The occasionally hard to remember six step Stop The Boats policy conceived by the current Coalition government has routinely been battered for its insistence on using a blunt, one-size-fits-all instrument to unpack an increasingly complex issue, but its predecessor had an even more novel approach.
In November of last year, the Customs and Border Protection website, under direction from the Labour government, published an 18 page graphic novel designed to deter potential asylum seekers from illegally entering the country by boat. Across its 18 pages of dystopian horror the graphic novel tells the story of a desperate young Afghani man who at the behest of his parents (willing to spend their entire lifesavings to secure his future) embarks via v. dodgy boat for a better life in Australia, but not before he is intercepted by border control, detained and processed, then shipped to an offshore detention centre where his only companions are the incessant mosquitoes, health issues and bouts of depression living in the processing purgatory that is the Seventh Circle of Detainee Hell. It’s a bleak outcome.
If the point wasn’t already clear enough, the newly updated Department of Immigration website features a graphic strap that says “NO WAY”.
The website also notes that the barriers to entry in Australia are tougher than ever. “People who travel to Australia by boat without a visa will not end up in Australia; they will be sent for processing in Nauru or Papua New Guinea,” it says. “They won’t be able to work, and could be waiting a long time while their claim is being assessed. Australia has the toughest border protection measures ever. The Australian Government has announced that no temporary or permanent protection visas will be granted to anyone who arrives in Australia by boat without a visa until further notice.”
A sampling of the comic below…
The campaign, only coming to light now after some recent digging by The Guardian Australia, has been labelled in some quarters of the media as fear-mongering propaganda.
“This document is in incredibly poor taste,” Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said. “The fact that it came from the Australian government is a disappointing indictment on our once generous nation, which helped to draft the Refugee Convention…When did the lucky country, the country of the fair go, become the country that threatens to break people’s spirits, including children, by locking them up on remote Pacific islands?”
Via The Guardian, SMH
