Ala Akba

Apart from anything else, a leaflet taking on the voice of Islamic activists is rendered somewhat less convincing when the signature rallying cry is misspelled. Upon reflection, it was probably a deliberate style choice, but that doesn't make it any less dumb.

Amusingly, Howard's in damage control mode, condemning the leaflets as racist, which is just a bit rich for my delicate sensibilities at this hour of the morning. After all, the man is not above encouraging bigoted fringe groups himself when he gets a spare moment, and both his policies and his past rhetoric leave him open to the charge of race-baiting. It's just the execution of the leaflets that was a bit off. He's condemning the blackface while upholding Jim Crow.

This episode has made front-page news out of a long-existing fact: there are some scary folk in the hard right faction of the Libs. Sometimes I wonder how they can coexist with a man of evident conscience like Petro Georgiou. Fine, it's a big tent, but surely there are limits? Is a middle-class upbringing and a heartfelt devotion to cutting taxes really enough to keep these people together?

I'm not entirely sure it is. If the Libs lose office, the post-election fallout is going to be vairy interesting. Stay tuned!

Michelle Grattan: What Was Andrews Thinking?

The ever-thoughtful Michelle Grattan had an interesting take on the African refugee quota issue in today's Sun Herald. I'm not quite as quick as Grattan to dismiss the "race card" explanation. Yes, pulling the race card in 2007 would be seen as a "cynical tactic" - by the people who are inclined to care about cynical tactics. This is a dishearteningly small proportion of voters, as the repeated reelection of John "Children Overboard" Howard attests.

But I think there's something in Grattan's emphasis on where the Africans Overboard issue would play badly. The Australian electorate can be broken down as follows: a largish minority of voters who abhor the race card in all its forms; a smallish minority of rednecks for whom stories about AIDS-ridden refugees serve as a call-to-arms to defend Straya from the imminent threat of damned foreigners; and the majority, who aren't mobilised either way on questions of race, preferring to vote for, say, whichever government will allow them to buy a bigger plasma screen. The first group would never vote Howard in a million years; the second voted for Hanson, then redirected to Howard when it turned out that Hanson was crazy, not to mention embarrassing; the third group is the one Howard needs to woo if he wants to hold on to government. And as Grattan points out, it's not 2001 anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean these people will see discussion of race as a political ploy, but I think Grattan is right to say they won't be mobilised by it as they were over Tampa. They are too busy wilfully ignoring the Government's plaintive defence of its IR policy.

Incidentally, it seems to me that much of the backlash against Andrews over this has focused on the fact that it isn't true that African immigrants cause more than their fair share of angst. All well and good: I have nothing against what Stephen Colbert calls "fact-based agendas". And it's always nice when you can point out to people that they are just plain wrong. But I haven't seen much objection to the framing of the question, thus: even if African refugees were disproportionately represented in crime, would that absolve us of our ethical duty to provide a home for those who genuinely - and, in the case of the Sudanese, desperately - need it? My strong feeling is no, it would not. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees agrees: quotas for refugees are supposed to be based on need, not on some notion - whether well-supported or not - of who settles most successfully once they're here.

With Friends Like These...

From ABC Online:

Senate candidate Pauline Hanson has congratulated the federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews on a decision to cut the number of African refugees allowed into Australia..."Do you want to see increased crime on our streets? Do you want to see increased violence?" she said. "Do you want to see your daughter or a family member end up with aids or anyone for that matter?"

The Soft Bigotry of Kevin Andrews

For most of my adult life, I have pondered one of the most vexing questions in Australian politics: is John Howard really racist, or does he just cynically exploit the racism of the electorate for political gain? I never answered the question one way or another. But the issue is nonetheless resolved in my head: I don't care. Each is precisely as bad as the other.

This came back to me when I was reading Guy Rundle's opinion piece on Kevin Andrews in Crikey today. Guy asks much the same thing of Andrews: racist or cynic? And just as I concluded for Howard, so I say of Andrews: it doesn't matter. The damage his M.O. causes is far more important than the (I suspect) not particularly interesting political philosophy behind it. In his dealings with the Haneef case, Andrews demonstrated that he is willing to do most anything to keep the fear of the other a salient feature of Australian politics, including, but not limited to: grossly misrepresenting the case to the public, ignoring the rulings of the judiciary, and placing such pressure on the Feds that they were unable to handle the case with anything that resembled professionalism or competence.

Now, Andrews is at it again, introducing what appears to be a racial component to the assessment of refugees. Regional quotas already exist, but the traditional rationale for them has been targeting areas of high demand, ie, we take the most refugees from the places that are the most screwed up. Fair enough, I guess, except that Andrews has now taken it upon himself to explain the moratorium on refugees from Africa in failure-to-integrate terms:

...it was clear that settlement wasn’t occurring at the rate that occurred with other refugee and other migrant groups to Australia

Not that Kevin is racist. Anything but:

"We know they've been in war-torn situations; many of these people are much younger than any other group of refugees," he said."So [the] combination of a lower level of education, up to a decade or so in refugee camps and in conflicted situation, these are all issues that are providing us with challenges."

Young, disadvantaged people from war-torn parts of the world. Definitely not the kind of people we should be accepting as refugees*.

It seems Kev's particularly concerned about the Sudanese, who, despite the assurances of such know-nothing sources as the Victorian police that they are not overrepresented in crime statistics, just don't fit in as well . Case in point: the recent murder of a Sudanese refugee, Liep Gony. If the Sudanese community had any real commitment to integration, they would avoid becoming murder victims. It's so obvious.

Meanwhile, Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke says he agrees with Andrews' stance, albeit without the kooky Sudanese murder-victim hook of his Coalition counterpart. Hooray for diversity.

*"A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.." - UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees