A letter to Peter Dutton

By Vanessa Kairies

Dear Peter Dutton,

If your wife was raped in another country by foreigners and they fled that country to their homeland, would you expect their government to extradite them to face prosecution?

If your child was raped at a party, would you ever send them back to that location?

If an adult handcuffed one of your children while a group of adults looked on and laughed would you take action? If an adult struck your 4 year old daughter with such force that she fell over and grazed her elbows, would you react?

If friends of yours were bashed to death or died from an infection due to lack of inappropriate medical treatment would you expect an investigation to find out the cause to prevent it from happening again? Would you also expect that the murderers faced prosecution?

How do you feel about people who trade drugs and money to vulnerable people in exchange for sexual favours? Would you want this happening to members of your family?

If someone threw a rock at your child, would you act?

If your child’s pre-school recorded a “critical incident” at its centre once every 20 days, would you expect that centre be closed?

If your 5 year old child developed significant PTSD syndrome as the result of negligent treatment at pre-school, what would you do?

If your adorable little toddler, God love him, had tuberculosis, would you want diagnostic tests carried out immediately or would you prefer to wait for 3 months? Once diagnosed would you like to wait 3 weeks for the medication to arrive in your country before treatment could be carried out?

If someone was spying on your wife, how would you respond?

If your family had to flee their homes because of flooding due to rising sea levels from climate change, would you expect sympathy and a new home to live in or would you want to be imprisoned?

If you were studying your HSC in a foreign land, and due to be married to a national of that country, would you want to finish your education, get married and start a family or would you prefer to be dragged by your hair screaming and placed in a detention centre? Would you expect to have representation by a solicitor or would you prefer that that right was refused?

Just for fun, do you like to play the game of waterboarding and zipping on a Sunday? I could help cable tie your arms to a bed and my friends and I could throw you up into the air and let the bed land. Promise we won’t hurt you. After that we could try a few rounds of waterboarding.

Do you think that rapists should be caught, charged and imprisoned?

Do you think murderers should have the same fate?

If there were government departments responsible that could fix all of the things by closing these facilities, would you have expectations that the government minister responsible would act immediately, or would you expect that person to lie and cover up these human rights abuses?

On a different note, do you like to save money? Are you good with a budget?

Please let me know your thoughts, if you have lost your heart, conscience or soul, I can help you to find them. You could start by reading my article ‘Australia has a duty of care towards asylum seekers’. It might be a good place to begin looking.

Your sincerely

Vanessa Kairies

For more information about the Asylum seeker issue please see my cartoon folder in this link.

For more information about racism in Australia, please see my cartoon folder in this link.