A nice line in bigotry By Phillip Adams 

 I WISH to apologise to the bigots of Australia. I've been wrong to attack you, week after week, on the issue of asylum-seekers. It was rude of me to single out the out-and-out racists for harsh criticism. Or to complain of your abusive, obscene, frequently illiterate and often anonymous letters. 

When, of course, I should have been thanking you. Thanking you for your honesty. Your unequivocal,
straightforward, cards-on-the-table, foul-mouthed, hard-hearted, unapologetic loathing of people from the Middle East and particularly from Afghanistan seeking a new life in Australia.

Your utterances, an increasingly familiar form of political pornography, make a dramatic and welcome contrast with the coded, veiled, mealy-mouthed expressions from the 'I'm not a racist but' members of Australia's middle and upper-middle classes including those in the upper echelons of the mainstream parties who aren't for a moment (heaven forbid, what a suggestion!) opposed to dark-skinned immigrants, let alone Muslims. Their sole concern is, of course, for the 'integrity of our borders' and 'following correct procedures'.

Many of these people, similar to John Howard and Kim Beazley, are professing Christians who love their enemies, suffer the little children to come unto them and would see in any rejection of refugees an echo of the plight of Joseph and Mary who, with little baby Jesus, were given the bum's rush in Bethlehem.

So three cheers for the bigots who know the truth and don't hesitate to say it out loud. Or to spray it out loud. You see their views writ large on walls, aerosoled by arseholes on freeways, not to mention mosques. Baying, bellowing and bullying, the bigots set themselves apart in their rejection of euphemism. In contrast with so many of my fellow citizens who are disingenuous and hypocritical, camouflaging real meanings in double-speak and/or bureaucratic twaddle.

The racism of nice people who live in nice houses in nice suburbs and say nice things to their nice friends is as subtle and tasteful as their furnishings and objets d'art. Like dishes for their dinner parties, it's put together from the finest ingredients. It arrives on my desk gift-wrapped in layer after layer of perfect prose, couched (and couched is a good word, suggestive of ample upholstery) in language of decorum and moderation, to such an extent that one suspects, all too often, the person expressing the views is blissfully ignorant of what he or she is saying. Or meaning.

 Yet it boils down to the same thing. What the uncouth snarl on talkback radio, the couth whose necks are
white-collared rather than red present not as prejudice but patriotism. Or realism. As in: "Look, it would be lovely to help these people but . . .".

 There is, nonetheless, a quality of desperation in many of the arguments, with people clinging to key phrases like, yes, drowning refugees to pieces of flotsam. They clutch at the official line ? that the refugees aren't refugees, asylum-seekers aren't asylum-seekers but illegals or queue-jumpers. That they haven't jumped queues or broken laws is irrelevant, just as the law of the sea was irrelevant in the Tampa situation. Just as criticisms from the UN on our absurd and crude manoeuvrings go unheard. Not even the drowning of hundreds upon hundreds of people, many desperate women and children, failed to disturb the serenity and equanimity of these nice people. There's something absolutely monstrous about the indifference of the nice to human suffering. And there's something odd when an atheist has to remind these characters, who so frequently profess their Christianity, that they'd make Jesus Christ want to puke.
 

Let's test the waters with a Geoffrey Robertson-style hypothetical. A boat is approaching our shores. It carries 500 Anglicans and Presbyterians from the Falkland Islands, fleeing another attack from the Argentine government, which is taking advantage of the British having all their military eggs in the Afghanistan basket. Ask yourself this question, nice people. Will these white folk, these Christians, these refugees of English stock, be turned away? Turned away from Christmas Island? Will there be no room at the Australian inn? Will they be frog-marched on to naval vessels and dumped on that literal shit heap, Nauru?

Now another boat hoves into view. It's full of white farmers and their families, fleeing the brutalities of Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Will we turn then away with our navy or will our ships form a guard of honour to guide them to our shores?

What about a boat full of Greeks fleeing a renewed outbreak of the Cyprus conflict, brought about by those
wretched Turkish Muslims? Given the size of our Greek communities, would any Australian politician dare propose that they be turned back to Indonesia?

We have learned that the captain of the Tampa was threatened by Australian officials with charges of being a people smuggler. That he was told the Tampa would be seized and sold. Will the same threat be made to the
captains of the vessels I've described? Or will we welcome the passengers to Australia, citing special circumstances and dusting off the family renewal category for immigrants? 

And if, perchance, their vessels sink at sea, and hundreds of them drown, will we simply shrug and change the subject? Not bloody likely. 

Stop press: Here comes another boat. It's from Aceh, full of Indonesian Christians. Now this will be hard for the nice people because there might well be impassioned concerns expressed by Australia's religious hierarchy who have, with honourable exceptions, seemed detached from our ongoing scandal.

Christians fleeing persecution? That might, just might, stir the Governor-General into saying something. Having marched beside Peter Hollingworth during Vietnam moratoria, I've been waiting for him to do something, say something, say anything, on the moral, ethical and, yes, spiritual issues raised by this, the most profound and divisive crisis we've faced in decades. Where Bill Deane would have been speaking out, as only Bill could, in defiance of prime ministerial disapproval, my old friend Peter, erstwhile Anglican archbishop of Brisbane, has been as quiet as a church mouse.

Let's not kid ourselves, nice people. The bigots know what's going on and rejoice in it. Their tirades are vastly preferable to the hypocrisies of the more sophisticated players in this disgusting game.

philadams@ozemail.com.au