Labor and the Greens who want you to believe this is a terrible existence.
"These photos demonstrate otherwise. People have seen other photos in recent weeks of those up on Manus out enjoying themselves outside this centre, by the beach and all the rest of it.
"They're economic refugees, they got on a boat, paid a people smuggler a lot of money, and somebody once said to me that we've got the world's biggest collection of Armani jeans and handbags up on Nauru waiting for people to collect it when they depart."
Someone once said to him.
What someone should tell this fool is that with those words he condemned his Prime Minister in the eyes of a volatile Trump, threw into absolute question whether the US on hearing his words will consider taking one single additional detainee and chose denial over acceptance of all available evidence to the contrary.
To a degree it is understandable.
The lies born out of Howard's ruthless exploitation of the Tampa affair have been told repeatedly for the past 16 years playing to fears and prejudice of a voting block only too willing to accept nonsense as fact.
It has shamed Australia, diminished us in the eyes of a world that once held our values in as high esteem as we still vainly attempt to ourselves.
Dutton's Armani refugees are not footballs in the centre of some grotesque political game, they are people some of whom have been welcomed and supported in Sunshine Coast homes.
And they certainly aren't the recipients of a nation's largesse.
Dutton is either delusional or a very callous individual.
It is now up to the rest of us to decide whether we are the same.
