Doctors without voters ignore border threats

The gods walk among us with white robes and medical degrees. The hallowed halls of medicine are producing a new type of doctor, the activist medic. Gone are the humble podiatrists who contented themselves with feet, or the general practitioner with family practice. Demigod doctors are on the rise and playing politics on the job. Their cause du jour is border security.

Several medical bodies are campaigning for medivac as the government seeks to repeal the malformed legislation. It was introduced by one-term wonder Kerryn Phelps, who used her background as a GP to give it an air of authority. Phelps’s bill passed with the support of Labor and the Greens.

Border security was on the agenda at this year’s election, as it has been since the Liberal Coalition came to power under Tony Abbott in 2013. Once again, Australians elected the party that has a record of securing borders by turning back illegal boats, sending their passengers to offshore immigration centres, and deporting illegal arrivals and criminals.

The Liberal Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy was crafted in response to the last Labor government’s disastrous approach that resulted in more than 1000 deaths at sea, 8000 children in detention and about 50,000 people entering Australia illegally. It cost taxpayers about $16bn to clean up Labor’s mess. Perhaps activist doctors and lawyers can afford that kind of money, but most of us cannot.

Despite Australians voting for secure border policy since 2013, activists want to dismantle the policy. From the pulpit of PC medicine, doctors without voters are lecturing Australia on national security. Free of charge and without commonsense, politicised medics are running a partisan campaign to prop up medivac. To get a glimpse into the rarefied world of megaphone medicine, consider the article on medical site newsGP: “Peak medical bodies united in support of medivac law”. It states: “Australia’s peak medical bodies have called on senators to block the federal government’s bid to repeal the legislation.”

The peak bodies passing judgment on medivac reform include well-known experts on national security such as dermatologists and podiatrists. There is a glaring omission in the piece, namely dissenting medical opinion. To find it, you must scroll down to the comments section. In dissent, Dr Strickland wrote: “This medivac legislation has very little to do with treatment of patients, but a lot to do with politics. We in the medical profession have to realise it is designed around a push to overcome the fact that these illegal boatpeople are not allowed into Australia … They are not POWs, but free to mix into their present communities, work and contribute.”

Dr Denness inquired about medical bodies’ right to claim authority on medivac matters: “Here we go again with ‘our’ leftist-progressive medical political college. When did you survey us, your paying members, for our opinions about this issue? Was a clear majority in favour of your action with regard to this?”

Apart from their friends in the Greens and Labor left, activist medics have the taxpayer-funded but unrepresentative media on their side. In its coverage of the issue, SBS cited president of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, Rod Mitchell, who declared medivac a success because “130 people who required urgent medical treatment have now received (it)”. If that were the case, the legislation might be justified.

But in Senate estimates last Monday, head of Operation Sovereign Borders Craig Furini revealed only 13 of the 135 asylum transferred to Australia for medical treatment under medivac laws required hospital upon arrival. Five refused treatment. Speaking to 3AW, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton revealed six people admitted entry to Australia under medivac have been flagged for security reasons.

In other publicly funded left-wing news, SBS reported on the ABC reporting on the AHRC in furious agreement with the UN.

The UN’s human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, came to Australia at the behest of the AHRC and did her tribe proud by criticising secure border policy. In the tradition of the socialist UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, Bachelet ignored the evidence that Operation Sovereign Borders has saved perhaps hundreds of lives and protected Australians’ safety. Instead, she pursued the UN line on borders, saying medivac was good and border protection is bad. Then she smeared people who are rational enough to see how irrational open border activists are. Bachelet said: “Rather than labelling people who favour refugee pushbacks as bigots and racists, we need to listen and recognise the fear, anxiety, insecurity or other factors that may be behind such attitudes.”

Guterres used the same line when he was the UN’s human rights chief, claiming that Australian concern about boat arrivals was “a kind of collective sociological and psychological question”. Tell that to the 1000 who died thanks to lax border protection. Australians don’t want to fund the people-smuggling trade, welcome terrorists, offer welfare for folk who reject free-world values and watch children drown at sea because the hard left is too soft-headed to understand the long-term impact of opening borders in an age of transnational jihad and crime.

The medivac bill was poorly designed by politicians and activists keen to assume greater authority over immigration and asylum policy. From the outset, the bill was criticised by security experts who explained the significant risks involved in weakening executive power over Australian borders. ASIO warned it “would render the government powerless to conduct proper security threat assessments or stop transfers to the mainland”.

Despite numerous warnings from security and intelligence experts, medical activists secured passage of the bill. In less than a year, the green-left has managed to botch border security again by letting queue-jumping border cheats into the country along with half a dozen flagged as security risks. Will medivac doctors pick up the tab for going soft on borders, or will they leave taxpayers to pay for their delusions of omniscience?

Why don’t megaphone medics do us all a favour: lose the megaphone, pick up a stethoscope and get back to work.