Shocking gaffe exposes docs’ real agenda
A disgraceful claim about Auschwitz has exposed the real political game our our peak doctors group is playing, writes Caroline Marcus. And it’s activism over national security.
The problem with Kerryn Phelps’ medivac bill is many doctors have a far greater interest in activism than they do national security.
The proposed legislation from the cross bencher and past president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) essentially transfers responsibility about border protection from the government to medicos, who will be tasked with determining who needs to come here for medical treatment.
But the peak body representing registered medical practitioners yesterday belled the cat on the real political game it’s playing.
In urging the government to pass the bill, AMA’s federal executive, paediatrician Dr Paul Bauert, had the gall to compare asylum seekers in offshore processing to Jews slaughtered at Auschwitz.
“The main problem these people have is a lack of meaning, a lack of any end to what’s going on, a lack of certainty,” Dr Bauert told Sky News.
“Even those that finally knew they were about to be condemned to the gas chamber at least found some sense of relief in knowing what was happening.”
“Relief”? Seriously?
Who is the good doctor getting his talking points from — Father Rod Bower, who at the end of last year used his woke Gosford Anglican Church sign to virtue signal that “Manus is how the Holocaust started”?
MORE FROM CAROLINE MARCUS: My visit to Nauru
Not only is Dr Bauert factually wrong — many in concentration camps didn’t know they were about to be gassed, rather they thought they were simply about to have a shower or be treated for lice — but trivialising the Holocaust to score a political point about offshore processing is deeply offensive to survivors and victims’ families.
“The Holocaust was a systematic attempt on an industrial scale to exterminate an entire people,” said the Australian Jewish Association’s Dr David Adler, also a former AMA NSW deputy medical secretary.
“Whatever your view of offshore detention, it is nothing of the sort and to link the two is as ridiculous as it is offensive.
“It saddens me to see a once prestigious and highly professional body fracture into an ill-informed political activist group. No wonder AMA membership has declined dramatically and only a minority of doctors belong.”
Ouch.
Invoking Godwin’s Law, which holds that the longer a discussion continues the greater the likelihood that a comparison to the Nazis will arise, leaves observers in no doubt that for some medical groups, this issue has become as much about political activism as altruism.
When I pointed out the ludicrousness of his comments on Twitter, Dr Bauert responded: “My deep apologies for causing offence — Auschwitz was a humanitarian disgrace,” before doubling down.
“I stand by my view that our current offshore detention policies are inhumane and needlessly cruel.”
Make no mistake; if the medivac bill is passed, doctors will ensure that most if not all refugees and asylum seekers being processed offshore will come to Australia.
When I visited Nauru a couple of years ago, several of the refugees and asylum seekers I spoke to had some sort of medical complaint — whether physical or mental.
There was refugee Massoud, who said he had a running injury.
“Before I came here, I always used to run but now I cannot run because the ground was full of stone in the camp,” he said. “And now my knee is destroyed. If you feel my knee, my knee is very loose.”
Mustafa, the co-owner of a beachfront restaurant ironically called Bondi Beach told me he had tried to set himself alight “because, you know, I have pain. I cannot eating, my weight down.”
Whether genuine or not, whether serious or not, it’s not hard to imagine two Australian doctors could quickly be scraped together over Skype who would sign off on bringing patients here to treat all such complaints.
We’ve already seen an Iranian asylum seeker medically evacuated to Australia to the tune of $100,000, only for doctors to find out she was simply constipated.
Yesterday, this newspaper revealed a 38-year-old Afghan asylum seeker will face court after allegedly groping two nurses following his transfer from Nauru for medical treatment last month.
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That’s all despite a $26 million upgrade to the Nauru hospital in 2016 — funded by taxpayers — which rendered facilities better than many regional hospitals back home.
Of course, once on Australian soil, asylum seekers and refugees are able to launch endless legal action to prevent their return offshore.
The Australian Government Solicitor warns the medivac bill could leave the government impotent to stop those with serious criminal records — including convicted murderers, rapists and child sex offenders — from being transferred to Australia.
It will also no doubt lead to a resurgence in boat arrivals as people smugglers advise their desperate clients that the deadly trip is worth the risk because they will eventually end up in Australia with a mere scrawl on a prescription pad.
Most Australians rightly don’t want to see people suffer indefinitely offshore, but nor do they want activist doctors to compromise our borders.
Caroline Marcus is the host of Saturday Edition and Sunday Edition on Sky News.
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