Janet Albrechtsen, compacts and irrational fear mongering about irrational fear mongering

(Above: The Bulletin banner, and a typical cartoon kicking the foreigner can).

The art of the trollumnist columnist is complex and tortured, the devices many and varied, but none are as useful as the simple option of pot calling the kettle black.

You might for example have thought that the recent hints that there are terrorists amongst the boat people suggested a little fear mongering. You might have thought that the overwhelming fascinated horror with a few people braving the sea and people smugglers to make it to shore showed alarmist tendencies, especially when put up against the thousands who saunter through at airports.

You might have even thought the relentless braying of the media about the Indonesian crisis showed yet again its tendency to do the "boy down the well" routine - beloved of Bart Simpson - with relentless dedication, especially as it allowed the tabloids a header field day.

You might even think that linking boat people with the question of Australia's total population, its congested roads, and over-crowded public transport and inadequate water supply a little far-fetched, since a thousand here or there don't in any way compare to legal immigration, and you might even marvel at the collective amnesia that suggests and Italians and Greeks and Lebanese had an easy time settling into Australia.

You might think that the looming spectre of an Islamic takeover is also slightly preposterous, given the numbers and given the growing healthy trend towards secularization, which even now sees many religions adopting a healthy hearty paranoid defensive posture.

You might even think the opposition has been trying to make hay with the government on the matter of boat people and immigration.

Time for a little of that old pot meets kettle magic polishing brush, even if Janet Albrechtsen opens with a rush of incoherence in her column The unreasoning fearmongers:

The Left’s penchant for emotion blinds them to the success of an immigration compact that’s accepted by both sides of politics.

And then he railed against Australia’s immigration policy and the “concentration camp on Christmas Island”. No mention that the 78 Sri Lankans on board the Oceanic Viking are determined to take up residence on Christmas Island.

An immigration compact that's accepted on both sides of politics? You mean the ruinous Labor party policy which has produced a flood of immigrants so vast and overwhelming that current helpless persecuted natives - not the old natives, the latest boat people natives who've been arriving by boat for a couple of centuries - are likely to be forced into gulags in Tasmania by Christmas?

As to the "he", Albrechtsen does of course refer to John Pilger, who is apparently in his pilgering way emblematic, symbolic and comprehensively indicative of all who disagree with Albrechtsen:

What Pilger has done for peace is not entirely clear. But the progressive mindset says that if you are expert enough at crafting emotional arguments that’s enough to deserve a prize. One need only look at the two big issues of the day - climate change and border protection - to realise the progressive predilection for emotion over reason and stealth over honesty. Some of them - mostly politicians - use emotion for calculated political purposes. Others - commentators and activists - seem to genuinely suffer from arrested development, frozen in perpetual adolescence where emotion trumps reason.

Not of course that labeling all your opponents as deceitful Pilgers prone to pilgering is in any way dishonest or emotional or a preference for stealth over reason. Well pilger that for a joke. Come to think of it, some people should just pilger off. If Pilger is the emblematic progressive ideologue, why does he sound so much like Albrechtsen from a 180 degree skew? The same irrational bear baiting and willingness to overlook anything that doesn't fit in to the ideological suitcase ...

Now some politicians or commentators might see Albrechtsen's argument as a case of arrested development, where a frozen tendency to lump opponents into perpertual adolescence is a case itself of perpetual adolescence, but that would be a case of emotion trumping reason, and therefore not applicable to any logical terminator dedicated to terminating irrational, emotional human beings.

Make any sense? Well as much sense as accusing opponents of the thought crime of perpetual adolescence. What's wrong with adolescence? And anyway what's wrong with emotion? How's that lyric go: "forever young, forever young, I want to be forever young." (that's enough Alphaville, go away please).

Wasn't it only yesterday that Joe Hockey was telling me that all I needed was love?

Yep, the fear mongering game always involves exposing the emotional fear mongering game of others while playing the fear mongering game yourself. We have to name and expose the real fear mongers, it being the business of commentariat columnists to reassure us all that everything is hunky dory, except for the way the fear mongers are driving us to the verge of extinction by Friday with their fear mongering:

A few months ago, NSW Premier Nathan Rees labelled those sceptical about the climate change science as akin to Nazi appeasers in the 1930s. Last week at the Lowy Institute, Kevin Rudd said those same people are fearmongering, gambling with their children’s future. It’s a powerful allegation, full of emotion. It is also dishonest.

We'll all be rooned, but not by climate change, but by fearmongers who suggest that climate change is real, because calm rational folk only want to study the science. Led only by scientists they like. In a way that curiously resembles creationism, except of course the real fear mongers are the quasi religionists who believe in climate change. Like mad irrational abbotts and monks.

Not that any of this has to do with fear mongering emotionalism. Why the very use of the word fear monger is an example of how to use a word in a rational way without fear mongering:

To be curious about the state of science, to ask questions of the orthodoxy, to suggest that we not rush ahead of other countries in a way that will punish the Australian economy is the antithesis of fearmongering. It says let’s draw breath, put aside the wild hyperbole, ignore the growing group think, the cheap symbolism and think rationally about climate change. Those who predict the end of the world, those such as Al Gore who tell us sea levels will rise by 6m in by 2100, those such as Tim Flannery who tell us we have about 20 years to act on climate change or else place our future at risk of apocalyptic droughts, floods, war and famine. Here are the fearmongers.

Ah yes, and let's not fear monger about the fear monger merchants, because wild hyperbole does nothing to further the debate. It would soil the purity of calm rational thinking. But seriously don't you understand how these fear mongers will ruin everything, drive this country into bankruptcy by Thursday all for nothing, a chimera, a phantom of the opera of the imagination:

The emotional claims by Rees and Rudd do nothing to advance debate. That is not their intention. Their aim is to shut down debate by shaming opponents into agreeing with them, or at the very least, just shutting up. Anyone who disagrees with the Left on a range of issues is invariably labelled as cold-hearted and lacking basic human compassion.

Um because Janet Albrechtsen told us basic human compassion was a blind emotional argument and what we needed was cold hearted reason? Golly am I confused now.

Well how else are the fear mongers fear mongering us into a blind state of irrational panic?

No issue highlights this more than border protection. Here, once again, the language used by the Left is replete with emotion. On Sunday morning on ABC1’s Insiders, journalist David Marr said that Australians - unlike any other people in the world - fear refugees. Fear is a strong word. It is full of emotion. It is also a dishonest way to describe Australian attitudes to border control. Recent poll movements against the Rudd government suggest that Australians remain concerned about border protection. But being concerned about border control is not the same as being fearful of refugees.

Fear refugees? You mean the terrorists on the boats, armed with weapons, Tigers on the run, coming here to sow havoc and reap carnage? Tosh, fiddlesticks, we don't fear them. That's an irrational dishonest thing to say. Alert but not alarmed, we are, and border control isn't the same as being fearful. Especially if we just shut the island down, go into lock down mode, and don't let anyone in. Because they're coming to take us away, they are, hah hah, they're coming to take us away ... (stop that Napoleon, this is serious).

You see, this blind irrational emotion is the problem, when what's needed is calm, and rationality and order. And did I warn you about the way the left is about to ruin everything, and will lead to the end of western civilization as we know it, industries shut down, unemployment everywhere, a country in turmoil, anarchy loosed upon the world, the centre not holding, and likely enough before we even see the new year's eve fireworks:

Those on the Left, such as Marr, pepper their language with emotion because their thinking is premised on the same. They cannot fathom that Australians have long expressed a rational preference for an orderly, controlled system of immigration and border protection. It’s nothing to do with fear, David. It’s to do with facts. And a simple compact.

Oh yes, that simple compact, which Chairman Rudd has undermined and ruined, and soon the boat people will be creating a republic and Borat will be making fun of us, and John, where are you John, it's getting dark, way too dark to see, think I'm knocking on heaven's door:

As former prime minister John Howard reminded us in his weekend interview, the facts speak for themselves. Under Howard the boats stopped. And, as he said, “the consequence of our policy was that because we stopped the boats public support for a higher immigration rate to Australia rose, and public support for a humanitarian refugee program was maintained and even strengthened.

“The Australian public will always support a reasonably high immigration program if they think it is properly managed and serves the interests of Australia,” he said.

Howard was not alone in understanding that and formulating policy to reflect that deal with the Australian people. As my colleague Paul Kelly sets out in his book The March of Patriots, the politics of people movement grew from an enduring compact that began with the Chifley government in 1945 when increased immigration became both a reality and a necessity in a globalised age.

Oh god, the tedious mind numbing Paul Kelly. Unfortunately not the singer but the pompous pedant given endless space to muse in The Australian, the tedium of whose work is invoked with such strident emotionalism in Guy Rundle's The long, plodding March of Patriots?

Yep, the same, and now for a tedious reminder of how everybody has been singing from the same compact song sheet since Ben Chifley, except of course Chairman Rudd is in the process of ruining it all, as we were so forcibly and emotionally reminded by John Howard, in step with all those brave Labor leaders, except of course the emotional Chairman Rudd, who when he's not being emotional is of course a robot, a Ruddbot with a bureaucratic mind, devoid of emotion or humanity, a soul-less paper pusher and file farmer:

How easy the Left forgets or deliberately ignores the facts underscoring that compact. Remember in the 1970s it was Gough Whitlam who said: “I’m not having hundreds ... Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their political and religious hatreds.”

And Bob Hawke in 1990 who said: “Do not let any people ... think that all they’ve got to do is break the rules, jump the queue, lob here and Bob’s your uncle. Bob is not your uncle on this issue. We’re not going to allow people to jump that queue.” And Paul Keating, who, as prime minister in 1992 introduced mandatory detention for unlawful arrivals.

Oh how easily we forget that the Labor party was the party of White Australia, and Arthur Calwell said two wongs don't make a white, and now we have a wong nong who's getting climate change wrong, and how easily we forget that The Bulletin carried in its banner "Australia For The White Man" until Donald Horne removed it in 1960, and for that vandal act was attacked vehemently by many of the Bulletin's readers.

Um, sorry, remind me again how quoting the emotional activities of emotional ostensible lefties furthers the argument? Forget it, it's just another pilgering, from the right, and now the emotional hysterical Rudd is being valued for his robotic tendencies:

Rudd understands the compact. But in his quest to be all things to all people, he now finds himself and his policy held to ransom by a group of savvy asylum-seekers who are highly strategic in their actions and demands. Clearly, Rudd did not count on the resolve of the 78 Sri Lankans on board the Oceanic Viking. But as he figures out what to do, he can count on the resolve of the Australian people in expecting - not through fear, but through reason and proven success - that his government will keep his side of the compact on immigration policy. Better Rudd listen to history than the overblown and unthinking emotion of those on the Left.

Ah, we're back to the compact, and Chairman Rudd holding firm, even though his policies have been a catastrophe, and likely to ruin the country. How quickly we forget Malcolm Turnbull and his valiant attempts to curry favor with the hysterical right:

This sorry saga is emblematic of a policy debacle for which the Prime Minister and this Government are refusing to accept responsibility. Not one question about the Oceanic Viking has been answered other than with a contemptuous, savage and sneering attack on the Opposition.

The truth is that this debacle is a disaster entirely of the Government’s own making. (here)

Oh yes, there's a compact alright, and it's the usual compact of politics, to do the other side down, and use whatever emotional terms and irrational attacks as might produce a result, provided they don't go too far towards the unseemly on the unloveable, and to spend a whole column on the virtues of fear mongering in a fear mongering way sees Janet Albrechtsen exhibiting the finest flourish of incoherent dissembling emotional irrationality she's managed in quite a while. What a fine pilgering.

Pass me that pot polish, I can see a number of kettles who are black.

"Oho!' said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."

"Not so! not so! kettle said to the pot;
"'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean -without blemish or blot-
That your blackness is mirrored in me" (here)

So feel you've learnt anything useful about climate change, the science thereof, or the history of boat people in Australia? Thought not - information isn't the business of fear mongering about fear mongering. But here's a factoid about a boat person I culled from a history picture book for your amusement, for those who've forgotten or might never have found out about the immortal cavortings of the Australian government in the matter of anti-fascist Czechoslovakian writer Egon Kisch, invited to speak in Australia in 1934 by the Australian Anti-War Council.

The government claimed it was acting on advice from British authorities that Kisch would be an "undesirable visitor". When attempting to land in Melbourne, Kisch was arrested and put back on his ship. While the ship was travelling to Sydney, the matter was taken to court, and with the authorities unable to produce the information on which they'd claimed to act, Kisch was allowed to land.

He was taken to a police station, and given a dictation test ... in Gaelic. He was arrested, prosecuted as an illegal immigrant and sentenced to six months jail. On appeal, the High Court declared Gaelic wasn't a European language within the meaning of the act, but Kisch was given another test, failed that, and declared an illegal immigrant. He left Australia voluntarily.

Now that's how to deal with boat people ... and if they pass the Gaelic test, make them eat haggis. They'll be leaving voluntarily, och aye ...

(Below: a few cartoons to go on with).