Wood pulls a Dutton

After almost two decades of racism, Australia is finally getting off its "stop the boats" bullshit. But don't worry, racists - Michael Wood has your back!

The Government wants to increase the time it can detain without a warrant people seeking asylum en masse from four days to 28 days.

It also plans to introduce a “community management approach” - including electronic monitoring - rather than putting people in prisons, however, that will likely not be in place before the legislation is passed.

The Government says the bill, to be introduced to Parliament this week, is to ensure those arriving here would have enough time to get legal representation.

...which is pretty tortured logic, because one of the primary roles of those lawyers will be to free their clients from detention. "We have to lock you up so you can get help to not get locked up", seems utterly perverse "logic". Instead, its just the desperate attempt to rationalise punitive racism of the sort seen in Australia. And it shows the utter moral void at the heart of this dying Labour government.

But then, should we really have expected anything better? After all, this is the party that locked up Ahmed Zaoui, of "lie in unison", of leaked smears against teenagers, which removed the right to reasons in immigration decisions and which introduced mandatory detention for the illusory "threat" of "mass arrivals" in the first place. Their record on refugee issues is simply shameful. This is just more of the same.