Sunday, March 28, 2010

Refugees in Australia - the fear drum gets louder as the election gets closer!


As predicted multiple times on this blog the fear drum is being hammered louder and louder as the days roll on toward a federal election. Every day members of Abbott's fear spruikers gang, both from within the Coalition and the MSM pamphleteer set, come out and hammer Labor on the 'failure' of its border protection policies.

That peculiar program, ABC Insiders, had Ackermann beating the drum this morning, apologizing for the Brisbane based Sunday Mail's front page firing up fear that 'boat people' are in the community, shopping at your shops - be afraid, be very afraid!

Why that nasty piece of work, Ackermann, gets a regular slot on a show that purports to showcase the views of serious political journalists defeats me. He is nothing more than a Murdoch press funded propaganda stooge of the Liberal party. His pronouncements on refugees, or "these people" (as he so subtlety puts it), should be examined by federal authorities as I'm sure they amount to vilification and hate mongering.

Mind you, he is in such bad company, with mainstream Coalition politicians doing the same dirty work routinely to whip up political support. Pyne's outing on Ch 10's Meet the Press this morning being a case in point. It goes on and on and it seems that hate mongering has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government. It reminds me sometimes of an obscure party grabbing public attention in the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s. They banged a few fear drums too! May be the best thing is to laugh at these pathetic loons and sympathize with their obvious challenges!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Refugees in Australia: the idiocy of the 'boat people' scare campaign nailed.

This post from Pollytics nails the lie that is the fear campaign waged by Abbott and his merry band of drongos as they try to whip up support for their draconian approach to refugees.


In 2008, there were approximately 15.2 million forcibly displaced refugees around the world. The blue square in the corner is the proportion that tried to reach Australia by boat.


"In 2008, France, the UK and Italy combined had 96,870 applications for asylum submitted.

In 2008, 51 industrialised countries participating in the UNHCR statistics program had 382,670 applications for asylum submitted.

In 2008, there were approximately 827,000 asylum applications submitted across the globe

In 2008, there were approximately 15.2 million forcibly displaced refugees around the world.

Yesterday we had SBY address our Parliament – the leader of a country of 230 million people, heading a democratic government that struggles with serious economic and social development issues everyday. He was here to talk about development cooperation, security and intelligence sharing and international economic partnership in the forums of global power to boost living standards and enhance the social and economic ties between our two nations.

What did we bang on about?

Boat people."

Great post Possum....