The Irony of Complaining about Boat People
Fri 16 Jul 2010I haven’t been so well lately, but last Monday I did manage to crawl to the screen to watch Q&A on ABC1. I didn’t want to miss WA Green Senator Scott Ludlam.
The arrival of asylum-seekers by boat has dominated the electorate lately and Q&A reflected this. More than half the program was dedicated to the topic.
At one point, I tweeted something I once saw on an Aboriginal mate’s Facebook page. It struck a chord with the #qanda audience. I see that now, at the end of the week, it is still the top tweet (with 70+ retweets) with the #qanda hashtag.
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I like the idea of tweet text being searchable, so here it is …
To my aboriginal mate, the definition of “irony” is one wave of boat people complaining about another. #qanda
10:06 PM Jul 12th via TweetDeck
MikeFitzAU
Mike Fitzsimon
July 16th, 2010 at 14:09
Wow - breaking into QandA - great win and a great tweet!
July 16th, 2010 at 16:53
[…] The Irony of Complaining about Boat People « MikeFitz with overflow bit set… mike.brisgeek.com/2010/07/16/the-irony-of-complaining-about-boat-people/ – view page – cached I haven’t been so well lately, but last Monday I did manage to crawl to the screen to watch Q&A on ABC1. I didn’t want to miss WA Green Senator Scott Tweets about this link […]
July 16th, 2010 at 22:50
Indeed, indeed.
July 17th, 2010 at 0:35
[…] The Coalition, the extreme right wing of Australian politics, has developed a fear of boat people (who are not truly human) and has a policy of turning them back on the open ocean. After a few boats have sunk, they will stop trying to get here! Their racism is out there for all to see. I can remember when Pauline Hanson was kicked out of the Liberal Party for being racist! As my mate Mike has twittered, “To my aboriginal mate, the definition of “irony” is one wave of boat …“ […]
July 21st, 2010 at 14:35
Interestingly, our ancestors motives for being on those boats were vastly different from the motives of those arriving on boats today. I get the irony, but the solution is still the same… solve the problem in the country of origin… I just wish I knew how.
May 11th, 2011 at 23:43
[…] least compassionate members of Australian society, I’ve had enough of this unfairness. I’ve said it before, but I thought it was time to let this Tweet go […]