Just when you thought the Government’s “stop-the-boats” rhetoric couldn’t get more tasteless, they decide to turn the misguided message into a telemovie.
The Federal Government is spending more than $4 million to fund a telemovie aimed at deterring asylum seekers from travelling to Australia by boat.
Now, it’s not exactly the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster — it’s certainly less than the $21.6 million they forked out to have the fifth instalment of Pirates of the Carribean filmed in Queensland — but for a government insisting they’re in the midst of a budget crisis, it does seem a little over-the-top.
The drama, which will be screened in countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, has been touted as a tool to highlight the dangers of seeking asylum by boat, ABC’s Lateline program revealed last night.
Sydney-based production company Put It Out There Pictures has been given the $4.1 million contract for the project, which will include storylines about the Australian Navy and asylum seekers drowning at sea.
“Television soap operas and telemovies are proven media to reach the target audience when seeking to deliver complex messages,” a spokesperson for the Immigration Department told Lateline.
“Each broadcast will be accompanied by a major awareness campaign across television and social media.”
In other words? The project is as a straight-up piece of propaganda.
It is essentially the telemovie equivalent of the Rudd government’s 2013 advertising campaign: a heavy-handed message to dissuade asylum seekers — delivered, rather ridiculously, via a medium many displaced people are unlikely to be able to consume.
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Western and European countries cannot keep accepting refugees forever and something really needs to be done as It is simply unustainable because you just cannot help everyone. We cannot look after the all people that are here now (look at hospital waiting periods, access to mental health, Indigenous communities living in third world conditions, our wildlife losing their habitat for developments etc), so it doesn't make us bad people to put a cap on the numbers of people arriving here (by plane or boat) to ensure the resources that we have are sustainable now and for our future.
In an emergency on a plane we are told to fit our oxygen masks first before helping anyone else. That doesn't make us selfish, it just means that we need to enusre that our own needs are met before helping others. This needs to be done on a global scale before we reach crisis point.
What... They want to warn them of the danger the trip poses to the lives of their families AND that they won't be getting into Australia anyway.... Talk about ruining the surprise for the ones that make it, what bastards!
but the govt says they've stopped the boats.....Why would they need to make this film then? Surely word has already gotten around?
I see where your trying to go, so without getting into researching actual numbers, maybe we can say they have stopped the boats arriving in Australia, and that by all reports from countries asylum seekers were traveling through on their way to Indonesian boats that the flow has stopped or reduced to a trickle?, perhaps that trickle is coming from countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the video is to ensure the word continues to get around.
They probably could have done it cheaper by installing some destination signs,
Australia 13,000 klm and a leaky boat >>>>
<<<< Great Britain 5,000 klm drive there
May not have gone down well in London though!
No, I don't think that would have been a popular move.
The big problem is that Australia has signed up to the convention on asylum seekers and is continuing to breach them. This is just a nasty addition to those breaches.