Dear Australia,
Yesterday, I woke up late. You know, no classes until noon, its a Friday afternoon and it was a rainy dreary day. Nothing unusual for Melbourne. First thing I do when I wake up is pull my phone out of its charger and read the news/new feed (but really, aren't they pretty much the same thing?)
BorderForce, splashed across some news media, Huh, never heard of it, lets read up.
*reads*
Huh, this looks bad. Maybe the media is sensationlizing it like usual. Lets try another source.
*reads*
Okay, exactly the same thing. Er... I guess I'm going to be needing my passport today to travel in the city. I think? Is that what I need? Either way, no big deal I guess
Wait... no.
Australia, mistakes were made.
Mistakes were made when we let Abbot into government, allowing him to make a mockery of the Australian way of life. Mistakes were made, when we sat idly by when we let it get to this. Mistakes were god damn made, when my reaction to reading the news on this 'operation' was to look for my passport.
This is not god damn okay. This has gone too far. Australia we should not be okay, with our psuedo-police force being allowed to check our visas. Nor should we be okay when operation fortitude was released in a way that it was (or at all). The press release and everything about the release stank of incompetence and absolute stupidity.
We are better than this Australia. I can use all my patriotic phrases and say how we're supposed to be the land of the fair and invoke lines from our anthem telling you to 'advance Australia', but really
I shouldn't need to. We shouldn't have to think about whether we have the correct forms of ID when we walk out the door in the morning. I don't understand what our government was thinking when they thought that Melbournians would be okay when they're stopped and asked for out Visas.
This is nothing short of fear mongering, sensationalist, fear mongering policy making. The kind of thing that I expected from our broad sheet newspaper, not our federal government.
How can a government agency be allowed to use the excuse of low level communication error to explain such a monumental screw-up. I mean, we're only talking about fundamental civil rights here, who needs correct forms of communication? That's the type of excuse my friends use when they don't want to see me ;(.
If the government's intention was to catch visa over stayers and illegal migrants why would you announce when and where they're going to be looking for them? How do you expect to catch anyone if you tell them where you're going to be looking for them? I don't expect them to stand in the middle of the street wearing marks going "O hey, don't mind me, I'm totally legal migrant with my Visa in my bag."
Wait, this sounds like a book I studied once. I'm pretty sure we used it a text as an example of a dystopian society. Or maybe I'm getting it mixed up with pre-WWII Germany.
Who knows why Abbot thought it was a good idea to do it in Melbourne. I mean, lets trial our first civil rights ruining operation in the city which was just named most livable city in the world for the most irony possible. Maybe that was it. Maybe Abbot wanted us to have a laugh by being seemingly incompetent. Melbourne just lost its tram networks for effectively 6 hours only several days ago; we all needed a laugh this week. Yeah, lets go with that.
Good thing, Melbourne got its head in the game and the organised snap protest causing the operation to be called off. Well done Melbourne, we put it off for a bit.
Lets not let it happen against.
~TastyJacks~
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