The Kororoit Creek Solution

PERHAPS it was the slight weight gain stemming from the recent addition to the Billabong’s library of a book chocka with American barbecue recipes and marinades. Or it may be that the desk chair, like the bottom it has cradled for so long, simply fell victim to time’s wear and ravages. Whatever the reason, there was an explosive crack when a poor Bunyip sat down last week to tickle the keyboard and ended up sprawled on the study’s axminister. This turned out to be a blessing, as the skirting-board perspective revealed an unopened packet of Silk Cut under the desk drawers, bringing back happy memories of the last passage through an airport duty-free shop.

The smokes were still tasty and the chair, now fixed, brought its own blessing en route to the repair shop, which is in an industrial estate on the border between Williamstown and Altona. To get there one needs to drive along Kororoit Creek Road, where a maze of town houses is under construction beside the bird refuge, which looks a lot like a tidal swamp. They made quite a sight, those units, so striking that the Bunyipmobile came to a stop while memories consumed its driver. Once, in a different Australia, the address had been the site of a migrant hostel, where New Australians were housed while finding jobs and coming to terms with their new homeland. Some remained in residence for three or four years.

How different things are today. Earlier, on Melbourne Road en route to the upholsterer, one of the most arresting sights was the spectacle of three tented women, veiled from head to toe and escorting a posse of nippers, near Newport railway station. Perhaps their husbands -- mind you, it could be but a single hubby for all -- are productive new arrivals, and perhaps there is not a penny of public subsidies supporting their homes. Perhaps, but not likely.

How much better would it be, rather than arguing about Nauru or sending children to the waiting procurers in Malaysia, if Australia turned back the clock and re-introduced the hostel system? The message would be that you are welcome to come, but the only taxpayer largesse you can expect will be a bed in a hostel’s Spartan accommodation and free meals at its cafeteria. Other than that, you will need to learn English, pick a footy team to support and build your own future.

It would blunt UN criticism of Australian inhumanity and, one suspects, diminish the appeal of the land of milk and welfare cheques those people smugglers have found so easy to sell. One suspects the number of illegal aliens arriving by leaky boat would see a precipitous decline. Those who did arrive, however, might be precisely the sort of fresh citizens we need – the sort who are grateful for the chance to get ahead in a new land, expect no public charity, and won’t mind a little discomfort while finding their feet.

It’s just an idea, and. these folks’ recollections, testaments to how well the hostel system worked, suggest it is a good one.

Consistency Overboard

SOMETIMES the caring and compassionate mind can be very hard to understand. Consider the logic, and this is but one example, of the ongoing and largely unsuccessful efforts to restrict the use of illegal drugs. Importers and wholesale dealers are seen and detested as the real villains, which is why the courts generally administer stiff sentences. As for the end users, they are punished as well, but not with anywhere near the same degree of severity. It all makes sense, right? Stern justice for criminal syndicates’ organisers, a measure of sympathetic leniency for those perceived to be their victims.

Now ponder a second species of entrepreneurial criminals who profit from another prohibition’s distortion of its market -- those who profit mightily by shipping so-called asylum seekers to Christmas Island. Everyone seems to agree the people-smuggling kingpins are, to quote Kevin Rudd, “scum of the earth” who should “rot in hell.” So far, no inconsistency. If a criminal organisation is running contraband, be it drugs or people, senior members are told they will be in quite a bit of trouble if caught.

One or two steps down culpability’s ladder, however, the current logic gets a lot murkier. Other than the anguish and uncertainty of waiting and wondering if applications for residency will be approved, there are no punishments for people smugglers' end users. There were disincentives under John Howard, mind you – the prospect of a prolonged stay in Nauru amongst them – but those were quickly dismantled by our current and compassionate PM upon her predecessor’s ascension to The Lodge. Given the good food, clean sheets, mobile phones, computer access and welfare payments that await them, few boat people would see that parcel of goodies as anything other than a reward, the worst efforts of a few media-genic roof-sitters, riot-inciters and lip-sewers not withstanding.

That is one example of cognitive dissonance, but it is not the only one. Just as an exercise, imagine you are a current or former heroin addict who hooks up fellow junkies with reliable suppliers. You pass along their names and phone numbers, rate their trustworthiness and extol the pleasure of the high they will attain once the connection is made. A legal mind might nominate several charges that could be laid against such touts, but even if no formal accusations were brought to bear it is safe to assume they would be of interest to police.

Now turn attention back to the people-smuggling racket and individuals who support it by word and deed. From the published comments of those who lost friends and loved ones in the latest leaky SIEV, it seems there are a quite a few urgers who are working from inside Australia to encourage the perilous transits of other undocumented aliens. Several are quoted in today’s newspapers, where they display detailed knowledge of would-be arrivals’ names, safety, and travel schedules. Take Sayid Abas Sultani , for example, who tells the Silly of his plan for flying to Indonesia in search of missing nephew Sayeed, who was aboard the compassionate Gillard’s latest death ship.

How did Mr Sultani, who stepped ashore just seven months ago, know of his kinsman’s pending passage unless he had been communicating with him? And if he and they were chatting or emailing or whatever, why didn’t Sultani advise his nephew of the dangers ahead and advise him not to come through the back door? True, young Sayeed might have accused his uncle of hypocrisy, as that was how he entered the country, but the answer to that would have been quite simple: Yes, nephew, I did jump the queue, but by the Prophet’s beard I am now on the fast track to full citizenship and obliged to observe, and encourage others to respect the law of the country which so kindly took me in.

Unfortunately, a presumptive sense of entitlement appears to rule out that option, as another survivor of the latest sunken SIEV explains, also to the Silly. “We will continue this way again. We will go again by boat. Let the Australian government know that,” vows Iranian Dawood Waladbegi, whose wife and kids appear to be amongst the most recently drowned. “I lost all my family members. I have no one here. I don't want this life.'' Upset as he is about his miserable lot, Waladbegi still has a life, which is no longer the case for the family members he knowingly placed in such danger.

When Waladbegi does arrive, as he surely will, it would have a prophylactic effect on the flow of future undocumented arrivals if he were to be charged with aiding and abetting the people smuggler's manslaughter. And it wouldn’t hurt if his contacts in Australia, the ones who urged him to place his family in such peril, were charged as well. If he were a heroin addict who lined up fellow addicts with dealers known to cut their wares with battery acid, there would not be a peep of complaint about his complicity being brought before the courts.

But with boat people, no way. All that compassion, it doesn’t leave any room for consistency or genuine and sincere concern. 

Unhinged Thoughts

PHAGE thinker Julie Szego saw smoke over Villawood and almost became angry “at some level” about new and uninvited arrivals burning public property, endangering staff and insisting that a country which did not know they were coming must now open its doors, and welfare system, without further delay or inquiry.

At some level, the attempt to hold the authorities of an enlightened country to ransom smacked of opportunism and bad faith. And I couldn't help questioning the wisdom of letting in people who are so contemptuous of the rule of law and so willing to risk the safety of others.

But the madness soon passed and Szego’s thoughts returned once again to that special Fairfax place where the blatant and obvious is never more than an opportunity to embrace the obtuse.

The minister [Doug Cameron] has the balance between rights and responsibilities all wrong in this instance. Obviously, asylum seekers who break the law must be brought to justice, but the government wants the punishment to go way beyond the crime, and it seeks to do so by retrospective measures that change the rules in mid-play.

That’s the shot, Julie. No need to feel uneasy at any level now that you have exonerated the arsonists and switched all blame for the detention-centre riots to the government, which should have warned the new arrivals that setting fires might annoy and disconcert the people who paid for the things they are torching.

“…statelessness occasioned by upheaval and trauma unhinges the mind,” writes Julie.

Funny thing, that.

Opining for Fairfax seems to have the same effect.