If we can stop the boats and save a life that is a good thing, but if the original intention was simply to stop them coming because it was considered a vote winner, that is inexcusable. So, what will it take for this brutality to be a vote loser?
Author
and journalist David Marr made an interesting observation on the ABC’s
Insiders
program last Sunday. He suggested Australians might be willing to countenance the unbelievable cruelty being exacted upon asylum seekers at Manus Island and Nauru if they thought it was a one-off effort that would bring an end to the boat people risking their lives to come to Australia. David concluded, however, that if this was what people thought, it was a false expectation. He was certain that the boat people would not stop coming, not now, not ever; and he is right.
If Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison think news of unbelievable cruelty at Manus Island and Nauru detention centres will filter through to those who are seeking to find another country to live will succeed, they are wrong. Why? Because always there will be other ways for people smugglers to continue their trade and adapt to…
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THE VIEW FROM MY GARDEN 
“Stop the boats” was never about saving lives. In my view, the actions and statements of Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Julie Bishop and others in the LNP, as well as their overall policy (if that doesn’t demean the term) provide enough evidence to support that view and to lead any reasonable and rational person with any compassion to conclude that this government is concerned only with extending the very culture of greed and materialism at any cost, which is a major contributor to the appalling circumstances in other places which are the reason that so many seek asylum in the first place.
This government not only disrespects its own people, it has disgraced the nation in the eyes of the international community by its anti-humanitarian stance and its failure to honour international covenants and agreements to which our country is a signatory.
It seems that, today, Australian politicians in power apparently believe that they have the *right* to act in whatever way they choose, regardless of whether that action is moral or ethical, relative to the generally accepted definitions of what merits those labels in our society. I’m not sure exactly when this situation came about and I don’t believe it is one pursued only by the right wing side of politics but it needs to be stopped. There are many examples of it and too many to cite here but a simple one is the way in which governments now invariably act as though, when funding is allocated to a service or function or project, we should be grateful for the gift that they are bestowing on us. These politicians seem to have forgotten or choose to ignore the fact that the funds, resources, land, public facilities and such, that they appear to see as their own, actually belong to or exist for the welfare of all. Our infrastructure and wealth has been built by citizens over many years and the funds our government controls come from the taxes that we pay. They are *not* the property of our politicians to use as largesse or curry favour.
Our politicians need to be reminded that they are *custodians*, not owners. In matters relating to land and non-renewable resources, it is also time that they – and *all of us* acknowledged that these can’t be *owned* by anyone in reality for we are each on this Earth for an insignificant amount of time. That is also true for the rest of humanity and it behooves us all to recognise it and to have the charity, courage and decency to share the wealth, freedom and space we have with those who are less fortunate. “Operation Sovereign Borders” is an obscenity both in concept and implementation and shames our nation as slavery did America, Britain and the Church.
Without revolution – which I neither advocate nor see as a real possibility in Australia – I don’t know how we can stop this affront to humanity and Australians of conscience other than to do what you do and keep on raising the questions and the issues as far and as widely as possible so that not one more decent person ever again ticks the box on the ballot paper against the name of any politician who supports this blight on our politics, our country and our humanity.