Andrews’ ‘Africans’ Comments Against Departmental Advice
Turns out that last October’s comments by then-Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews about Africans not ’settling and adjusting’ were contrary to departmental advice.
He was told that socio-economic problems (unsurprisingly) played more of a role than ethnicity in criminal behaviour.
Yet after the beating death of Liep Gony, an Australian citizen of Sudanese birth, Andrews saw fit to say:
I have been concerned that some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money in to provide extra resources, but also to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan. (Age, 2 Oct.: 2)
Ironically, Andrew’s comments came on the same day that it ‘emerged that Mr Gony’s alleged attackers were not African’ - as the Age persists in phrasing it. His alleged murderers were, in fact, white and Australian-born.
In a paper I just wrote on the Gony affair, I argued that media framing set the stage for Andrews’ comments by portraying Gony’s death as part of a continuing ‘refugee crisis’ in Australia.
The reporting was strikingly similar to that of other ‘crises’, such as the Tampa and ‘Children Overboard‘. In 2001, the Howard Government used these incidents to encourage ethnic and immigration tensions for political purposes and was reelected.
In the paper, I said:
While this paper does not imply that Andrews had cynical motivations for his comments, if the Minister had been looking for a Tampa-esque moment, he could be excused for believing the time was ripe.
Now that we know that Andrews specifically acted against departmental advice, it seems less likely that his comments were innocent in nature.
Papers at the time noted that Andrews’ explanation above did not match with the rationale his department had previously given for cuts in the intake of African refugees, and this seems like the final nail in the coffin.
Here were are again, six months after an election, finding out damning information about another of these pre-election, race-baiting events.
Andrews was specifically told that ethnicity was not the problem, but he went ahead and made statements that whipped up ethnic tensions in Noble Park - to the tune of a beaten Sudanese refugee on the 10th and a bashed police officer on the 11th.
Thank god it wasn’t to the tune of another term in power.
Race row we didn’t have to have [The Age]
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