David Bonnici: Australian politics is not the West Wing

David Bonnici provides a humours take on Australian Politics and political junkies like me.  But he also provides a genuine analysis of why the Australian Government fails to act more humanely on Asylum Seekers and sadly as he sees it it has everything to do with cynical politics and winning elections.  No I know your shocked by that. I was too.  Here is some of what he had to say:

There is no better example of the absurdity of Australian politics than the asylum seeker issue. The facts are clear. Australia has a relatively small number of people seeking asylum. The number is a fraction of Australia’s migration intake. There is a trickle of asylum seekers not a flood. And the situation is being well managed, though it could be better handled if the government wasn’t afraid to use detention centres on the mainland to process refugee applications. It shouldn’t be as big an issue, but it is because the Liberal Party has made an art form of turning it into a border security problem; while pandering to those concerned that the skin colour of those arriving allows for further fears about the impact on Australian culture. This bullshit could have been nipped in the bud a long time ago. Instead it has been allowed to fester because we have a media organisations that by and large doesn’t question such claims, but happily reports them to suit their own agendas.

 

Via Group Think