Don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Boss of Australia has given us all the week off next week.
Oh, sorry, scratch that. He hasn’t given us the week off. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given the politicians of Canberra the week off. Parliament was meant to be returning to get on with things on Monday, November 27, but now they’re not. There’s nothing very urgent to attend to.
Same Sex Marriage can wait til the Senate gets its stuff together. The Royal Commission into the Banks is languishing in the long grass. There’s a bit of confusion about which politicians are and aren’t actually Australians. So, let’s kick back, and have a slow slide into Summer, Aperol in hand.
OR NOT.
We have a stellar idea about a place the Prime Minister – and other interested parties – can visit during his unexpected holiday. We hear it’s lovely at this time of year. It’s a little tropical retreat, called Manus Island. And it’s never boring.
You see, there’s some confusion about what’s going on over in Manus right now. You might have read about it. Depending on who you believe, there are either several hundred men living in chaotic, filthy and dangerous conditions on Manus right now, under fear for their lives. Or, there are a few whingers who are refusing to move out of perfectly lovely accommodation into some more perfectly lovely accommodation.
What’s all that got to do with us? Well, those men are asylum seekers who, in the first instance, were trying to make it to Australia from various war-torn nations, hoping to find a fresh start in a compassionate, multicultural nation. Australia responded by locked them up in a detention centre – at considerable cost – as part of the Pacific Solution, the “stop the boats” response that both sides of Parliament thought was a great idea a few years ago, but one that has become considerably on-the-nose since.