Scorched Earth

It’s funny how things travel in threes and February seems to have been the month of appealing to the lowest common denominator ... the month of base emotions, of fear and loathing.  Firstly, posters starting appearing, like harbingers of doom, around my home town of Melbourne advertising the “new” Jesus Christ Superstar – Arena Spectacular.  Surely enough to make the skin crawl on any right thinking person.

But as hideous as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is, it had nothing on Geert Wilders. Geert arrived to regale us with stories about how Islam is almost as dangerous and harmful a social force as the Catholic Church.  Never one to let facts get in the way of wild assertion, Geert claimed his speeches were “carrying on the traditions of Australians who fought at Gallipoli and to uphold the defence of our freedom".  Someone should remind Geert that Australia lost to the Turks at Gallipoli after we invaded the Muslim country following Britain’s refusal of the Ottoman’s request for an alliance.  In light of our act of pointless aggression, those uncivilised heathen wretches had this to say upon our defeat:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours.  You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.” – Mustafa Attaturk

Clearly, the Muslims have something to learn from us about how to treat a defeated people:

But, the Victorian Liberal Party wasn’t going to let Geert take sole occupation of the intellectual and ethical netherworld.  Always keen for a game of limbo, the Liberal Party scraped under the bar with this flyer that confirmed just how low they can go:

Now, while others have challenged the content of this flyer, I take no issue with the numbers presented.  In fact, let’s take them at face value for they are not the real issue.  The real issue is where destructive discourse like this can lead.

All Australian governments of all persuasions spend money supporting disadvantaged and vulnerable people.  Some governments spend more, some spend less, but it is accepted as a key function of government in this country.  Just ask the agricultural sector.  Now, it is to everyone’s benefit to have open and considered debate around the allocation of such money.  But there is an important difference between social policy debate (even vitriolic or negative policy debate) and social policy vilification, where the very idea of spending money on a given social issue is portrayed as an evil.

There is no discussion in the Liberal propaganda on what the expenditure for dealing with illegal boat arrivals should be or how costs might be reduced.  There is no policy debate. The flyer deals only with absolute figures and does so in total isolation.  Thereby, the message is simply that every dollar spent on “illegal boat arrivals” is a loss to you, the reader.  It is a powerful message speaking straight to the biases and fears of its audience.  It vilifies the fundamental notion of spending money to deal with refugees and this is achieved through a disturbing play on the “us and them” narrative around asylum seekers discussed in a previous post, Of Sticks and Stones. 

As sickening as this is, the greater issue lays in where the line is subsequently drawn in the vilification of government social expenditure.  Once such attacks are considered “fair game” and the dogs set loose, there is no calling them back.  The principle of demonising social expenditure and its recipients – playing one group off against another – for political expedience is established. Thus, every government, current and future, becomes vulnerable.  In this context, what’s to stop a future Labor opposition from attacking a Liberal government over the notion of funding health programs for Indigenous communities?  And so it goes until such programs and expenditures are considered politically risky.  Like all races to the bottom, there is no winner here and, by pandering to selfish “fear and loathing”, political parties risk creating a policy environment that is, in human terms, a nuclear winter. A ruinous space ruled by survival instinct.

Ironically, the Liberal’s flyer on illegal boat arrivals appropriates the colours of the Indigenous flag.  I wonder if its Indigenous readers were thinking what might have been if only they’d had a spare $6.6 billion laying around ... [fades to static]