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.
Staleness of thought occasioned by lack of editorial upheaval unhinges the mind...
ReplyDeleteWow, she's an intellectual.
ReplyDeleteI note with alarm that on your last article you accepted comments from Spot-the-Dog; I believe this is inflammatory to Islamic bloggers who wish to contribute to these stories.
ReplyDeletePet food manufacturers may need to be compensated under the new regime.
Spot, I'm afraid, has no place in multi-cultural Australia.
Julie Szego is regulation Age collective, but unlike most of them she occasionally strays into the territory of sensible comment.
ReplyDeleteLike her opening paragraph in the above article, or previously when she opined that anti-war lefties weren't entirely consistent or maybe the US isn't the most evil country after all or even that pandering to Islamic sensitivities might not be such a good idea..
I'm sure the Phage think she's a dangerous right wing reactionary.
In other unsurprising news, the dumbest person on twitter makes the dumbest tweet about the death of Osama bin Laden
ReplyDeleteGreat to have you back Prof!
Correllio