17 June, 2016 13:30

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

The Australian Labor Party has today declared they will ‘get around’ to ‘discussing’ viable alternatives to the detainment of war-weary asylum seeker children on Nauru, the moment they sort out this issue with those couple of cows in Vietnam.

Labor has called for an independent office for animal welfare after video footage emerged of what appears to be recently-exported Australian cattle being bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers in Vietnamese abattoirs.

The isolated incident in Vietnam looks to be something that will be acted on immediately, and takes complete priority over the fact that the mental health of detained refugees continues to deteriorate in the sweltering hot pacific Island jail of Nauru Detention centre.

Speaking to the Today Show today, Labor MP Anthony Albanese declared that “Australians want to know that their government is going to act on Animal cruelty in a irrational and rushed fashion that results in the crushing of an entire Agricultural sector – just like we did last time”.

“We’ll address the other stuff after”

In June 2011, the ALP Gillard Government implemented a live cattle export ban for two months and had stringent new guidelines introduced as a response to a television program which showed footage of mis-treatment of Australian sourced cattle at certain Indonesian abattoirs.

In that time, Northern Australia suffered significant loss of earnings and the 2012 Federal Budget confirmed that a potential class action had been communicated to the government from livestock producers and related industries, who’s entire livelihoods had been ruined due to the actions of several uneducated meat processing workers in south-east Asia.

At the same time they were battling cruelty in foreign abattoirs, the Gillard Labor Government made it clear that cruelty towards non-Australian lives were not as big of an issue, even if they were human lives.

In 2012, Prime Minister Gillard announced the reopening Nauru detention centre and Manus Island detention centre for offshore processing of young asylum seeker families who had travelled months at sea in a leaky boat to avoid being murdered by horrifying regimes elsewhere in the world.

On 19 July 2013, newly returned Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced, “asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia” – striking a Regional Resettlement Arrangement between Australia and Papua New Guinea – an agreement that Papua New Guinea now detests and has been found to be a violation of international law.

Nauru detention centre detainee, Azim*, spoke to the Betoota Advocate today, via smoke signals he had created with left over flammables that had been used for self-immolation protests last month.

“If only I was a cow” he said.

“That might sound like I am losing my mind, which I am, but I just know if a foreign abattoir had the same amount of rapes and suicides, there would definitely be a bipartisan Government intervention within days,”

“Unfortunately I am a human export, and that’s not something Australian politicians care about. The four Prime Ministers I have seen since I arrived here have been quite indifferent to my plight.”

“I wish all the best for the cows.”