Happy world refugee day, Peter Qasim

You’ve been in deten­tion for seven years. Now you’ve been moved into psy­chi­at­ric care. And Amanda Van­stone has finally offered you a visa. Why? She’s char­ac­ter­ising your psy­chi­at­ric dis­tress as a ‘change in coöperation’. Nice. So, that’s Aus­trali­a’s offi­cial policy? Drive them mad and then we’ll let them in?

Yes­ter­day’s refugee march was pathet­ic­ally small in com­par­ison to the outcry that’s needed in this coun­try. Were you lot appeased by Howard’s con­ces­sion to Geor­giou? You gull­ible, gull­ible people.

The scariest/funniest moment yes­ter­day was when Tallace and Paula and I were hold­ing the banner right up the front and I star­ted a “no bor­ders, no nations, no deport­a­tions’ chant… only to be told by the dis­con­cer­ted woman with the mega­phone that it wasn’t one of the ‘approved’ chants. Ooh, did I scare you with my rad­ical ideas? I told her in no uncer­tain terms we didn’t plan to do as we were told… but she had the mega­phone. We later gave up and moved back­wards, where we ended up sur­roun­ded by Red Bloc… chant­ing exactly the same thing.

EDIT: Howard, you are scum. Asked by Kerry O’Brien whether he is respons­ible for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from deten­tion, he says “Per­haps their par­ents should have stopped to think before they came illeg­ally to this coun­try.” When Kerry responds with “Per­haps they were in fear of their life”, Howard blusters. Now, I’m furious.