Be Warned, New Zealand

Australia Risking a Human Tsunami

The Sydney Morning Herald, on balance, is habitually more favourable toward left-wing, progressive political ideologies.  Consequently, it tends to be a cheer-leader for the Australian Labour Party.  So, when its senior correspondents start to give a good old fashioned shellacking to a Labour Prime Minister, you have to know that things are pretty bad. 

Here is how a recent column was headlined:

A diminished Gillard caught in a storm of her own making

 The article, by Paul Sheehan (columnist and editorial writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, where he has has been Day Editor and Washington correspondent) begins by described Gillard's bumbling in the top job:

The most surprising aspect of Julia Gillard's first day of facing parliamentary questioning as the newly elected Prime Minister was her demeanour. Gone was the woman who had made an art of confidence, even mockery, during question time. On this day, September 29, she was pale and nervous. She even said the government's home insulation program ''was beset by problems. It became a mess''.

But the focus of the article is not upon the ineffectualness of the Prime Minister, but upon the tragic failure of Australia to control its own borders from illegal immigration.  It is faced not with a swarm of refugees, but with people migrating illegally to Australia for lifestyle reasons.

Three months on from her near-death experience, Gillard has still not grown into her new role. Never did this seem more evident than in the aftermath of the tragedy at Christmas Island with asylum seekers dying in the surf. What did she do in this moment of crisis? She called for a committee.

 

It is impossible to exaggerate the failure of Gillard and her government in their policies towards boat people. She was the principle author of a policy paper, Protecting Australia, Protecting the Australian Way, which became Labor policy. This policy has managed to create the worst of both worlds: cruel yet ineffective. And ludicrously expensive, like almost everything else this government does.

The detention centres are bulging. More are sprouting up. A detention centre has been set up in a Brisbane hotel. Another in Darwin. Another in Melbourne. Another at a remote air force base in Western Australia. Another at a second remote air force base in north Queensland. A defence housing site in the Adelaide Hills has been turned into yet another detention centre, to the consternation of the locals. . As for Christmas Island, it became saturated a year ago.
The vast majority of those arriving by boat are being granted residency. The approval rate is roughly twice that of applicants processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is a green light to the people-smuggling trade.

The High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that large numbers claiming asylum status in Australia are not refugees. The government has been slow to handle legitimate refugee claims. It has been slow to handle illegitimate claims. Detention centres have seen riots, demonstrations, hunger strikes, self-harm and suicide by asylum seekers.

 According to Sheehan, the whole situation is an unholy mess.  It is rapidly escalating out of control.

The courts are clotted with immigration appeals. The law itself has been rendered uncertain. The refugee intake quota has stayed set at 13,500, which means boat people are significantly displacing those awaiting processing by the UNHCR. This is the ''queue'' that refugee advocates pretend does not exist. It is another green light for people-smuggling.

The government has failed to prosecute those who blew up an asylum boat in 2009, killing five and injuring 40. It capitulated to demands from people with zero leverage during a standoff with Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking.

Almost 200 boatloads have arrived since Labor came to government. The people-smuggling trade is thriving. The budget for handling the refugee intake has blown out. Expensive charter flights are shuffling asylum seekers around the country. Children have drowned. Families have been separated.

 We wish to make two general observations.  First, see here the achilles heel of all progressive ideologies.  The liberal progressivism of the West is built upon sentiments of grossly misplaced pity and guilt.  "Wanting to help folks" translates into government rules, regulations, laws, and vast, vast bureaucracies to manage all affairs of life so that no-one goes without.  Two factors combine to smash this idolatry.  The first is that eventually progressive governments run out of other people's money.  They collapse under the dead weight of their own debt.  The second is that they are unable to police their borders--for sentimental mawkishness cannot be restricted to one's own citizens.  The secular humanism of the West means that it inevitably extends pity and guilt to international refugees of all types wanting "in".  The more they let in, the more line up to come. The host society eventually implodes, culturally and fiscally.

Labour turned its guilty-and-pity meter up full in Australia, portraying previous Prime Minister, John Howard as cruel, heartless, and inhuman for his staunch, firm stand against boatpeople.  Now, in government,  it is being swamped with life-style "refugees".  We would not minimise the hardship or tragic experiences of those seeking to migrate and make a better life for themselves.  But governments have no legitimate responsibility nor competence in trying to save the world, redeeming it from all hardship or tragedy.  Recognizing lawful limitations and the limits of government's legitimacy and competence is not hard-heartedness.  It is humility. But it is a humility which is intolerable to the Western progressive secular-humanist mind.  "We can do this (through government)" is the undoubted faith of the day. 

The second major observation is this: it is only a matter of time before New Zealand has boatloads of people turning up on our shores.  They would have been here much earlier, were not geography in our favour.  We expect that our government will quickly find itself in the same maudlin mess--because our established religion is the same as that of Australia.  We in New Zealand are also comprehensively dominated by the politics and regimen of lugubrious pity and guilt. 

Our "feelings and emotions", our humanist sympathies and empathies, our hubris in wanting to "put things right" will all lead us down the path of porous borders.  It is only a matter of time.  Sooner or later the first boatload of lifestyle refugees will arrive.  The Government will not have the "heart" to turn them away, fearing the public outcry and indignation at the inhumanity such an action would reflect.  Word will quickly spread through the people-smuggling networks, and within a short space of time an armada will be on its way.  Checkmate.

Well, it will not be the first time.  There was the Maori migration, then the British/European.  In the grander scheme of history, the boatload migration may well be the third.  It is not as remote or unlikely as many may think.  Progressive humanist idolatries will cheer it on.