July 06, 2015

Horse 1931 - Border Force!

Do you like fighting brown people? Do you like "getting tough on crime" even at the expense of real action on climate change, unemployment, housing stress, manufacturing, equality issues, racism and indigenous affairs? Then we have the perfect service for you.

BORDER FORCE!

That's right, even in the face of prosecuting budget repair, Border Force is the newest weapon in abrogating responsibility of our obligations under the UN Refugee Convention; stealing budgets from elsewhere, whilst hiding other cuts.

The Australian Border Force is a paramilitary organisation which steals functions and power from both the Immigration and Customs, is Australia's brand new frontline federal authority charged with carrying out the promise of three word slogans like "stop the boats", all while ignoring human rights issues and carrying on behind a cloak of secrecy.

Want to provide information to journalists or speak out against conditions in which refugees find themselves? Don't worry, we've got that covered. People caught disclosing information about cruelty perpetrated to refugees in detention centres such as violence and neglect, can find themselves imprisoned for not one but two years.
Last year, Scott Morrison who was Minister for Immigration and Border Protection at the time that Operation Sovereign Borders was implemented, used his powers under used Section 70 of the Crimes Act to refer staff from the charity Save the Children, who were working on Nauru to the Australian Federal Police for daring to speak up about what they'd seen, No need to worry about due process because with a liberal application of Border Force, they could have been detained and sent straight to prison.

Personally I have no idea why we even need the Australian Border Force if it isn't to cover up and legitimise the cruel treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in our ongoing and undeclared war against brown people.
I don't understand for instance, if you were a terrorist, why you'd consider coming to Australia by boat. That simply makes no sense at all. If you were radicalised by Daesh, Al-Qaeda or some neo-Nazi group, why wouldn't you just come through an airport like any other person on a tourist visa? That'd make far more sense than taking weeks on a leaky boat and ending up in Manus Island. It would be much more efficient and quick to just pass through an airport like everyone else and arouse as little suspicion as possible.
If you were an Australian-born citizen intent on causing terror, then no organisation like The Australian Border Force is going to stop you from planting a bomb in a rubbish bin or running into a cafe brandishing guns.

Maybe Prime Minister Tony Abbott likes playing soldiers. I note that during the offical launch last week, all of the officers to the new organisation were all sporting medals in praise of all the people they'd blown up and they'd all been given lovely new black uniforms, which is ironic considering that the current group on indeterminate brown people who the Australian Government has assigned as the current designated enemy, Daesh or ISIS, is also clad in black.

If The Australian Border Force has been modelled after the US Department of Homeland Security, then that's equally useless at stopping domestic terrorists and wingnuts for precisely the same reasons. If it's modelled after the UK Border Force, then it must invariably fail at its task because the UK has given its Border Force five patrol vessels, whilst The Australian Border Force has been given none.

Perhaps fitting is that within it's first week of operation, the Australian Border Force's staff are planning a two-hour strike at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport on Wednesday. Maybe that's the real reason why the Border Force was created. Some people face a pay cut of $25,000 per annum, which sounds like a real incentive if you want to keep the borders safe.

Disregard human rights, sound tough on crime, pay people less: you can do it all with Border Force!

Warning: Distasteful right wing formula such as Border Force may be difficult for lots of people to swallow. May cause wind.

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