Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 31, 2002


TRY EXPLAINING IT TO THE KIDS


ONE Saturday morning a while ago in the Barossa Valley, I was involved in a ``hypothetical'' organised by the Law Society on the detention of asylum seekers at Gulag Woomera and shortly at Gulag Baxter. Also on the panel were academics, lawyers, the clergy, officers from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) and the Liberal MHR Christopher Pyne, who was Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock for the occasion. Pyne made a pathetic Ruddock - far too animated and colourful, giving as good as he got with derisory asides at the ``hysterical rhetoric of the Feminazis'' on the panel. To be fair on Pyne, only Ruddock can do Ruddock, wearing an Amnesty lapel pin and doing his doublespeak routine, the point of which seems to make the asylum debate so boring that people will not be tempted to think too deeply about it. Ruddock also proves that having hooded brown eyes does not necessarily mean you are well connected with the Taliban. Pyne had to leave early, pity, after which the DIMA officers, sentiment running against them, were given a few uncomfortable moments and did not hang around for lunch. Asked if the fence around Baxter would be electrified, one officer seemed most offended and said, no, the technical term was ``energised'' - a subtlety worth noting as you fizz and crackle upon the wire. As for breaches of human rights, the same officer said DIMA, in support of free speech, had provided cardboard on which the Woomera detainees could make protest signs. So there. My hypothetical dilemma, posing as a journalist, was to be told by a redneck editor that a Catholic priest harbouring Woomera escapees in his Adelaide presbytery would be raided by the police that evening. The priest was a close friend of mine. What to do? What a coincidence, I said, for this very evening the priest and I were going out to dinner, or would be now. There was also some hypothetical banter about journalists at a Woomera riot being knocked down in a melee of pro bono lawyers seeking publicity; and of the ``Dob in an Escapee'' campaign run by the redneck editor - first prize, a family trip to Christmas Island in a leaky boat. Much more seriously, the citizenry has become disconnected from politics for all sorts of reasons but when did we become indifferent to the fate of helpless people and insensitive to their ill-treatment? Now, wincing at lip sewing and suicidal kids, we offer a tut-tutting, dismissive shake of the head at refugees behaving badly and what else can you expect of extremists? Extremist Australians, I mean. Faced with a supposed invasion of, er, which minority is it this time - Muslims? - democracy can be a dictatorship of the majority. History is said to be a chronicle of what ought not to have happened and to that extent, the future will bear down hard on us for what we ought to have done and did not do in our treatment of asylum seekers.