Sometimes Australians feel like we're not always taken that seriously on the world stage, viewed only as producers of crocodile hunters, B-grade soaps and prime ministers with a bizarre taste in raw onions. So it's good to know we are finally being presented as a model for other nations to follow.
True, it's our government's policy of jailing children in horrific conditions in offshore prisons in which they suffer sustained abuse that has caught the eye of racist European politicians seeking to cynically exploit the growing numbers of mass drownings in the Mediterranean. But still, it's nice to be noticed.
Among those pointing positively to Australia's policies of refusing to settle asylum seekers who come by boat, jailing thousands of desperate people who have committed no crime indefinitely in camps widely condemned as hellholes and forcibly deporting many back to the very regimes they fled, are such charming people as English journalist Katie Hopkins.
In response to the reported drowning of as many as 1500 people, Hopkins said in a column in Murdoch's Sun tabloid: “Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.”
In the piece Hopkins, who also said “these migrants are like cochroaches”, added: “It’s time to get Australian”.
So basically, we are getting some very good press among racist psycopaths, but I suppose at least it's change from being mocked because Tony Abbott knighted Prince Philip.
Others who have hailed Abbott's approach include the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party Nigel Farage. This is a man whose party UKIP peer Lord Pearson complained that “Muslims are breeding 10 times faster than us”, and UKIP member of European parliament Godfrey Bloom, who condemned British foreign aid going to “Bongo Bongo Land”, suggesting such aid was spent on fighter jets in Pakistan and sunglasses.
Why Bloom said “sunglasses” I truly have no idea. Either Bloom opened a dictionary at a random page and said the first word he saw, or he genuinely believes it and is outraged that all these Bongo Bongo Landians seem to think they can just walk around trying to look a bit like Bono at the expense of hardworking English taxpayers.
At a St George's Day celebration on April 23, Farage hailed the harsh asylum seeker polices pushed by the Australian government, insisting: “I suspect that the Australian premier Tony Abbott actually has got this right”.
But, Farage is not without his criticism, telling the media: “Some of the ways that Australia acts on these things are tougher than we in Britain and Australia can perhaps stomach”.
Yes, the man who leads a party so racist one of its candidates said English comedian Lenny Henry should emigrate to a “Black country”, thinks that Australia is going too far in its measures to keep out asylum seekers.
This is like being told by Christopher Pyne to stop acting like such a child; or by Kyle Sandilands you are being too much of a dick; or have Abbott advise you to be a bit less misogynist.
The basis for pointing to Australia - that Australian government policies show how to stop boats and therefore save lives - is actually deeply flawed.
First, the much greater numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Europe makes Australia's approach impossible to replicate - all the jails in Europe would not be big enough to cope.
Second, the government claims no boats entered Australian waters last year, but given the extreme secrecy it has imposed over “onwater matters”, we only have their word for it. We also have no idea how many boats were stopped in international waters or the fate of any boat forced to turn back.
Finally, even if the boats were stopped, it has only “saved lives” if you ignore those who die in Australian-run prison camps, such as Reza Berati, who was bashed to death by a guard, or those who commit suicide in despair, or the documented deaths of those forcibly deported to the regimes they fled.
So, at best, our government can claim not that it is saving lives, but that it is forcing desperate people to die elsewhere.
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