I’m Dobbing
A lovely fellow sociology postgrad made the point yesterday that Coalition Government policy is often made using a ‘rhetoric first, policy later’ strategy. That is, the Government create hype around a certain issue, invent and embed the language required to buttress the hype, and then implement a policy to deal with it. The population is so convinced by the hype that once the policy comes through people accept it without a murmur. She was talking about the shift away from public health funding through emphasising the magical goodness of private health funds and offering families a temporary rebate. But she might as well have been talking about immigration policy. Today I just happened to need statistics on how many people are in Australian immigration detention centres, and which countries they come from. This is the link to the information:
http://www.immi.gov.au/illegals/
This is another link that visitors to the above site are encouraged to follow:
http://www.immi.gov.au/illegals/dob-in-line.htm
Illegals?!
DOB IN LINE?!
Has the Immigration Department always been an outpost of The Daily Telegraph?
Lola says the government always advertises what it “will do”, but never what it “done”. And one cannot be measured by its future deeds. Governments often live in a world of fantasy…
Comment by Daniel — 4/11/2006 @ 9:49 pm
That Lola! I should dedicate a post to her some time ;-)
Comment by ann — 4/12/2006 @ 11:07 am
Oh whoops.
As Peter Garrett once said, ’short memory,
must have a, sho-ort memory’.
Seems I’m as Australian as Ampoll.
Comment by ann — 4/12/2006 @ 3:00 pm
This is from Lula, our president/philosopher: “The future will be better tomorrow”.
Comment by Daniel — 4/13/2006 @ 9:42 am