From JOHN PASQUARELLI
The Australian boatpeople saga took an interesting turn last week when the story of Papuans coming across Torres Strait in dinghies surfaced in the Australian media.
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| John Pasquarelli...berates Australian authorities for treatment of PNG border crossers |
The fact that 120 people apparently made the trip should have meant a huge story but like a lot of politicians, the journos were asleep at the wheel and there was not a single TV image.
According to reports, Australian immigration officials seized the dinghies and the Papuans were 'sent packing' back to Daru.
It is alleged that the Papuans were carrying false Australian citizenship documents but until the PNG media investigates, we are all in the dark somewhat.
Illegal boatpeople from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka regularly arrive on Australian shores and many of these people are culturally-incompatible with mainstream Australians, especially the Muslims with their often unveiled contempt for the traditional Australian/Christian culture but this does not stop them embracing all the benefits that Australia affords, including Centrelink and all the other welfare 'goodies.'
Many ex-PNG expats find it hypocritical and confusing that Australian immigration can send the Papuans 'packing' but literally welcome other illegals to our shores.
The situation is of course complex but woe betide Australian authorities if the thousands of West Papuan refugees decide to hop into their canoes and dinghies.
Why on earth are you quoting John Pasquarelli? He is notoriously anti-government, anti Asian, anti-black, anti-Catholic Church; he seems to be just about anti everything.
ReplyDeleteHe ran Angoram in the Sepik like a real Masta in the 1960's and had little respect for PNG people, apart from using the women for sex.
His friend Martin Kerr writing about Pasquarell in PNG said "Big John didn't seem to have a healthy respect for the local indigenous New Guinea population. His attitude towards natives bore the satisfaction of a completely dominant masta-servant relationship. A kanaka was a kanaka to John,". Another former acquaintance from PNG who asked not to be named told the Australia Review, "for Pasquarelli the locals were coons. He thought that they weren't long out of the trees."
He left PNG before independence as he knew his kind couldn't last. He went on to become one of the driving forces behind racist Pauline Hanson.
Source - http://www.aijac.org.au/review/1996/2117/pasquarelli.html
Whatever Pasquarelli was, or is, he made some important points in his piece. The arbitrary way the boats with Papuans were seized and the people immediately dispatched to PNG with little recognition in the press says a lot about the general attitude of Australians to their former colony.
ReplyDeleteAt the time PNG was given independence in 1975, Papua was a direct possession or territory of Australia, and the Papuans were given no say in their country's change of status. Josephine Abaijah and her Papua Besena fought unsuccessfully for some recognition for Papua. She considered that Australia could have granted Papua, if not the whole of PNG seventh statehood status. From 1949, the Trust Territory of New Guinea and the Australian Territory of Papua were administrated jointly. Peter Simogun from the Sepik always favoured Australian Statehood for the two Territories.
The facts are that from the late sixties, Australian politicians of all shades of political opinion were all doing their best to unload PNG as soon as possible. This accords with their compliance in the illegal acquisition by Indonesia of West New Guinea. It seems that the prevailing political wisdom then, and I fear now, that the Island of New Guinea is of no strategic importance to Australia. Contrast this with the words of Billy Hughes after WWI: "...any Power which controls New Guinea controls Australia."
Giving PNG early independence and with the likelihood of it ending up as a dysfunctional state seemed to be of no concern to policy makers in Australia in the 1970s.Fast forward to today: What is the state of affairs in PNG? There are reports of PNG being used by criminals as a staging ground for the export of drugs to Australia.
As a previous resident of PNG, in the Australian days, it appalls me, when I return there from time to time to see the breakdown of law and order; the corruption in the country; an education system which is largely a joke, and a health department that delivers practically nothing to rural people.
The lapdogs of Australia, the emerging PNG politicians, who were positioned by the pro-independence lobby at the time to demand what Australia was over ready to give are still running the country.
What is to be done? The Australian Government must re-engage with the people and Government of PNG, actively assist in all aspects of government and welcome many PNG citizens to Australia. We need to forget about wars in distant places like Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrate on our own region.
To the north of Australia is a resource-rich country with millions of the finest people on the planet, who understand Australian people,and are ready to help us if only we are willing to help them.
In the madness of the present geopolitical world situation cooperation between Australia and PNG
is in the interests of the survival of both nations.
David Wall
Pasquaralli is a racist bastard of the worst sort. He treated PNG people like slaves, so quoting him is like quoting Hitler in a discussion about Jewish rights. I suggest that your displaced love for the people 'north of PNG' will result in the same solution.
ReplyDeletePasquaralli is also anti-Jewish and believes the holocaust was a myth.
If you are referring to my comment about a country 'to the north of Australia', I'm talking about PNG. I don't know what Pasquarelli thinks of the Jews.
ReplyDeleteDavid Wall
He is anti-semite, anti-black, anti-Catholic and a right wing facist. He helped bring Pauline Hanson to power - does anything mre need to be said?
ReplyDeleteHe regards PNG people as 'coons', who are 'just out of the trees'. But he still used many Sepik women for sex. See the book by his friend Martin Kerr.
He is a complete arsehole.
I treat 'anonymous' comments with the contempt they deserve - comments written by faceless gutless grubs - on PNG independence day I was in the Sir Hubert Murray Stadium with mates and as for my anti-semitism - one of my best paintings was purchased by a well known Melbourne Jewish solicitor!
ReplyDeleteI must say that I agree with Pasquarelli that criticism that is anonymously given is cowardly to say the least.
ReplyDeleteIn my comments I've used the anonymous mode because it facilitates easier downloading on the blog, but I do put my name down at the end of each of my comments.
David Wall
Email: mahal362000@yahoo.com.au
In 2000 John Pasquarelli, the former political adviser to Pauline Hanson, was appointed Secretary of one of Victoria's foremost racist and Holocaust denying organisations, the "Australian Civil Liberties Union" (ACLU).
ReplyDeleteNot to be confused with the bona fide Australian Council for Civil Liberties, the ACLU was founded by John Bennett after his expulsion from the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty Victoria). Bennett
denies the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and espouses a range of racist views, claiming the "Asian invasion must be stopped" and the "granting of land rights to Aborigines could lead to what in South Africa
was called Apartheid".
Pasquarelli's ongoing association with Bennett at the ACLU, reflects the increasingly close ties between Holocaust deniers and the broader far-right camp.
And in December in his review of 2010 for the Australian Conservative, Pasquarelli calls PNG 'a basket case'.
ReplyDeleteNice to know what sort of company you are in Malum Nalu.
The reason Australia unloaded Papua in 75 was the concern of all the social issues that would occur if they were fully integrated into Australia with all the rights other states have.
ReplyDeleteIronically, if that had happened in 75, there would be an aggressive independence movement today - including huge compensation demands.
You can't win.
my final comment re 'anonymous'and his/her cowardly defamation of me - for the record I was responsible for having the Haus Tambaran at Kanganaman declared National Cultural Property and I was the prime mover behind the Gavien Land Resettlement scheme - designed to get people out of the swamps near Angoram - I have NEVER denied the holocaust - my interest in politics is concentrated in Australia and our nearest neighbours - Isi Leibler the Jewish businessman who created and did very well out of Jetset returned to Israel to live - in 2000 he stated that multiculturalism had no place in Israel but was OK for Australia - Hanson was attacked by leftist Jews and others as racist simply because she opposed multiculturalism - what anonymous says about me is totally without credibility given the grub's failure to identify itself!!
ReplyDelete