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| Not you guys again! | |
Fortune favors the bold, and there are enough happy asylum seekers reaping
the fruits of of Australia's welfare system to silence any
doubters. But selling all your possessions and boarding a rickety boat to sail
across dangerous waters to face an uncertain reception from the inhabitants of
the great southern land is a bit dated now. And it's an investment whose window
of opportunity appears to have closed. But humans are gamblers by nature, and
another boat of unwanted human refuse is reportedly making its way to Australia to try their
luck. Their boat ran out of fuel in Indonesian waters and, in
usual fashion, the Indonesians refueled the vessel, fed its occupants, gave
them a compass and pointed them to the international human garbage dump -
Australia. Of course this boatload is fundamentally different from the previous
boatloads. This lot are Vietnamese (presumably Christians), and perhaps
they think Australians will have a softer spot for people who don't have a
cultural predisposition to strapping on explosives and immolating themselves
while screaming 'death to the infidels'. On the other hand, they may just be sailing to Australia for a cruise. They
might pop into Sydney Harbour, visit some relo's, catch a show at the Opera
House, buy some of those little stuffed koalas with 'made in China' on the
labels, and cruise home again to the People's Socialist Paradise Republic
of Vietnam just in time to feed their flock of flying pigs. But it's not
likely. This is a bit of a novelty for Australia - it hasn't happened for 15 months
since the drownings, the hugely popular SAS storming of the MV Tampa and the
relocations to Nauru and Manus Island. And it comes just as the Iraqi war is
slipping off the front page, and the country is hunkering down for an Asian
invasion of SARS. What amazing timing! What will the government do with them?
Well, Nauru is a nice place this time of year. Actually, since it's almost on
the equator, Nauru is a nice place any time of the year, and with the asylum
seekers reportedly eating better than the Nauruans, maybe its not so bad. And
the new arrivals will have a chance to practice their multicultural skills
with the current detention-center inhabitants. And with rumors about Johhny ('I'll be making an announcement about my
long term future in the not too distant future') Howard still basking in
the glory of war, this could be just the ticket to ensure another
box-office-success at the polls for Johhny's fourth-term victory lap. The lefties have always called Johhny a US lap-dog. Now he looks set to become
a victory-lap-dog. What a life!
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