Leftist journalists cheered when Labor in 2008 scrapped our tough border laws:
The Age crooned that “yesterday a stain was removed from the soul of this nation” and “Australia began the process of restoring some of its lost humanity”.
The Australian’s Mike Steketee added “Australia at least has a policy it can justify in terms of basic humanity”.
The Age’s immigration reporter said the new policy” more closely reflects the values of Australian society”.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Horin cried “a shameful era is over in Australian politics”.
The Left kept backing Labor’s ”more compassionate” approach even when it predictably lured more than a thousand people to their death. In fact, many in the Left ignored the reality. Some criticised conservatives who repeatedly warned the drownings were inevitable while the laws were so soft. The Left seemed almost unmoved by the deaths caused by its “compassion”:
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young yesterday stood by her party’s policies. Pressed on whether the Greens accepted responsibility for the tragedy, Senator Hanson-Young said: “Of course not. Tragedies happen, accidents happen.”
By Labor’s end, Fairfax reporters hardly bothered even reporting the latest drownings.
But now?
Under the Abbott Government’s “tough” laws the drownings have virtually stopped because the boats have largely stopped. We have not had one boat arrive in nearly four weeks.
That lack of corpses seems to disappoint some in the Left. Some who never blamed Labor for the real deaths it caused have now resorted to attacking Tony Abbott for deaths they lavishly imagine:
The Guardian’s Van Badham gets on a Twitter war footing against Tony Abbott, Tuesday:
IF Abbott wants a “war-footing” against refugees, his actions demand an internal resistance. We must be that resistance. Enough of this.
She creates her own #tag writeyourowninevitablemaritimeincident and sets the ball rolling:
THE navy fire warning shots at a smuggler vessel, accidentally shoot a pregnant refugee.
And:
THE navy fire warning shots at a smuggler vessel, sink ship, everyone drowns.
And...:
BOAT load of refugees commit suicide rather than be forced back to countries of origin.
Badham, of course, may simply be angry that Abbott proved her wrong when she brainlessly claimed last year:
...deterrent policies are completely ineffectual
But it is striking that such Leftists are angrier about imagined dead boat people under Abbott than they were about real dead boat people under Labor.
More evidence that their “compassion” is phony. It really is all about them, and the dead boat people - in the sea or in their minds - are mere props for their plays, in which they always cast themselves as the hero.
Badham, of the Guardian, is also angry about imagined ”warning shots” allegedly fired by our navy over one boat - a false claim peddled by Fairfax.
More extraordinary is that she even fancies that those imagined warning shots were aimed not above one boat but were actually fired at several of them:
