The Business Of Cruelty

"Since off shore processing began in August last year, 15,543 people have arrived in 259 boats. Seven hundred are on Manus or Nauru and the cost is heading into the billions."

"I want to die. I don't want to live more, because we don't have anything to do here. Your questions doesn't have answer, your fate is not clear, what will happen to you?"

"You see many guys here do suicide or hurt themselves, just because they don't want to harm the others. They just harm themselves because of bad situation, or because they show - they want to show their feelings"

"By last November there'd been reports of mass hunger strikes and at least eight attempted suicides. And a 35 year old Iranian man, near death after a 50 day hunger strike, had to be evacuated to Australia"

"There are temperatures in the 40s and humidity around 100 per cent. Heavy rain, no air conditioning and ah, insufferably hot. Um muddy tracks, um and when it rained a faecal smell of inadequately you know drained sewage effluent."

"There are now thirty children in the Manus camp. Most have been there more than four months"

"Journalists, cameras, and even photos are banned from the Manus camp"

"the minister's refusal to front up for an interview for this story with no reason given, other than we could turn up for one of his doorstops if we liked"



None of this is news, not really. Four Corners this week was really letting us in on the secret we all knew - that Australia's government is now in the business of cruelty. And this isn't a partisan thing. It's not Labor versus Liberal. The business of cruelty is a thriving joint venture in which both major parties are enthusiastically involved.

This business is allowed because these brave servants of the public interest which we elect have successfully entrenched the Big Lie that the government's responsibility lies with preventing desperate people in other countries from deciding how best to improve their lives, rather than with taking care of the desperate people that find themselves in this country. The government has decided its jurisdiction extends all around the world when it comes to deterrence, but doesn't even include its own territory when it comes to caring.

We've accepted that and other Big Lies, such as the one that tells us that our leaders are striving to represent the acme of compassion, with these policies designed to ensure that when refugees die, they have the decency to do it far away from us, in foreign camps, or on boats heading anywhere but here. Designed to ensure that the world is in no doubt that if, when you've got nowhere else to turn, you turn to Australia, you will be imprisoned, and isolated, and brutalised, and driven right over the brink of madness by a government determined, at any cost, to make itself monstrous enough that people stuck in the worst places on earth would rather stay put than risk coming here.

The hellholes created by our fearless leaders are not unfortunate unintended consequences of sensible policy: they are the entire point of the policy. They are not locking up children by accident. They are not causing people to hurt themselves, starve themselves, and kill themselves in spite of their best intentions. This is exactly what the policy is supposed to achieve. The government is deliberately causing suffering, because they have decided that causing suffering is the best way to achieve their aims.

Because their aims are to avoid criticism, to avoid protest, to avoid electoral punishment, from that great mass of Australians who become outraged whenever they sense that the government is being too kind to people who didn't have the good sense to be born into first-world privilege. Their aims are to neutralise "excessive humanity" as an electoral negative.

So please, when we discuss politics; when we thrash out the respective merits of the different parties; when we laud the prime minister's unwillingness to be lectured on misogyny by that man; when we proclaim one side's virtue over the other's:

Never forget that no matter how much better one side is than the other, both sides are in the business of cruelty. The lesser of two evils remains evil, and its evil is deliberate, ongoing, and vicious.

This government, this prime minister, this Labor Party is engaged in wilful and knowing savagery against its fellow human beings. This Opposition protests this savagery only inasmuch as it is insufficiently savage.

In the unlikely event that any members of either government or opposition end up reading this, please know, you are reprehensible. If you sleep at night, it speaks only to the humanity that you jettisoned long ago. If you can look at your own deeds without being blinded by burning tears of shame, you are lost, and so are we who have somehow allowed you putrid beasts to rule over us.

May you all go to Hell.

THE TIME IS NOW

My fellow Australians,

An election has now been set down for September, and it is never more than at those moments when an election is set down for September that good-hearted patriots must turn their thoughts lightly to what they might DO for their country. A true patriot doesn't just THINK, he DOES, and today I can honestly say that I am ready to DO what it takes. The Australian people deserve ACTION, and that's what I deliver here now.

That is correct, today I announce my candidacy for the post of Australian Prime Minister.

As a patriot, I believe in this country. I believe in mateship, and outbacks, and the flag.

That's the Australian flag, and if a lifetime of Australian has taught me one thing, it's that a flag is not just a flag, it's a way of life. And it's my way of life, and if living the flag lifestyle is against the law these days then I guess just lock me up and call me Mr Jail.

Running for prime minister is not a decision I take lightly: every prime minister should take these decisions heavily, and if elected I promise my decisions will be twenty percent heavier than my opponents' at all times. The Australian people deserve heavy decisions, and as a politician I consider myself a slave to the Australian people. Chain me up Australian people, I am ready to work your plantations.

It's not just hollow rhetoric that causes me to say that mateship is my religion. The Australian people deserve more than hollow rhetoric, and I promise that if elected, I will give them more more-than-hollow rhetorics per day than any other politician in history. That's what mateship means to me, and the Australian people deserve mateship more than ever in today's modern world.

A great Australia doesn't just happen overnight. I promise not to make a great Australia happen overnight with the last breath in my body, and that's a promise you can take to the bank. But what you can't take to the bank is a bad economy, and that is why I promise to give the Australian people the economy they deserve which is not a bad one.

Under my prime ministership, the economy will be not only robust, but expansionary. The Australian people deserve economic security, and I promise that their security will be more economic than ever. The Australian people are sick of governments spending like drunken sailors, and that's why I am making a solid, rolled-gold, rigor mortis commitment to spending like sailors who have not drunk very much at all. The sailors I spend like will practise moderation, while enjoying a glass or two of red wine to unwind at the end of the day. The Australian people deserve heart-smart sailors, and there's no doubt that when the budget is in balance we'll enjoy our economy all the more. A strong economy is the foundation of a strong country, and I believe in a strong country which is this one.



That country is strong, and it's from our strength that we draw our power. The Australian people deserve strength, which is why as prime minister I will work out every day almost with weights and everything.

Part of being strong is industrial relations, and as an industrial relationist I promise that my prime ministership will be full of fairness. The Australian people deserve fairness, and fairness is more than anything the thing I will be fair about.

The environment is also important and I support it. The Australian people deserve an environment.

Why am I running now? I am running because I love my country. I love its men and its women and its animals and its grass and its trees. The Australian people deserve a prime minister who loves Australia. I promise to love Australia more than my opponents and I promise to show this love in several ways.



I am committed to loving Australia even more than I love other countries. I love things like kangaroos and Tasmanian tigers and vegemite jandals, and I have made a full and firm commitment to keep loving everything about Australia until I die and even afterwards if my brain is intact and can be put into a machine that breathes and things. The Australian people deserve my love now more than ever, especially with the internet transforming our modern world into a terrifying wasteland. The Australian people deserve a world-class terrifying wasteland and it is that wasteland that I promise to love more and more every day.

Australia is about families, and as prime minister I promise to have a family more than any prime minister before myself. The Australian people deserve families, and I have the power to grant that through my grace and commitment. The Australian people deserve my grace and commitment and to hell with anyone who says otherwise. As prime minister I will never say otherwise.

My fellow Australians, it is time to get this country moving forward again. As a freedom-loving plutocratist, I believe in forward movement, and I believe that the Australian people deserve a country that moves forward. Never again will our country have to move backward due to a weak economy or rabbit plagues. The Australian people deserve sustainable rabbit populations, and on my first day in office I will sustainabilise every rabbit in this great sunburnt country. The Australian people deserve sustainable sunburns.

Over the coming months and weeks I look forward to sharing with you more of the vision for our future that we deserve as we move forward and not sideways or up. The Australian people deserve a country that moves only on one axis. My fellow Australians, the fightback starts HERE.

Thanks, you all.