YES, yes, this multiculturalism is all very well and good, and even if some of those New Australians are a bit slow to grasp cricket, everything will be just fine if they open a few more exotic eateries and, beyond that, make it a very definite point to behave themselves. Four years, that’s all it now takes for the new arrival to get a gum tree from the local mayor. It does not seem very much time to invest in acquiring something quite so valuable as the all-but inviolate right not to be deported, and Akin Sari, pride of Northcote, rather makes the point.
If the young fellow’s name rings a bell it is probable you remember the events of the G20 conference in November, 2006, when a group of young people decided to trash Collins street, smash a police van and do serious injury to two officers. Akin Sari was perhaps the biggest pest of the marauding lot, and he scored a 14-month sentence even after swearing that he had examined his conscience and would never again mix violence and politics. Never. Not ever, and certainly not as he was doing in the photo below.
Mind you, the magistrate had quite a list of charges to consider, and he could not have been impressed by the young man’s initial cockiness, especially when the arresting officers testified that Sari accused them of being disciples of Christine “Make Mine Flame Seared” Nixon, whom he regarded as something of a joke. Bad he might have been, but not entirely stupid – and just a little bit lucky as well. Admirers of the then-Police Commissioner? It is a marvel those cops did not have his guts for garters.
Sari’s most interesting boast was that, even though he had arrived from Turkey only five years earlier, he was a dinki-di Aussie. “You can't deport me,” he was reported to have crowed. “You can't do anything to me. Your laws are pathetic.” Back then, when Sari swore allegiance, two years’ residency was all that was required. This has now been doubled, with some other, very minor conditions added.
All this is worth dredging up because, when Sydney’s wallopers followed the lead of their Melbourne counterparts and moved along the Martin Place Occupisants, an unreformed Sari was there to give them grief, in this instance with a metal torch that he allegedly used to wallop a copper over the head.
Once again a thoroughly nasty piece of work has been arrested for belting policemen. And once again he cannot be deported.
Would it be too much to ask that an Abbott government extend citizenship’s qualifying period to, say, six years, and perhaps add another five years of probation on top of that? Sari is about to cost the taxpayers another significant sum. He doesn’t like Australia, and Australia has no reason to like him.
