Playing Faust

Last weekend I was lucky enough to see Radiohead perform live.  I’ll resist the fan-boy gush and simply say that the performance was mesmerising.  While they played some of the old classics, unfortunately, they didn’t play one of my all-time favourites: the quietly haunting, All I Need.  One of the things I love above this song – indeed, it has become inseparable from the song itself – is the film clip that was produced for it as part of MTV’s EXIT Campaign to end child exploitation.  The clip shows the parallel stories of an average kid in a Western country, contrasted with the life of a child living and working in poverty in a third world country.  There is a beautifully simple arc to the story, which I won’t give away but rather encourage you to check out the clip:

http://youtu.be/DV1hQSt2hSE

The piece highlights a paradox that I’ve always felt to be true: that it’s the people in the worst poverty, suffering the worst oppression, that seem to work the hardest (for the smallest reward, if any).  However, just seven short days after the Radiohead concert, I would like to thank Tony Abbott for opening my eyes.  It seems I was deceived.  Those arriving to our country to flee poverty, violence, threat and fear are all idle scroungers.  According to Little Tony, they are characterised to a man, woman and child by a “something for nothing mindset”.  Thank you, Tony.  As a friend of mine might put it: I think I just got cancer from listening to you.

Now, of course, among those who seek asylum in our country there will be those who seek to exploit our welfare system.  Exactly as there are those among our community today who do the same thing.  But, equally, there will be those – the vast majority – who want nothing more than to find a job and raise their families with the freedom and opportunity that we so often take for granted.  Indeed, it might do us all well to reflect on how hard we actually work and how much we sacrifice to buy our luxury goods, compared with the sacrifices and efforts of those who make them for us.

But this gross caricature of asylum seekers was only one of Abbott’s assertion used to justify a proposed reduction in Australia’s refugee intake.  Little Tony was also quick to point out that many refugees arrive, wait for it, illegally.  That reducing overall refugee intake decreases illegal arrivals defies logic.  Experience would suggest that creating even an impression of scarcity leads people to panic.  The great irony is that, by reducing our refugee intake, we may in fact increase the boats heading south from Indonesia – with refugees starting to behave something like bogans at a stocktake sale.  But Abbott’s focus on the “illegals” conveniently overlooks the very nature of asylum.  To seek asylum is not an act borne of civility, it is an act borne of desperation and fear.

Abbott’s primary thesis though was that Australia simply cannot afford to take 20,000 refugees per year.  This is despite a considerable body of research showing that the net effect of migration is that of economic benefit.  This is despite Australia reputedly suffering from a labour shortage – a crisis so severe that some of our more nefarious employers are even seeking to bring in their own boat people.  This is despite the previous Liberal Government introducing middle class welfare to encourage Australians to breed – produce one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country, we were told.  This is despite the fact that we hold ourselves out to be a fair country.

There is no logic or justification to Abbott’s comments.  They are nothing more than repugnant political posturing. It making these statements, Tony Abbott has become the hollow man of Australian politics.  Form without substance.  An empty surface of arrogant privilege.  There is nothing human beating there.

Beyond what it says about him as a person, there is a more troubling aspect to this direction from Abbott.  He has now established a pact with a fickle and dangerous demon: the lowest common denominator in us all.  He has joined hands with the voracious id of society.

The problem with a race to the bottom is how far do you go before you stop?  In a previous post, Chasing Ordinary, I discussed comments from Liberal MP, Malcolm Turnbull.  Turnbull suggested that his party would not vary too far from the middle ground.  However, the danger of the narrative like the one espoused by Abbott is that, if left to fester, it has to power to shift the middle ground.  It is difficult to ask people to be compassionate – especially, if they perceive it might cost them something.  It is easy to spread the virus of fear, a virus once released cannot be controlled.  Abbott’s comments open the door to hatred.  They validate more extreme views and stir the corner of darkness that exits within us all.  In this environment, the moderate person is the one who is less extreme than the worst of what we are.

It is easy to make carcinogenic statements like Little Tony’s when in opposition.  In government, you have to own the human consequences of your decisions.  But, once in government (which seems inevitable), will Abbott be able to pull back on the reigns in this dizzying race to the bottom?  Will his seemingly seductive demon allow him such humanity?  Abbott has forgotten that this beast, in its brutal simplicity, is demanding and unforgiving.  Its appetite can only by whet, never satisfied.  This may prove to be his tragedy.  And ours … [fades to static]