Kurosawa's
Lady Macbeth
in a suit

Ruddock thrives on smell of deportees' fear
Harold Hark
11 October 2002

With the cruel but efficient refusal of asylum to 168 East Timorese families who have lived in Australia since 1995, Heil Ruddock has proved once again that he would have fitted right in with the Nazi's complex logistical problems involved in the transport of millions of Jews to concentration camps.

Using the deflective excuse that "people who are sitting in refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa don't have that same chance to sit here for five or six years," Ruddock betrays the wizened heart for which he has become infamous.

He is never going to admit poor Africans to Australia, full stop. White Zimbabweans, yes, but not Africans whose unending poverty still finds them hauling water to their villages. Such skill levels are not commensurate with Australia's Aryan small business requirements.

And we've seen what his treatment of Middle Easterners is like.

But the East Timorese families have been living here for the last seven years. They belong in Australia.

They are here, the refugees he is referring to are not. The East Timorese have built lives here, they work and go to school here. They are Australians in every way but one: the lack of a suitable visa allowing them to remain.

Why is this so hard for him to understand?

It fits with his indefinite jailing of innocent asylum-seekers. They are incarcerated for no other reason than their desperate attempts to flee the same regimes he and his government are calling a threat to civilisation. By leaving them in prison year after year with no date of release, he has committed an indictable crime against the spirit of humanity.

In fact, Heil predates the Nazis. His thinking is medieval.

These families should not be made to leave unless they want to. East Timor may be over its worst--and that is far from certain--but whether it is or isn't the fact remains, they have lived here long enough to call Australia home.

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