The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Oh Mandy

At the opening of Mardi Gras last night, Bob Downe referred to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone as "camp". I think Bob was being far too kind. The Immigration Department's hopeless bungle detaining a mentally ill woman in Baxter detention centre for 10 months demonstrates the incompetence of a Howard ministerial department at work once again. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre spokesperson Pamela Curr says the woman was locked up for up to 20 hours a day without access to proper medical treatment. Vanstone claims the department "went to great lengths to establish the woman's identity". But still they managed to fuck it up. Again.

I hope this fuck-up will reach the legal counsel representing the Bakhtiari family. After all, if Vanstone and her department can't get the identity and mental status of one Australian resident right, it doesn't seem such a leap that they - woops - might have been wrong all along in their findings that the Bakhtairis were Pakistani and not Afghanistani, as the family insisted, and therefore the ruthless uprooting of Mrs Bakhtiari and her children - armed police sneaking into their home after hours to take them away under cover of darkness - was totally unfounded, illegal and a gross infringement on the civil rights of a family who had called Adelaide their home for the last four years and who were active and well-respected members of the local community. But the Liberal party spin doctors are diabolically ingenious. I'm sure once again an incompetent Howard minister will live to fuck things up once more.

posted by Sam @ Saturday, February 05, 2005