Deconstructing Scott Morrison

Watched ABC’s Q&A the other night 19-Apr-2010, Premiers, Population And The Politics Of Fear and got my first good look at Scott Morrison, Coalition Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship.

He’s confident, polite, articulate and a complete sleaze bag.

Morrison’s willingness to inflame xenophobic sentiment on boat people Asylum seekers proves that the Liberal-National Party Coalition still has Simple Minds on the issue of Immigration, in the most evil sense of the phrase.

Scotty’s (and Tony’s) Dog Whistle

Scotty’s Dog Whistle on Q&A was ‘put migration last’. Here it is:

SCOTT MORRISON: At the end of the day migration is the question that you answer right at the end of the process,

The AlanJonesAPhiles in the electorate understand this language immediately. It means ‘we don’t want don’t trust don’t need don’t care about don’t give a tinker’s curse about boat people go away go away now fast you yer mates and the UN can just go and get stuffed’

Now, you can’t say that sort of thing directly in a civilised nation, so you have to preface the whole thing in an acceptable-face-of-evil sort of way by couching it in noble sentiment. Here’s Scotty being calm and reasonable about the whole thing:

we are currently growing at a rate of net overseas migration of, on average over the last seven quarters, of 300,000 per year… what this debate, I think, is really all about is about strained cities, about water resources, about energy supplies into the future, and all of these types of things.

So, Scotty tells us migration is killing the environment, so its not that we don’t like xenos, no, we LOVE Tamils, Afghans, Hashemites, Vegemites and Amelikites, its just that they’re killing our cities, drinking all the flamin’ water and overcrowding the public transport. So if they could rack off back to whever they come from we would all be mightily pleased just be reasonable…its nothing personal, its about our very personal survival, not yours

…which is why Australia needs to put migration last, or to quote Scotty

migration is the question that you answer right at the end of the process

Now, Scotty started all calm and reasonable just tootling on his Dog Whistle like a good ‘ol boy, but was then directly called out as a xenophobe by member of the audience who asked

JOY GOODSELL: My question is to Scott Morrison. …I was wondering why you can’t behave like Bruce Baird did when he was acting for refugees, instead of stirring the racist pot that you’ve been doing over the past few weeks?

Onya Joy.

So Scotty puts the Dog Whistle away and comes back with more like a Dog Bagpipes and starts spraying the Howardisms thick and fetid.

He calls the Boat People ‘illegals’…

I want to stand up for people who are sitting in camps all around the world whose places are denied by those who choose come by an illegal method.

…notice again trying to couch his stink in a noble cause.

He calls them wilfull destroyers of documents:

those who have wilfully gotten rid of their documentation…they come here dispense with their documentation

(of course acknowledging that some have their documentation destroyed by no fault of their own).

He says we are in danger from a flood of refugees:

There are 10 and a half million refugees in the world today… Where do we stop?

And finally – we should be grateful for this – flat out says he doesn’t support ANYONE coming to Australia by boat.

SIMON SHEIKH: But the truth of what you said there earlier tonight is that you don’t support people who come by boat.

SCOTT MORRISON: No, I don’t…there are 10 and a half million of them… last time we were in government it worked. We reduced the boats to zero and they stopped coming. We make no apology for it.

No Boats. Its what the Coalition thinks the people of Australia want. Its the goal Abbott and Morrison in their tiny, diminished hearts stand for.

But they cannot achieve it, setting aside for the moment the infantile banality of such a xenophobic and mean spirited policy objective, Yes, in 2002, zero boats arrived, but that was due to Australia’s immigration zones being redefined under the infamous Pacific Solution (the boats still came) and also this does not account for many months when Refugees arrived by boat in much the same numbers at present under Howard’s watch

Rudd’s figures on boat arrivals correlate the same way as Howard’s do: to external factors, i.e. overseas war. Which is the raison d’etre for the UN Convention On Refugees

But counting of boat numbers misses the point at so many levels. It makes me queasy to think that the alternative government of a prosperous Liberal Democracy like Australia can imagine pride in refusing refugees of war; worse turns them into cheap political capital.

The huge majority of refugees under Howard were found to be a legitimate refugee (97% Iraqis, 93% Iranians, 84% all asylum seekers) under the relevant UN Convention which has its genesis in the experience of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. None were found to be terrorists.

Morrison should feel pride that Australia is a signatory to that noble agreement instead of couching his dead lies in the faux nobility of the whitewshed tombs (Population Policy, UN certification, respect for documentation) he recycles for his sleazy purposes.