The Sound Of Settling

Kevin Andrews. What an arsehole. Serously. When it comes to ministerial incompetence, Andrews not only takes the cake, but he swallows that motherfucker whole.

Andrews, the Australian Immigration minister, is cutting the percentage of Africans from Australia's refugee quota from 50% to 30%, having already cut it back from 70%. Initially he claimed this was because the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan had improved. Anyone who knows even the slightest amount about the situation in Darfur knows that this is rubbish. Now he has quit with the spin and decided to be honest and inform the public that his decision is due to refugees from Africa "not settling into Australian life". Being the incompetent minister he is, he has failed to provide any evidence to demonstrate this claim, nor has he defined what constitutes "Australian life". This unfortunate stupidity soon turned into insane absurdity when Andrews used the bashing death of Sudanese refugee, Liep Gony, as evidence for his standard line that the Sudanese "don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian life as quickly as we would hope". Now let's just get this straight. Most people who have at least a few brain cells would conclude, when hearing someone has been bashed to death, that the perpetrators were murderers and should be punished accordingly. Minister Andrews, however, concludes that it is evidence that the victim hasn't "settled" into "Australian life" (whatever that may be). So what is Kevin Andrews implying here, that people who aren't deemed to be "settling" into "Australian life" deserve to be beaten to death? Maybe the minister would like a state-sanctioned militia to go around beating to death people who don't seem "settled". Maybe the group could model themselves on, oh I don't know, the Janjaweed?

Andrews proved himself incompetent (or an pathetic joke) during his bumbling handling of the Mohammad Haneef affair and he has now taken that incompetence one step further. At least Phillip Ruddock, when he was immigration minister, had the verbal capacity to skillfully change the subject and twist the facts to avoid accountability for the government, Andrews can't even do this. He stumbles over his words, pathetically avoids questions and changes his story constantly. He lacks the ability to perform even basic public speaking, let alone have enough ability for someone who has one of the most important and sensitive portfolios in the government.

From what I can deduce, Andrews takes his policy advice from the Herald-Sun. The Scum has been running a scare campaign against African immigrants for several years now. They claim that they are forming gangs and cite the way the travel in groups of 5 or 6 and wear American basketball clothes as evidence for this. According to people who are actually informed about such things, it is a common cultural trait for East African men to walk around in groups of 5 or 6. They come from community-based societies and as a result do things as a community. As for implying that the wearing American basketball indicates one is in a violent gang, not only is this (offensively) stereotyping African-Americans as members of gangs, it also overlooks the most obvious conclusion that maybe they just like basketball? The NBA is dominated by people of African origin, of course young African kids are going to want to emulate them, they are a huge success. It's no different to someone wearing a cricket top or football jumper. Or maybe it is in the eyes of this government? Apparently Liep Gony was an excellent basketball player, maybe if he had been an excellent cricket player Kevin Andrews would have considered him "settled" enough not to deserve to be beaten to death.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of Andrews' comments, there's an underlying insensitivity that stems from a complete lack of basic understanding of refugees, let alone empathy. For people such as those from the Darfur region of Sudan, who come from a conflict where their government is completely complicit in their persecution, governments are institutions to fear. These people aren't of the mindset, as people who are brought up in Australia are, where you are able to tell the government to go fuck themselves if you think their policies are wrong. These people are going to be overtly sensitive to the pronouncements of the government. Having been given refuge here from their government (maybe you can get the dictionary out and look up the term "refuge", Mr Andrews) the last thing the last thing they need is to be demonised by ours.