The author complains that current refugee policy does not represent “our country”, while simultaneously complaining that it represents the lowest common denominator.

Like all collectivist thinking, this article lacks intellectual coherence because of the fallacy of conceptual reality: the fallacy of taking an abstract aggregate concept and treating it as a reality, as a decision-making entity.

The word “Australia” has three different meanings which all such discussions confuse:
1. the physical territory of Australia
2. all the people who are in Australia on any given day.
3. the State and government of Australia.

Thus there is no point in asking what “Australia” thinks, without distinguishing those meanings. Obviously the physical land itself is not a decision-making entity.

There’s no use asking what “the people” think, because you’re referring to 22 million different people. They are not some monolithic lump. Different people have different opinions. Their opinions keep changing. And different people keep coming and going every day. In this second sense, “we as a people” don’t decide anything because we don’t decide anything “as a people”.

But if the author is talking about the State, that’s a different proposition entirely.
The State is a small elite minority of the population claiming a legal monopoly of the use of force, backed up by force, as decided unilaterally by itself. It has the power to take by force and threats – “policy” – from one group of the subject population, and give to another.

The State is not “the people”, and the people are not the State. Furthermore, contrary to popular myth, there is actually no evidence that the State represents the people in any specific governmental action: http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/

So it is never intellectually coherent to discuss the actions of “Australia” in the last sense, the political sense, without making a clear distinction between actions which benefit the population as a whole, and actions which merely loot A to satisfy B. But the “we as a society” brigade never make that distinction, and that is the fatal flaw underlying the author’s reasoning.

“My question remains; what cost to us as a people, this despicable, cruel, politically motivated handling of a crisis which is of our own making?”

The answer is, it doesn’t cost us “as a people”. Some individuals who claim higher values that they are unwilling to pay for, get the privilege of forcing other individuals, who disagree with them, to sacrifice their values under compulsion, which is what the author is arguing for.

And the crisis isn’t of “our” own making (confuses all the population with the State). It is caused by a minority exercising monopoly powers on a double standard (“I can use threats to steal from you, but you can’t do the same back to me”: the basis of all policy.

“They [the Greens] alone can hold their heads up at the end of this disgraceful part of our history, and with hand on heart say "I really tried".

This sentence shows the author’s fake moral superiority based on his own confusion based on his own ambiguous use of the term “we”.

The Greens could only hold up their heads with pride if *they personally and everyone who agreed with them* had offered to bear the costs of the refugees’ transport, accommodation, processing, legal costs, re-settlement and indemnity themselves. I’d like to see that!

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Greens is just as bad as that of the “sink the boats” brigade.

JKJ,

A thoughtful and well written reply.
Solutions are generally coloured grey and are rarely black or white despite the fact many would want that to be the case.

SD

Thanks for your thought provoking response Jardine.

I wasn't really writing for economists, or for seasoned analysts, but more to get a simple sadness I feel now, into words. I am not, and have never claimed a position as a writer, but I have opinions, and occasionally I ask Graham and the team to humour me, as was the case here.

There was a time, when members of the population of Australia in general, accepted that occasionally this area had a need to accept refugees, because that was the situation at the time. Vietnam was a case in point, now Afghanistan and Iraq, and to a degree Sri Lanka, though I have to note Australia was not a party to that exercise. It was entirely internal.

As our Government, on our behalf, as a nation, went to war hand in glove with the USA in the "coalition of the willing", we as a country, represented by our Government/s of both sides at various times, accepted a role in those invasions, quite willingly, as part of our commitment to the USA via various treaties.

I find it hard to think in the terms you ask, simply because many of us objected to the country being involved in "oil wars".

We, as objectors, took to the streets, but the voices of 50,000 plus people, around the country, were ignored by our leaders, and in our name, commenced action in Iraq originally, and now Afghanistan.

Daemon

Thus, I am compelled to think in terms of "us" and "we", irrespective the objections voiced at the outset of both the Middle East adventures, by many of "us".

In terms of "monolithic lump", I disagree in some instances, because as a country we accept the decisions made in our names, as individual members of the population, governed by a group elected under our form of "democracy", and that decisions made by those governments are presented to the world as "our decisions" - that is to say, in representation of the common voice if you like, regardless of the fact only 52% of the population felt elation over the result of a recent poll.

I hear the points you raise, but find it difficult to find a way to make my points, such as they are, whilst holding in my mind, the collective, as represented by "our" government, which isn't really representative.

The fact that I don't think Tony Abbott will be much use outside Australia, and that Ms Bishop, will be even worse in terms of our dealing with other countries, particularly in Asia, does not change the fact that they are "our" representatives, to the rest of the world, who quite rightly, will be excused for not understanding why a Clive Palmer is one of "our" representatives.

Perhaps, Jardine, you could share a thought o this as well? In many respects it echoes my feelings.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/september/1377957600/christos-tsiolkas/why-australia-hates-asylum-seekers