Politics has been a joke recently. Tony Abbott’s plebiscite stunt. Kevin Rudd’s cancelled ‘assassination party’. The Independents wearing replicas of Katter’s hat in Parliament.
So today The Blowfly thought it appropriate to start with a little joke.
A psychiatrist was driving along in his car, when he saw a man lying on the footpath. He stopped his car and got out to assist. The man had been assaulted and left for dead.
“Quick,” said the psychiatrist, ‘tell me who did this to you; he needs help immediately!”
The Blowfly believes this is symbolic of Australian politics presently.
Politicians seem to be confused about where the real emphasis should be.
Let’s take the asylum-seekers.
Our mining industry is going gang-busters presently. China, in particular, needs our coal and iron ore because it is expanding at an amazing rate of knots. Our terms of trade are extremely high. Our dollar is high as a result. Imports are cheaper. We are cruising.
But we don’t have enough labour to sustain the growth in the mining industry. The Government is talking about importing 30000 Indians. They have also initiated an enterprise migration agreement programme to allow large employers to automatically get visas for people who fit guidelines for their labour requirements. Many of these requirements are for simple labourers and other lowly-skilled workers .In any event the migration enterprise agreements will incorporate a substantial training component.
In addition to this the numbers of people migrating to Australia have dropped dramatically. This does not augur well for our economy’s capacity to supply our burgeoning labour needs.
And the population is also ageing----just to rub salt into our wounds!
On the other hand we have a large number of asylum-seekers who wish to relocate to our country. We are trying to deter them because there are many citizens who think that they should get in the queue-----wherever the queue is in Afghanistan, Iraq , the Democratic Republic of Congo , the Sudan etc. All the stats are saying that at least 95% of these people are genuine refugees. And there are no legitimate queues in these countries.
Refugees would do backward somersaults if they were welcomed to our country on the basis that they were to work in the mining industry for at least 10 years and live in Newman , Weipa or even Mt Isa for that matter. Most of the labour required to build the Snowy Mountains Scheme had to be imported in the 50’s and 60’s and those people have now been integrated into our society to its great benefit. These refugees could be good citizens too!
So why are we sending them to Malaysia to be processed? Why are we even contemplating Nauru? Why should we subject them to Villawood or the detention centre on Christmas Island?
Why don’t we just put them into constructive work?
Most of them would kill to live in a mining camp, earn good money, send their kids to school and build communities where their lives are not threatened by enemies or starvation.
And if we didn’t tell them that Julie Bishop lives in Western Australia and Bob Katter lives in Queensland most asylum-seeking refugees would be happy to settle in those 2 states.
No comments:
Post a Comment