Lock the doors
About Australia’s travel ban from India…
Scott Morrison has continued his “don’t worry about the India travel ban” media tour this morning on Nine’s Today show, where he was asked about former test cricket opener Michael Slater’s comments that the prime minister has “blood on his hands”.
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The decision to make attempting to return to Australia within 14 days of being in India a criminal offence punishable with up 5 years in prison and fines as high as $60,000 has been roundly criticised. Morrison has been going to great lengths to water down this rhetoric this morning.
The likelihood of any sanction, anything like that is extremely remote.
If the law is on the books the law is on the books. It’s not much comfort to claim that the likelihood of enforcement is extremely remote. If that’s the case why is the law the law?
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says Australians must have the right to come home, appearing on ABC News Breakfast to criticise the government’s India travel ban.
Well, look, it must be a fundamental right for every Australian citizen to be able to come home. The… song “I Still Call Australia Home” sounds ironic now, doesn’t it? It has a bitter taste to it.
That is the first thing – Australians must have the right to come home. The Commonwealth has the obligation to make it safe for them to do so.
The thing is, it’s not a universal rule.
Scott Morrison has been asked why Australia didn’t ban travellers from the US or UK despite similar rates of infection during their respective spikes, and if the characterisation of the Indian policy as “racist” is fair.
Morrison’s tactic when asked this is to talk about China, which by the most generous of characterisations is only vaguely related to the issue.
Ok how about Thailand? Sri Lanka? Kenya? Are we getting warmer?
In 1987, Ronald Regan nominated Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bork was notably (extremely?) conservative, and his nomination was divisive.
During his confirmation hearings, he was asked about Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court case that struck down laws outlawing contraception. Bork was disapproving and dismissive. The case was only brought, he explained, because activists deliberately broke the law so that they would have standing to sue. The laws against contraception weren’t a problem; they were really only used to suppress advertising.
I was appalled. Appalled to hear a lawyer–a judge–a Supreme Court nominee–speak in such terms. And equally appalled that not one senator called him on it.
I desperately wanted to hear at least one senator stand and demand of Bork, “Is it your position then that it is good jurisprudence to have unconstitutional laws on the books provided that they ‘are only used to suppress advertising’?”
Someone needs to ask Morrison a similar question.
What do expect from a man who proudly displays this in his Prime Ministerial Office?
https://i.postimg.cc/7hsShRVp/5568.webp
That is, a trophy he awarded himself, for his success in suppressing genuine refugees from seeking assylum. Many of whom were only refugees because we participated in the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But don’t forget, he is a Bible Believin’ Xtian.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/19/i-stopped-these-scott-morrison-keeps-migrant-boat-trophy-in-office