Refugee Update

I plan to vote Greens this Saturday, as they've been consistent in their defence of asylum seekers and refugees. I'm just going through the NSW Senate ballot checking various parties' policies. Here are quick summaries - follow the links for more detail:

The Science Party: close offshore detention centres and increase humanitarian intake, focussing on recognised refugees from Indonesia and Malaysia.

The extensive policy of the Socialist Alliance includes: end mandatory detention, increase humanitarian intake, resettle all recognised refugees from Indonesia and Malaysia; work, study, and social services rights.

The Australian Sex Party: end offshore processing, end mandatory detention (except for security checks); work, study, and social services rights.

Australian Progressives: end offshore processing; increase humanitarian intake; regional agreement.

The Pirate Party: end mandatory detention (except for health and security checks), close offshore processing centres, regional processing agreement. Unfortunately, as I am a content provider who earns royalties from e-books, they won't be getting my vote anyway.

You will not be surprised that Sustainable Australia, whose slogan is "lower immigration", would retain offshore processing and boat turn-backs, although they would remove children from detention.

The Nick Xenophon Team's policy is, frankly, confusing. They would retain offshore processing but improve safety and healthcare and transparency, and increase our humanitarian intake but actually resettle refugees elsewhere? tbh, this looks like a hand-waving attempt to please everyone.

The Liberal Democrats would allow asylum seekers to either purchase permanent residency, or to apply for refugee assessment, in which case they would be detained unless they posted the equivalent of bail. Well, if the people smugglers are making a few bucks out of human misery, why the heck shouldn't we?

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party support offshore detention.

The Animal Justice Party and the Health Australia Party have no specific policies. I couldn't find anything for the Socialist Equality Party either.

There are several more options, but I'm out of steam. Comment if I've missed something which shouldn't be missed.

"You can't run that fast. It was truly, truly frightening."

The Liberal Democrats' gun policy statement gives me the damn creeps, and yet would horrify the NRA. For example, if I'm reading it right, the Lib Dems don't think convicted domestic violence offenders should be allowed to have firearms. However, thanks to their senator, David Leyonhjelm, it will be possible to import the Adler 110 shotgun into Australia again in August this year. The weapon's availability is also supported by Katter's Australian Party and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. Eight rounds in eight seconds! That'd've made Martin Place jump. :P

Words on language

1. We've been watching loads of Animaniacs, which means getting the theme song horribly lodged inside one's skull. Look at the alliteration and assonance in "Just for fun we run around the Warner movie lot." I weep with envy at lyricists in general. I'll never write a line as good as "That's why it's better / where it is wetter." But then I'll never write a line as good as "I'm the cool cat (meow) / Check me out."

2. Only in American English do Dot, lot, caught, and plot rhyme.

3. I can't pronounce the Korean consonant 'ㅈ' properly; it's an unaspirated 'j', which doesn't occur in English. Conversely, the English consonant 'z' doesn't occur in Korean, so is substituted with either 'ㅈ' ("Rijing Star") or "s" ("We'll be the lucky once."). This amuses me, but it comes with a lesson: it doesn't matter a damn how well Kpop idols pronounce English, because they make an absolute fortune in Asia, without having to cater to English-speaking markets at all. (By contrast there are plenty of Japanese and Mandarin singles and versions of songs.) The West, and English, are not the centre of the universe after all.

4. Here's a bilingual dad joke for you.