Mass media try con tricks in asylum seeker war of words

In the asylum seeker war of words, how do con artists win hearts and minds?  The Murdoch empire is providing lessons in a breathtakingly blatant way.

On Monday evening Channel Nine aired a ‘news’ item about refugees and Centrelink benefits.

I didn’t see it, but an outraged friend called me afterwards and said it looked like an election ad, nothing like ‘news’.

In the transcript:

The information about numbers of refugees on New Start etc was the ‘result of a Nine investigation’. I don’t think that getting statistics from government departments rates as an ‘investigation’ – but this one ‘needed’ a ‘Freedom of Information request’ – so that proves that ‘they’ must have been trying to hide it.

‘Refugees are creating a soaring welfare headache for taxpayers’ – Centrelink benefits + refugees = welfare headache.

Centrelink benefits + the rest of us = ?.

By implication, refugees are not taxpayers. Nor are they really Australians.

‘Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said he believed Australia was entitled to wonder whether at least some refugees were actually “economic migrants” wanting a more comfortable life.’

Meaning: this channel will not say straight out that refugees are just economic bludgers, but if we quote an ‘authority’ you’ll get the drift.

Then another Murdoch outlet, the Australian, printed an article from John Pasquarelli, former senior adviser to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

John did not pussy-foot around. The people on boats are the ‘illegals and their criminal co-conspirators, the people-smugglers’.

 ‘A new Australia is in the making, where our ethnic minorities will become majorities’. And there will be more ‘unrest in Sydney’s west’.

Who is responsible for the ‘unrest in Sydney’s west’?

‘56,000 Vietnamese refugees’. And Malcolm Fraser for allowing them in because he felt guilty about the Vietnam war.

Thousands of Lebanese Muslims let in because of a ‘suspension of normal eligibility standards’

But wait, it is ‘not just multiculturalism that is fuelling anger’.

Huh? John hadn’t mentioned multicuturalism hadn’t mentioned before this, just ‘unrest in Sydney’s west’.

So, ‘unrest in Sydney’s west’ = ‘multiculturalism’. Easy.

John: ‘Sadly, these mainstream Australians have no one with the courage to become their flag-bearer in these challenging times’.

Assumption- people taken in by this crap are ‘mainstream Australians’.

Good point though. I must agree.

We mainstream Australians have no flag bearer.

Kevin, where is your ticker?