From one extreme to the other! A British man who has been in Australia for 55 years is about to be deported upon his release from prison at the end of a 14 year sentence for pedophilia.
Read about it here. What on earth is the federal justice minister thinking of? Here is my answer.
Pedophiles and poms who never became naturalised are two groups of people who rank quite low on the list of lives in Australia. Paul Keating demonstrated admirably that leaders can garner a great deal of support by grabbing members of an unpopular group and beating them up, figuratively speaking. Their unpopularity renders them largely defenceless and the demonstration, which could have got high billing at the Colosseum, appeals to the bloodthirstiness of the crowd who will almost certainly give the thumbs-down sign.
Neither an un-naturalised pedophile nor a spewing British government will win much support in this country. Hence, this man presents a perfect opportunity to get tough - by knocking down hard somebody who already has no legs to stand on. What heroes! What fearless champions! What a hollow victory for justice!
Using kids for sex is deplorable, but despite appearances there is zero honor in killing a baby goat for no better reason than because it is too weak and helpless to defend itself and no-one else will defend it either. That sort of act amounts to grubby, sham heroism displayed only to win support from non-thinking, easily duped onlookers.
In this country there have been many migrants from poverty stricken and war-torn countries who have been here for far less than 55 years who have embarked on sprees of unconscienable crime. A lot of Australians have insisted that they should be swiftly sent back from whence they came. But how many of them will be? Probably none!
Africans, Afghans, Chinese? Murderers, rapists, drug lords? Deported? Not on your Nellie! If they tried that, someone might object. There could be a political storm. Politicians might get a scratch on their perfect, shiny, gleaming personas. Yet, if that happened something meaningful might also be achieved towards effective crime control.
There is the additional fact here that while this man may not be an Australian Citizen, there was never a requirement for him to be. When English migrants arrived in Australia they were automatically awarded equivalent status with other Australians. It wan't until the early 'seventies that the Whitlam government changed the law requiring new British immigrants to qualify for naturalisation. Limited restrictions were placed on those already resident, but they were not required to become full citizens. Simply stating that "they should have been" 50 years in arrears is not a good reason for pretending that they were unless you are willing to let Rafferty's Rules win the day - never a good idea.
That is what this deportation will be - Rafferty's Rules. As much as we deplore pedophiles and as much as we think the same laws ought to apply to Britishers as do to any other nationality, this action reeks of cheap sideshow thuggery aimed only at winning votes on the strenght of histrionic toughness.
My primary purpose here is not to defend this offender against deportation, but rather to point out that makeover governments are the norm nowadays and accepting relatively meaningless demonstrations of power only serves to encourage them.
