Tony Abbott pledges to stop the planes

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott announced today that a coalition government pledges to stop the planes, particular those originating from Heathrow.

"At any given moment there are close to 50,000 illegal overstayers in Australia and it has to stop!", he said to Tony Jones on ABC's Late Line last night. "[Minister for Immigration] Chris Evans freely states that the majority are young Englishmen simply having too good a time.... If he was fair dinkum he'd stop the planes!"

In fact the largest number of overstayers come from the US, followed by China and then the UK.

If overstayers are caught, they are no longer detained but issued with another temporary visa, and according to some reports from within the Department of Immigration they are allowed up to six more months to make their way home.

Green's senator Sarah Hanson-Young added that 'it is easier to demonstrate and peddle fear and hysteria through pictures of people on boats, than it is through people coming off planes at Sydney international airport.'

The Greens have since taken the unusual step of supporting the Liberal proposal.

Minister Evans, himself an English migrant, responded that 'they're often young Englishmen who have gone to a party and are a few days late .... Or they've met a young lady and [they're] having a good time.'

A spokesmen for the UK Prime Minister David Cameron commented that it was an English rite of passage to visit the colonies and that the Australian opposition leader should learn his place.

He also stated that the United Kindgom's immigration department had no plans to screen out potential overstayers.

Prime Minister Julia Gilliard was noticably absent from the debate and has been accused by Mr Abbott of a bias due to her Welsh heritage.

The weight of expectation and a convenient scapegoat....

In times of crisis, you can just feel the tingling in the opportunists of the world. Finding a vent for unpopular decisions is critical to Corporate/Political PR and ensures that they don't get personally bitten.

If you want to scale back philanthropic and community activities, layoff staff or shift resources and - at the same time - justify a weakened balance sheet to shareholders, what better way to do it than find a scapegoat?

That way it's EXCLUSIVELY 'their fault' that you don't do x or y and not your own ineptitude or lack of risk management. The disappointment of anyone who might otherwise benefit is conveniently transferred to another protagonist and the corporation dances away to the next cocktail party with another bonus in the back pocket.

Corporations are not so bound by community support and can easily blackmail their way out of corners whereas political systems are much more fragile on such a short electoral cycle. This is exploited continuously - especially in Western Australia - to maintain the status quo environmentally and socially.

Thus ANY price on pollution will mean you need to sell your first born and any social benefits from a resources tax means that you'll need to hand over the kidney.

The punctum of an odd day...

On a day where the first female Australian prime minister was instated, two tennis players got their own 10 hour version of '15 minutes' and footballers again tugged for both our attention and at our emotions, the thing that most struck me was an architectural oddity ... for want of a better word.

Strangely touching.


Images of Julia Gillard's house/street from SBS's footage on June 24, 2010.


Julia Gillard at home in Altona. Photo: Ken Irwin/SMH, 2005.