Do you carry ‘papers’? You know the sort of thing we saw in the movie Casablanca where Nazi SS officers would demand to see your papers and if you didn’t have any or they weren’t in order, you would be in big trouble. Generally speaking, we don’t carry ‘papers’ in Australia but Peter Dutton is going to change all that.
You probably heard that the Federal Government wants to give police and the ABF the power to carry out random identity checks without cause at the nation’s airports, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull citing the “dangerous times” facing the nation as justification.
Mr Turnbull and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will unveil plans to roll out new legislation along with an already announced $294 million package to boost security at domestic airports and introduce new measures in regional centres.
The Prime Minister said anyone travelling through the nation’s airports could be subject to the new powers.
“The justification for changing the law so that police at an airport can ask you to identify yourself, the justification is the safety of the Australian people,” Mr Turnbull told reporters at Melbourne Airport.
Under current laws, police can only ask for proof of identity with reasonable cause if they suspect a person has or will commit a serious offence.
“There’s certain conditions that need to be met at the moment before police can ask for that identification, which is an absurdity, and it is an issue the police have raised with us,” Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton argued.
So, if you’re off to the airport to pick up Aunt Maud and you just slip on a T-shirt and shorts and head off make sure you take your ‘papers’ with you because Peter Dutton wants to see them and he doesn’t mean your Coffee Club loyalty card. He wants to know why you are at the airport, what your name is and where you come from; if you don’t have photo ID with you, you will be escorted to one of those unmarked rooms at the airport for questioning … and it won’t be the Qantas Club lounge. Mr Dutton would then like to waterboard you – you can never be too careful he says – until you confess to being a foreign agent or even a member of the Labor Party. Aunt Maud will probably also be taken down as she enters the arrivals lounge.
Do you remember back in August 2015 when Peter Dutton wanted Australian Border Force (ABF) officers to check people’s papers on the streets of Melbourne? Officers were to be positioned at various locations around the city and would speak “with any individual we cross paths with”, ABF regional commander for Victoria and Tasmania Don Smith said in a statement.
That little adventure was quickly knocked on the head when there was a massive public outcry about the creation of a police state and racial profiling. But Mr Dutton hasn’t finished with us yet, he has a very singular view of Australians, possibly formed in the years when he was a Queensland copper; he thinks we are all shifty and unreliable and he will frequently support this view by reference to the fact that some of us vote for Labor and the minor parties.
The next move by Obergruppenführer Dutton will surely be the issue of Australia Cards with photo ID and to receive one of these you will need to know the names of all Liberal Prime Ministers since federation and the political hierarchy of the Downer dynasty including Georgina the most recent political aspirant from that family, fresh from the IPA indoctrination camp.
The introduction of the Australia Card with Iris recognition algorithms is inevitable in the brave new world of Duttomania. Let’s just consider the aforementioned Aunt Maud who had been taken into an unmarked interrogation room at the airport and subjected to questioning and a strip-search but because she doesn’t drive she doesn’t have a photo ID driver’s licence and whilst she proffered her Medicare Card and her Woolies orange Rewards Card these were insufficient proof of her indentity. The options for the ABF are to return her on the first available flight to Mildura or hold her in detention indefinitely until a third country claims her.
The question for you is, do you know where your maiden aunts are right now?
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