Yes you are.

Sorry, but, yes you are.

So, updating the Lego Solution.

How about a bit of slippery language?

Forget that awful, cynical “Pacific Solution” which had, on the face of it, the promise of Peace and Closure but intentionally delivered anguish and seemingly endless grinding horror and despair. Get on board now with the

 
So we’ve got agreement with Teh Region. (Remember the Stan Freberg saying, “One hundred million moo-cows can’t be wrong”?) Social agreement is potent. We don’t want to be on the outer of the group.

It’s a Regional Protection Framework. Don’t you just feel so much safer now? And doesn’t everyone else in Teh Region, now that Big Briother is protecting them?

And it’s a Framework! She’s building something with her Lego! It’s got form and shape, ready for draping the metaphoric pelts of unsuccessful asylum applicants over it like a lovely protective tent.

But wait! What? Protection from what? Even Tony Abbott promises to keep us “safe”.

‘‘In the end the election will be about trust, it will be about risk, it will be about who do you trust to keep our country safe,’’ he told reporters in Sydney.

Fuck, Tony, what are you afraid of? Safe from what, specifically? Terrified, desperate, weak, starving, seasick people with their hands out begging for help? Safe from them?

Anyway, now Gillard gives you permission to have your cake and eat it too.

“If you are hard headed, you’re dismissed as hard hearted, if you are open hearted you’re marginalised as supporting open borders,” she said.

As you know, though, being Sir Roger’s readers, this is an example of the logical fallacy of the False Dilemma/dichotomy/choice. You are not either hard-headed or open-hearted. You can be both these things. These are not the limits of the possibilities. There are other choices that can be entertained. And it’s an example of intentional mis-direction because the complaint is really about those who actually are bigoted racists, or worse, strategically use the misfortune of others for political gain.

“Australia is committed to the development of a sustainable effective regional protection framework.”

This is good. “Sustainable” is good, isn’t it? It’s a big economic/social/environmental buzzword these days. Good to have it in there. And “effective”? Yes, effective is good. Better than ineffective. A guarantee of success in the coming, post-election months. Julia is a doer, a maker, of things that work! Or, you know, please think so until at least shortly after the election.

I bet they had a couple of people doing nothings else for days just concentrating on coming up with all this language. Probably trawled their way through all of Frank Luntz’s Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.

“I want to reassure Australians”, said Gillard, ” this is not about a quick fix, there is no quick fix. Only this sort of long-term approach will deliver what we need.”

Of course it’s a quick fix. The illusion only needs to be vaguely convincing until about August 28 or earlier.

Tony made the biggest claim of the day, though: “LABOR CREATED THIS PROBLEM!” Really? Went round Iraq and Afghanistan and Sri Lanka blowing things up and terrorising populations? Kevin Rudd?

Big call, Tony.

Big liar, Tony.

Do you know what the Bible says, Tony?
Revelation 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

So all in all, blatant, all-out disingenuous, dissembling, inauthentic, lying politicking. At the cost, of course, of real human beings.

Sir Roger returns to Gillard her own message to the rhetoricians:

[tags]refugee, refugees, asylum seekers, asylum, dog whistle, dingo, shock jocks, immigration, immigration policy, lego, lego hair, Gillard, Julia Gillard, politics, Australian politics, Australian values, racism, Tony Abbott, Abbott, Bible, liar, lying, rhetoric, spin, Luntz, Frank Luntz, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Regional Protection Framework[/tags]