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Warning: ‘Rant Alert’ rating = extreme. I’ve been ‘hot under the collar’ all week and I’ve chanted to myself "don’t blog angry, don't blog angry" but this story has pushed me over the edge!

Can you hear the dog whistle? You know, the subliminal call to racists, bigots and xenophobes the Howard government has practised to perfection. It’s there in the subtext - the ‘accidental’, ‘unintended’ racism. And, as the federal election approaches the whistle is becoming louder and clearer…as audible as a starting gun.

In the government’s sights this week were people who’ve endured unspeakable suffering in the Darfur conflict – refugees from Sudan.

Their need for refuge is undeniable – they’ve survived a six year conflict which has killed nearly half a million people and displaced just as many. They have languished in refugee camps in appalling conditions - traumatised and denied the basic human rights we take for granted: sufficient nutrition, housing, safety and education.

Seventy percent of refugees accepted into Australia in 2004-5 were African but the Howard Government limited the quota for 2007-8 to 30% and with that target already reached, it has closed the door to African refugees until at least mid-2008. There is some logic to this decision – the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called for a redistribution of refugee intake to favour those fleeing Burma and Iraq. But this is not the reasoning being applied by the Australian Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews. Instead, he’s blaming the allegedly anti-social behaviour of Sudanese refugees and their failure to adequately ‘assimilate’ or ‘integrate’ as reasons for the crackdown. It’s rhetoric with the ring of 'early Goebbels'.

In vintage Howard Government style, Andrews has played the race card within coo-ee of polling day, demonising these African refugees and highlighting difference as a means of arousing latent racism and unifying overt prejudice. This tactic has worked very well for the government in the past. At the 1996 election, in which they were swept to power in a landslide victory, they had the dis-endorsed Liberal, Pauline Hanson, doing their bidding on anti-Aboriginal racism. Ahead of the 2001 election it was the Prime Minister and senior ministers denying entry to a boat-load of shipwrecked refugees (the Tampa incident) and falsley accusing Middle Eastern Muslims of throwing their children overboard from a sinking vessel, which rallied the racists and xenophobes (a word which Pauline Hanson famously asked a reporter to “please explain?”). This election, with the deportation of Dr Mohamed Haneef backfiring badly thanks to a reinvigorated media and the backlash over the David Hicks scandal, Kevin Andrews has resorted to ‘blowing the whistle’ on the most vulnerable and obviously physically different members of our society.

Tall and slender, with skin the colour and texture of dark Lindt chocolate and a haunted expression, the Sudanese among us are strikingly beautiful but unmistakably distinctive. Andrews' targeting of white Australians’ fear of physical difference is pure racist politics. That’s a fact underlined by Pauline Hanson’s celebration of the Minister’s strategy yesterday "You can't bring people into the country who are incompatible with our way of life and culture," she told reporters.

The Minister attempted to justify his claims by relying on what he admitted to journalists was "anecdotal evidence" about gang violence, alcohol consumption in parks and threatening behaviour involving imposing young Sudanese men in the vicinity of suburban shopping malls. He linked the Sudanese refugees directly to criminal activity in Victoria with references to the recent bashing death of a young man near a suburban Victorian railway station. This was the point at which I really lost it – the victim was a Sudanese refugee…the alleged perpetrators were three white men! How is being a victim of crime evidence of an ethnic group’s unsuitability for refugee status, Minister? Moreover, as Victoria’s Police Commissioner, Christine Nixon, pointed out, Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in that state’s crime statistics. The Minister’s response to this statement, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), was deeply ironic: “"You can use data in all sorts of ways," he said. Yes, Kevin, you would know all about distorting the facts for political gain wouldn’t you? Especially when your government is fighting to win two marginal seats with significant Sudanese populations.

Wannabe Senator, Pauline Hanson, of the aptly bogan-ishly named ‘Pauline’s United Australia Party’, has merrily joined in the racist chorus with despicable claims that African refugees are the cause of an increase in Victorian AIDS infections and that they’re importing TB and leprosy into the country. Pauline’s never been big on evidence…neither was Adolf Hitler.

Kevin Andrews also pointed to the poor English skills and low levels of education among Sudanese refugees as evidence of their unsuitability for ‘integration’ into Australian society. Hell-ooo Kevin, they’re not skilled migrants, they’re traumatised refugees from a torrid warzone!! (See Bill Leak’s cartoon in the Australian today for further analysis on this point). What the absence of education and English skills within this group does highlight of course, though, is not the need to restrict or ban the intake of African refugees, but the requirement for further and better support services to assist with settlement and recovery.

This is a view supported by the Federation of African Communities Council, which is considering legal action against the Minister for racial vilification; the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who has called Kevin Andrews a racist who would have been at home in the deep south of the USA in the 1950's; several Liberal and National Party backbenchers who’ve broken ranks with Andrews; and even his Deputy, the Assistant Minister for Immigration, Teresa Gambaro, who oversees the refugee settlement program. She said she regretted the Minister’s approach and highlighted the need for the government to take responsibility for the integration of Sudanese refugees. “We have to support our humanitarian settlement program. They are no different to migrants of the past. They want a job, a future for their children and their children to be educated," Ms Gambaro told the SMH. She may well have been playing 'good cop' to Kevin Andrew’s 'bad cop' (another classic Howard strategy) but at least she was speaking sense.

The other point, of course, is the threat to racial harmony posed by this debate in the Australian communities which Sudanese refugees have made their new homes. And, the Minister's stance has no doubt exacerbated the pain and difficulty associated with their settlement in Australia - they're already recovering from trauma and trying to re-start a life from scratch in a country on the other side of the world with a different language and culture. Now they're also likely to feel alienated, ostracised and unwelcome. That is a real recipe for disaffection and the manifestation of anti-social behaviour and it will be on your head, Kevin Andrews.

I could write for hours about my abhoration of the Howard government’s race-politics but thinking about it for too long does my head in, turns my stomach and makes my heart bleed. So, here ends this rant...for now.

Postscript 9/10/07 Evidence the 'dog whistle' is being heard loud and clear from Wagga Wagga (NSW) where there are reports of African refugees being racially vilified in the streets following Kevin Andrew's racist outburst. The African community in Wagga Wagga has called a public meeting to try to address the problem. (Read more)    [read more]