Leftists wanted Israel Folau sacked by the law but a court ruling on a Tamil family is un-Christian
Could we please make up our minds as to whether Australia is to be a secular country governed by courts and laws, or a theocracy where politicians make policy by playing Bible Bingo and one-upping each other with relevant verses from scripture?
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- Alan Jones: Government’s treatment of Tamil family ‘callous’
- Letting Tamil family stay worst possible thing, says PM
Could we please make up our minds as to whether Australia is to be a secular country governed by courts and laws, or a theocracy where politicians make policy by playing Bible Bingo and one-upping each other with relevant verses from scripture?
Recall that just two weeks ago, the green-left of Australia (along with many others) celebrated George Pell’s being sent down by an appeals court in Victoria on historic sex abuse charges, calling it the victory of an impartial legal system over the bad old reactionary Catholic Church.
And that for months earlier this year, the great consuming progressive issue of our time was ensuring a rugby player was fired and hounded from the public square — with even his wife called upon to make her own ritual denunciations of her husband — for posting a Bible verse meme to his Instagram.
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Yet fast forward to the past several days and the controversy over a Tamil couple who’ve had multiple failed goes at receiving refugee status in the courts and God is suddenly in favour again.
Here’s Kristina Keneally last Friday, urging the PM to allow the family to stay where they have been living in rural Queensland: “The Prime Minister is a father and I appeal to him as a parent and as a Christian to look into his heart and decide what the generous Christian response here is.”
She went on: “It is a story of the good Samaritan and the people of Biloela have been showing that by their advocacy and their fierce determination to return this family of four home to that community.”
Here’s Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, speaking in a similar vein: “We have a Prime Minister that often likes to preach the Gospel and in any commonsense approach we should allow this family to stay here in Australia.
“It’s not a particularly Christian approach to this issue, the way this family was dragged away.”
Others on the left have similarly hopped in.
Paddy Manning, contributing editor at The Monthly and author of a forthcoming book on the history of the Greens, tweeted of the case, “Morrison. Dutton. Not a Christian bone in their bodies”, echoing many leftist commentators lately turned armchair theologians on social media.
Yet surely none of the above would want Scott Morrison — or anyone else for that matter — making policy on marriage or abortion or just about anything else on the basis of his Christian faith.
So what makes this case different?
It’s a reasonable question because, to any fair observer, it seems as if one minute the left wants the law applied without fear or favour. And that the next, it’s all about the Dennis Denuto school of jurisprudence, where anyone who doesn’t recognise the “vibe” of the thing — “but they’re lovely people!” — as the supreme law of the land is cast as a terrible sinner who will join Israel Folau’s drunks and gays and adulterers in H-E-L-L.
The same people who fretted that the Pentecostal Church-going, God-believing Scott Morrison was going to turn Australia into a Down Under reboot of The Handmaid’s Tale now want him to pick up his Bible to reverse what has been a swag of perfectly legitimate decisions by a series of courts.
It’s funny, too, how quickly the switch can be flipped back again. After Tony Abbott gave a speech in London overnight Monday, making throwaway reference to a verse from scripture, the Sydney Morning Herald made that the main event headlining their online report, “Tony Abbott quotes the Bible in Brexit speech”, hitting some sort of clickbait trifecta.
It’s easy to write this inconsistency down to political tactics — using your opponent’s rules against him is a time-tested tactic of the left, articulated in different ways by everyone from Saul Alinsky to Vladimir Lenin.
But there is, when you look at the selective deference to the rule of law in cases ranging from Pell’s to the family of Tamil migrants, another theme that develops — namely, the use of whatever’s handy to hammer institutions.
Pell’s conviction was a huge blow to the Catholic Church, an institution which — scandals aside — has historically stood as a bulwark against revolutionary schemes in Australia. Recall B.A. Santamaria’s opposition to communism in the last century, or the church’s opposition to the left’s radical abortion and euthanasia reform push in this one.
Meanwhile, the Tamil family that’s been in the news this week must, to opponents of Australia’s border control regime, seem like an ideal case to use as a lever to weaken our sovereignty and pry open a migration system that they see as terribly unfair and racist, despite its generosity.
Thus, to the progressive mind, the respect for law is entirely situational, given whether it advances the cause of bulldozing all those institutions which stand in the way of the progressive future the left dreams about and which the rest of us had better wish they never achieve.
Cooler heads understand that the same legal system that convicted Pell and put him in prison also judged these Tamils not to be genuine refugees and not eligible to stay in the country, and that both calls have to be respected.
Catch James Morrow on Outsiders every Sunday morning, Sky News Australia, 9am-11am