By Jane Salmon
All the hyperbole about Pezzullo’s fall from grace is annoying.
Everything Pezzullo oversaw on Manus and Nauru was actually worse than all the insider grandstanding, the attacks on public service neutrality, the enabling of lobbyists, the damage to democracy, the filthy deals. He oversaw actual torture, restrictive practices, medical neglect, human despair, denial of access to lawyers, bashings, extreme corruption, abuse of youth.
The neutrality of the public service has always been a myth. But brutalising refugees is a very obvious low. Devastating more than 2000 lives is significant.
Media have been far too gentle with the Home Affairs culture for way too long.
Address that by all means, but also give the legacy caseload of refugees permanency now.
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Jane Salmon, well called out.Pezzullo’s machiavellian machinations are of course nothing more than an artefact of a man who succumbed to hubris by virtue of his position and self-belief in his capacity to influence others in service of his own interests and his self-determined mission to concentrate power as an end in itself, but you correctly remind the readers that his department was central in its impact on thousands of people who were, more likely than not, claiming refugee status as a means of putting their intolerable circumstances in the countries from which they fled behind them.
The well-known expression, A Fish Rots from the Head Down, is indeed salient in the case of the hapless Pezzullo and those who served both under & above him.
That Australia chose to imprison & brutalise these people is to its eternal shame, and the fact that that sort of treatment is not restricted to this country does not provide any sort of rationalisation along the lines of ‘well, other countries do the same.’ We can, and must, do much better in the future.
Pezzullo deserves to join Maximilian, Charles I, Louis XVI, Nicholas II and many other rotten brown stinkers, in another place. He is an object of derision, full of stinking stuffing, loaded with putrid ego, overconfident based on utterly nothing and a disgrace to Australia and those who do serve. But, the pustular and ignorant Dutton should be there too. Is it possible to charge this evil object? The leader (hah) of the flopposition remains an object blocking basic decency and progress.
As I noted elswehere, the remaining refugees on Manus Island are being turfed out of the Australian accommodation that they have been occupying whilst in a bureaucratic limbo. It seems that the Morrison government washed their hands of all responsibility for these asylum seekers that we had previously detained on Manus (until PNG courts determined that they could not be detained in PNG as it was unconstitutional and they had not committed any crime).
So there they languish with their power and water cut off and their rent unpaid with the hope that they will just go away.
What a mess, spud !
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/29/papua-new-guinea-refugees-evictions-unpaid-bills-rent
The more one learns about the absolutely corrupt, self-serving and totally depraved Pezzullo, the more one realises what a self-absorbed, lying, conniving sociopath he really is! The man is BEYOND evil – a self-promoting parasite who harbours undeserved delusions of grandeur; a diabolical narcissist without a drop of compassion, zero integrity nor one iota of credibility. Pezzullo, like so many smug, hateful, and unconscionably depraved miscreants on the right-wing extremities of politics, is just a inhumane, shallow, self-promoting, power-obsessed right-wing extremist who ticks every box as a loathsome and, indeed, extremely dangerous political psychopath! Pezzullo’s evident and unspeakable level of backstabbing treachery, his callous inhumanity, ruthless born-to-rule ambition and self-serving megalomania resulted in his appalling, undemocratic misuse and abuse of power which SHOULD result in this depraved individual locked up and the key thrown away!
Thank you Jane. I totally agree. I have been helping support, along with many other Australians, some Refugees at Port Moresby. They would starve without support. They are all getting older and needing glasses and getting various medical complaints, needing new shoes and clothing and replacing phones stolen when they’re regularly bashed by locals…I won’t go on, but this morning I recevied this from one of the refugees: “”Hi. there good morning 🙏 I am not well have suffering live. I am sick and no power here is back out. The immigration stopped pay SPA. I living in dark .too much Mosquito”” No power. No money. More misery as they are told they will be booted out of their accommodation…
A great pity that Australia has besmirched the perception of Manus & it’s people. I know from first hand experience just how wonderful a place Manus is and the people are some of the more memorable and non violent of PNG. A great disservice has been done to Manus and its people which will take many years to overcome & will unlikely ever be forgotten.
A pox on Pezzullo & all the other enablers of this unjustified program.
Time for the Albanese LABOR to stop this inhumane treatment of legal refugees on Manus & Nauru. It was never a sound policy because it pandered to the xenophobia of the big city cellar dwellers and the FRWNJs living in regional centres while accepting rural socialism payments from governments.
Time to bring all these poor souls to the Australian mainland, house, feed, educate and treat for any medical conditions at government expense. Rehabilitation and ability to work must be promoted for all our sakes.
Too many Scummo & the COALition misgovernment policies are being continued by the Albanese government.
Short and sweet, Jane. Hit the mark.
Totally agree Jane. However, not only should Pezzullo face the charge of crimes against humanity but so should the ministers responsible including Dutton and Morrisson!
Thanks Jane
Just bloody awful. A blight on Oz, and all others across the world doing it. I’m blocking the stench of Morrison, Dutton, Pezzulo & their droogs. And aside from Manus flapping in the breeze (read ill-winds and big navy), Albo is keeping Nauru open, spit and polish but empty.
Ill winds are certainly building, but policies, plans and contingencies are eerily silent.