Tony Abbott’s legacy is keeping us safe

OF all the recent prime ministers betrayed by their own parties, Tony Abbott was the least deserving. He, at least, achieved a few things, says Tim Blair.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott.

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OF all the recent prime ministers betrayed by their own parties, Tony Abbott was the least deserving. Abbott at least achieved a few things, some significant indeed.

By comparison, the greatest accomplishments of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd were, respectively, getting rid of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

The importance of Abbott’s most spectacular accomplishment is only now becoming clear. Leading up to and during the 2013 election campaign, Abbott repeatedly vowed to “stop the boats”.

This was widely considered impossible. “Abbott plan to stop boats ‘won’t work’,” declared one Fairfax article in June 2013.

“The flood of asylum-seeker boats travelling to Australia will continue under a Coalition government, according to a former senior official in the Immigration Department who says Tony Abbott’s plan to turn back boats and reintroduce temporary protection visas will not stop the dangerous journeys.”

Doubts remained even after the Coalition was in office and Abbott, with then-immigration minister Scott Morrison, put in place their boat-stopping policies. “Stopping the boats is not going to plan,” announced the ABC’s Drum website in September 2013, above an opinion piece by veteran political correspondent Mungo MacCallum, who was of the view that “the best Abbott can hope for” was a continuing “slowdown in arrivals”. Then the boats stopped. And they’ve remained stopped ever since.

It was an impressive enough achievement at the time, but consider now just how different Australia might be if the people-smuggling trade to Australia had not been successfully ended. Consider what may have occurred if maritime channels to Australia were still open when the latest Middle Eastern exodus got underway.

Germany copped more than one million arrivals in 2015 and can expect many hundreds of thousands more this year and the next. As critics of Abbott’s boat-halting might put it, this is not working. On New Year’s Eve in Cologne an army of asylum seekers and their Islamic mates attacked hundreds of terrified women.

That notorious night, which authorities and media did their best to conceal, was not an isolated event. Recently a 16-year-old German girl named Bibi Wilhailm posted a video calling attention to Germany’s tensions. “One time in summer, the Muslims said we were sluts for walking outside in a T-shirt. Yes, we were wearing T-shirts. It’s summer!” she said.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott.

“If we feel like wearing it, we will wear it! And you Muslims have no right to physically assault or rape us for it! God willing, never in my life. You have no right to attack us because we are wearing T-shirts. You also have no right to rape.”

The teenager ended with a plea for protection: “The life of Germany has changed because these people cannot integrate. We give them so much help. We support them financially and they do not have to work. But they only want more babies and more welfare and more money. Men of Germany, please, patrol the streets and protect us. Do this for your women and your children.”

In Australia, thanks to Abbott’s asylum-seeker policies, we’re free to worry about such issues as a rugby league player’s dog-fondling hobby and some red-topped pirate’s plan for a republic. In Germany, young girls are begging for bodyguards.

Similar problems have emerged in caring, sharing Sweden, which was hailed in 2013 by UN sobwits for its enlightened attitude to country shoppers. Pia Prytz Phiri, a representative of the UN’s refugee agency, said Sweden’s decision to grant refugees permanent residence permits should serve as a model for other countries. “From a humanitarian aspect it is the right thing to do,” Phiri said, “but also we believe it is a very good thing for Sweden to do in its own interest.”

Sweden has since reconsidered. Last week the government announced that it would expel at least 60,000 asylum seekers who arrived last year. And the tally could be higher. “We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said.

Australia would be a troubled place if those boats hadn’t been stopped. Instead of the Mitchell Pearce matter, we’d be discussing the difficulty of balancing the budget in a nation where the only growth industry was mosque construction. Policies matter.

A SHADOW BOXING FOR A ‘NAKED’ SILHOUETTE

PORT Stephens is a beautiful place. Among the area’s many qualities is an unknown individual with a keen sense of patriotism and a wickedly subversive sense of humour.

This is evident following last week’s Australia Day citizenship ceremony in Port Stephens, where new members of the Port Stephens community received “Welcome to Australia” packages. Among the various items within was a stubby holder featuring the Australian flag and a female silhouette.

Naturally, there was outrage.

The Fairfax press seethed over what it described as “a lurid naked lady silhouette straight from the back of a 1970s panel van”, although how they knew the outline was naked is not clear. People see what they want to see, I suppose.

It so happened that the NSW Labor’s shadow minister for the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, Kate Washington, had been in attendance on that fateful day. She didn’t notice the stubby holders of shame at the time, but was subsequently alerted to them when informed by a recipient.

Perhaps that person only wanted instructions, or maybe a refill, but Washington took matters further.

“It’s exactly this kind of depiction of women that undermines what we are trying to do to reduce domestic violence and improve the way women are treated,” Washington shrieked. “I am mortified that I could be associated in any way with material like that and I’m horrified by the possibility the young girls I met who were part of a family becoming Australian citizens could have received one.”

Whatever you say, Supreme Grand Mufti Ms Washington. Presumably the next stubby holders handed out in Port Stephens will be decorated with images of women in burqas, although that might be denounced as racism or some other damn thing. Washington’s line about domestic violence recalls Greens senator Larissa Waters’ 2014 claim that gendered toys — Barbie dolls and the like — were connected to domestic violence and pay inequality. Note to small businesses: reduce your wages bill by handing out Barbies. Apparently they cut pay instantly.

And silhouettes cause violence against women. How this works I have no idea. Ask the shadow minister to explain, but right now I’m dealing with the more urgent problem of an empty stubby holder.