Posted on 07/06/2015 5:22:16 PM PDT by naturalman1975
AUSTRALIANS leaving for holidays at the weekend will have noticed new signage at airport departure terminals announcing a new force watching us.
Even the plastic tape marking queue lines to official counters proclaimed this new instrument of regulation and policing: Border Force.
However, few of those travellers would have noticed anything else different, even though this agency is one of the most powerful in the country and one of the most important politically for the Abbott Government.
It is another element of its promise to voters to “stop the boats”.
The new body essentially combined the frontline functions of Customs and Immigration into one agency with spiffy new uniforms and a military-minded approach to its job.
The quasi-paramilitary Border Force was launched last week by the Prime Minister with a triple appeal to the deity.
“May God bless you, may God bless your work, may God bless the country you are helping to protect and prosper,” Mr Abbott told Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg.
.....
Prime Minister Abbott said the aim of the new body was to “ensure the legitimate passage of people and goods through our borders while preventing all illegal passage”.
Customs officers will still want to monitor whether we are bring plants back or more than $10,000 in cash, but elsewhere under Border Force there will be significant changes. It will be a presence on the high sea and in asylum seeker detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island and on the mainland.
The Immigration Department once was dedicated to welcoming people here. Border Force is one of the Government’s chief weapons in making people unwelcome.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Umm, they don’t have any borders, they’re an island.
Maritime borders are a thing.
Good, I hope they are very successful.
Nice to see BOTH PARTIES wanting to keep your country secure - at least that’s how it looks from the article.
Broadly speaking true, but Labor doesn’t like looking like it’s tough on this issue, because it knows a large part of its base doesn’t like it - so they wind up helping to pass the laws in Parliament and then trying to pretend they had nothing to do with them for electoral reasons.
Yes, we’re lucky in some ways.
I despise the Australian Labor Party’s political beliefs, but I could never deny that most of them remain genuine patriots sincerely trying to do what they believe is right for their country. I think they are wrong about what that is, but for the most part, their intent is true.
There are exceptions.
LOL...but they do sound like part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.
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