Federal Immigration Minister Scott Morrison pulled us one step closer to realising the hellish reality of last week’s Commission of Audit report by introducing the streamlining of border protection services in Australia. A new agency will be created that will consolidate the operations of both Customs and border operations down into one entity. And that agency’s name? Drumroll please…
AUSTRALIAN BORDER FORCE
The year is 1984. Scott “Mad Dog” Morrison is a former Soldier of Fortune, steeled by decades of frontline battle on Australia’s most lawless frontier – the marine borders – he’s now traded in his machine gun for a fishing rod; attempting to enjoy a well-earned retirement. But just when he thought he was out, the game pulls him back in. Answering the call of the Prime Minister, Mad Dog is sent off on one last mission, and it’s his most dangerous one yet. With scores of boats containing the world’s best criminals bearing down on Australia, and with the evil socialist media stopping at nothing to tie his patriotic hands, Mad Dog has one last chance to stop the boats… before they stop him.
Coming to theatres in the Summer of 1999, it’s AUSTRALIAN BORDER FORCE.
Starring Kurt Russell as Scott “Mad Dog” Morrison
Rick Moranis as Prime Minister Tony Abbott
and Dolph Lundgren as Gregor “Los Lucifer” El Harazi
Ahem.
But in all seriousness, the combining of two Government bodies into one is a move that smacks of the same shit with a cheaper shovel; somehow still representing the challenges that face both Customs and the Border Patrol but only reporting directly to the Immigration Minister, and replacing one arbitrary agency with another.
Morrison spruiked the new agency on ABC Radio, “It brings together enforcement officers, investigation officers, those working beyond our borders, those working at sea, at the airports, sea ports, into an integrated agency that’s focused on one thing and that’s protecting our most important, I’d argue, national asset – our border,” and in the process managed to imply that invisible lines in the water have tangible economic worth, can produce positive economic growth for the nation and, when the time is right, can be sold for cash.
In addition, the first of the resettlement decisions for asylum seekers currently held at the Detention Centre on Manus Island have been handed down, according to Morrison, with positive and negative decisions being made in equal measure. These decisions – reiterating here again that they’re the first ones made for people held in the centre – have come some 18-odd months after the centre re-opened and began holding asylum seekers. 18 months. As in, a year and a half. For the first batch of decisions to be made.
Morrison told Sky News that he hoped refugees would be resettled in Papua New Guinea in July. However he didn’t mention if those settled in PNG were recipients of the positive or negative decisions.
Photo: Graham Denholm via Getty Images.
via SMH.
