A question of race

This week, Angus Taylor unveiled the Coalition’s much hyped immigration policy. 

Taylor proposed a series of measures that, shall we say, raised more questions than answers. 

Central to his ‘plan’ was to make staying in the country dependent on embodying Australian values. Putting aside the blindingly obvious fact that it’s impossible to reliably test for this, it also ignores the fact that some of the most proudly held Australian values are a fair go and mateship.

Next, he promised to implement tough vetting for social accounts, which presumably won’t discriminate against those who have told themselves what a great job they’re doing on a public platform. 

Or how about making it a requirement for any permanent visa holder to learn English, despite the fact just 3.4% of the Australian population report speaking English "not well" or "not at all"? 

This is, of course, all an attempt to cover a right flank that is increasingly at threat from One Nation, whose newly minted MP Barnaby Joyce this week made a hackneyed attempt at populism by…defending a convicted rapist? Australian values at their finest, obviously.

We all know what this is really about. The clue is in the title. 

There’s no need to put a neat button on this one. Mainly because AusPol’s very own Sass Queen, Malcolm Turnbull, did it better than we ever could.