F is for farce, P is for police state, S is for slippery slope

August 28, 2015 2:04 AM

A plan to conduct Operation Fortitude, a joint operation between the Victorian Police and the newly-created paramilitary Border Force as not been well received by the people of Melbourne who, to put it mildly, did not like the idea of being forced to show their papers in spot checks this Saturday. As Lenore Taylor says, Australian Border Force has united the nation against it. The Police say it was all a terrible misunderstanding over the wording of a press release typed by a "low level official". The original release has been removed.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says he had no knowledge of the operation.

Border Force: could you be stopped by an official?

And, of course, memes.

The Australian Federal Police has been quick to point out it "does not and will not stop people at random in the streets", despite earlier statements that officials woul;d be “positioned at various locations around the CBD speaking with any individual we cross paths with”.

At least one independent politician said East Germany’s Stasi would be delighted with the Australian Border Force.

posted by Mezentian (65 comments total)

Well, my parents living in Sheriff Joeville, AZ would love Melbourne, it seems.

I just literally do not understand how they can do this without profiling, short of stopping literally every person they see. And how do actual Aistralian citizens prove their citizenship if they're stopped? My husband sounds pretty English but he's Aussie. Would he be stopped on grounds of a suspicious accent and held till he could get his passport sent to them? Do they even think this stuff through?
posted by olinerd at 2:29 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, my parents living in Sheriff Joeville, AZ would love Melbourne, it seems.

We have strict gun laws... so maybe they might not.

I just literally do not understand how they can do this without profiling, short of stopping literally every person they see.

Given how multicultural Melbourne is, on a Saturday of all days, that bit has me baffled.

And how do actual Aistralian citizens prove their citizenship if they're stopped?

I assume they figured most people would have some proof of residence, which is not likely. That's the only thing that makes me believe there might have been some miscommunication about the involvement of Border Force.
posted by Mezentian at 2:36 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, this:
Labor leader Bill Shorten did not condemn the operation but queried why it had been telegraphed to the media
posted by Mezentian at 2:51 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Someone on Twitter has posted a few pics of people actually being stopped, so looks like it is going ahead... Under the pretence of "litter control". Because those people don't look like they were profiled at all, huh?
posted by lollusc at 2:58 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

olinerd: "Would he be stopped on grounds of a suspicious accent and held till he could get his passport sent to them?"

This is one of the things that confounded me while growing up in Texas. We had regular run-ins with the green truck guys, or Customs and Border Patrol (they, at least in the southwest region, drove trucks painted in a green hue that no one else ever used so you could spot them from a mile away), especially when on vacation in South Texas. A Texas driver license didn't, at the time, prove citizenship. It still doesn't but certain people can't get one because proof of legal US residency is now required. This also predated passport cards so there was no available option to carry proof of citizenship in a wallet form. I wondered, on more than one occasion, what someone who didn't look or sound (I have an accent, y'all) would have done.

It wasn't until years later, after I left, that the am I being detained dudes showed that I had no actual obligation to stop for them. So, one point in their favor, I suppose.

Australia, as it seems, has no national ID card system and the ID cards that are issued similarly do not prove citizenship. Unlike, say, most European countries that do have ID cards for citizens*. So, yet again, like yourself I am compelled to wonder what someone who is out and about—especially someone on public transport who may not drive or have a driver license—might show to "prove" citizenship... This is, of course, on top of the overarching question of what the crap is the government doing?

* slight derail, since Germany was mentioned several times: a German passport or ID card doesn't, according to the Bundesrepublik, prove citizenship. It provides the presumption. Only a certificate of nationality is conclusive proof.
posted by fireoyster at 3:02 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

The only explanation for this I've read that makes any kind of sense is that the BORDER FORCE!!! operatives would mostly have been sitting around waiting for the cops to pull over dodgy taxi drivers then running checks to find out whether the ones here on visas were in breach of their work conditions, and the whole "speaking with any individual we cross paths with" thing was just someone getting a bit loose on the dye fumes from their new BORDER FORCE!!! uniform since the BORDER FORCE!!! doesn't actually have the power to randomly stop people in the street and ask for their papers, please. But who knows. If those Twitter photos lollusc just posted are what they look like...
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:04 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

If those Twitter photos lollusc just posted are what they look like...
Snazzy threads BORDER FORCE!!! has, if that is them.

You know who else had snazzy threads?
posted by Mezentian at 3:08 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

lollusc: "Under the pretence of "litter control"."

"Oh hey it looks like you dropped this expired visa out of your passport, gonna need you to step over here while we get this all sorted out. Can't have bits of paper flying around now can we?"
posted by fireoyster at 3:09 AM on August 28, 2015

Ha ha, I hadn't seen the FDOTM cartoon before I started writing BORDER FORCE!!! like that. It just seems so obviously the way it's meant to be written.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:10 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you go round looking like a wrong'un, you've really only got yourself to blame.
posted by Segundus at 3:11 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

As someone said, these are taken outside the RMIT Language Centre, so there are going to be a lot of peeved international students tonight.
posted by Mezentian at 3:11 AM on August 28, 2015

If that stupefied cretin Dutton didn't know about this, I'll eat my hat. Dutton was befuddlingly incompetent last time he was in government, coupled with Abbott's declaration of a weekly security deliverable, as if this didn't come straight from PM.

The idea of preannouncing a sting operation is... Novel to say the least.

Andrew's statement clearly alludes to the routine nature the operation was meant to be, until it got hijacked by bumbling apes.
posted by smoke at 3:22 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm just impressed by the apparent necessity of a border enforcement agency in a country with no international borders.
posted by ardgedee at 3:32 AM on August 28, 2015 [17 favorites]

I'm just impressed by the apparent necessity of a border enforcement agency in a country with no international borders.

We actually have a border that measures 59,736km, although, true, we don't have anyone bumping up against us.

But WE HAVE TO STOP THE BOATS by putting immigration officers in central Melbourne.... or people will die at sea!
posted by Mezentian at 3:37 AM on August 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

Border Force members who have contacted their union are understandably furious about the government's actions.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:37 AM on August 28, 2015

It's precisely the absence of international (land) borders that lets imaginations run wild on the topic. (A French philosopher from the 1970s or at a pinch a German(ic) psychologist from a few decades earlier could make the argument in their sleep.)
posted by No-sword at 3:39 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

But WE HAVE TO STOP THE BOATS by putting immigration officers in central Melbourne.... or people will die at sea!

Which raises the question—if this is security theatre, then who's the audience? Presumably not Melburnians themselves. The kind of rural and suburban Australian TV watchers for whom central Melbourne represents everything wrong with modern Straya?
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:41 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Melbourne in Abbott's Australia seems to be a bit like Barcelona in Franco's Spain; a place whose loyalty and compliance are not particularly solid.
posted by acb at 3:48 AM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Presumably not Melburnians themselves.

I think the ones who are not stopped in Melbourne and xenophobic enough (you know, aside from those people who are the bad kind of xenophobic about the CHAFTA), and everyone else.

I can almost see why someone thought this was a good idea, because they didn't think it through (beyond perhaps focus groups). But we are dealing with the worst federal government ever.
(Incidentally, that link explains why, if you listen to as much parliament as I do, they are still banging on about ANZAC).
posted by Mezentian at 3:49 AM on August 28, 2015

I read Victorian police as from under queen Victoria and not the state of Victoria.
It still did not make sense
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 3:53 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Unlike, say, most European countries that do have ID cards for citizens*

That prove legal residency. I am not a citizen of the country in which I live, but I carry an identification card - the same type every citizen carries - which I have to show ALL the time (at the bank, at the public library, at the liquor store, and in every single interaction with officialdom) - to prove my identity and legal residence. I don't have a driver's license (don't need one) and the ID card is provided for free by a variety of agencies so there is no barrier to entry for citizens and legal residents.

There aren't any brown-shirted government agents patrolling the streets looking for foreigners and demanding that I hand over my ID card to prove legal residence, but there are enough instances in ordinary life where I have to that it serves the purpose without being intrusive and selective. I don't know why every country doesn't do this.
posted by three blind mice at 3:59 AM on August 28, 2015

Labor leader Bill Shorten did not condemn the operation but queried why it had been telegraphed to the media

Maybe Bill Shorten should just move over to the other side of the bench and let the Greens be the official opposition.
posted by Talez at 4:03 AM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

I don't know why every country doesn't do this.

I'm not sure how that would go down, symbolically speaking, in Australia, or indeed in other former settler colonies where there is a large and highly visible indigenous minority who really shouldn't have to prove "legal residence" in a nation administered and overseen by people who arrived only a century or two ago.
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:04 AM on August 28, 2015 [12 favorites]

Citizen ID?
You unlocked the AUSTRALIA CARD!

It .... was not Hawke's most popular idea.
And that was before everyone was tracked via their metadata.
posted by Mezentian at 4:05 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I read on Twitter that part of the reason for the multi-organisation project is that in Victoria, traffic/public transport cops have the authority to ask for your ID. BORDER FORCE!!! does not, but if you pair them up then you get a wider range of powers.

However I can't find this info again - is it correct? Or Just speculation from the kind of people who want to look knowledgeable on social media?
posted by harriet vane at 4:12 AM on August 28, 2015

From the Border Force: could you be stopped by an official? link:

What powers do Border Force officials have?

Border Force officials have a range of powers to enforce migration laws, including the power to compel a person to produce such documents as visas and tax file numbers to check whether they are an unlawful non-citizen.
But the Human Rights Law Centre's executive director, Hugh de Kretser, said all such powers could only be exercised if the official had a reasonable suspicion someone had breached a migration offence.

So, no, that seems like pure speculation.

My understanding is that PT cops don't have that right at all, unless you are riding for free and they want to ticket you, and regular police need that 'reasonable suspicion' defence (there was some ker-fuffle about stop and search laws a few years back here), which in a sweep like this seems like it would be hard to prove at law.
posted by Mezentian at 4:18 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I read on Twitter that part of the reason for the multi-organisation project is that in Victoria, traffic/public transport cops have the authority to ask for your ID. BORDER FORCE!!! does not, but if you pair them up then you get a wider range of powers.

Traffic police can only stop you and demand your licence if you're driving and transit cops can't do shit outside their jurisdiction.
posted by Talez at 4:21 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

This little section of Laura Tingle's piece from a couple of weeks ago really seems to have resonated:

A meeting of the National Security Committee of the cabinet has, however, recently asked for a list of national-security-related things that could be announced weekly between now and the election.
posted by hawthorne at 4:23 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

As a non-citizen who has given over more information than I was anywhere near comfortable doing (in short: everything) to get a partner visa, this fuckwittery has left me stunned; if I were stopped on the street this weekend and literally asked for my papers, I would respond, I think, with apoplectic rage.

Fuck this, fuck them and fuck their wet dreams of an ass-backwards panopticon of a society.

Much like Cato the Elder, feel free to assume a postscript to everything I write, to the effect of:
  Moreover, fuck Tony Abbott.
posted by flippant at 4:24 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Perhaps it's time for an Approved Brown Person Card to be issued to suspiciously swarthy-looking people in Australia, so that they can prove their right to be there? Each card would have an expiry date, and also an [ ] Islamic check box.

</🍔>
posted by acb at 4:26 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a non-citizen who has given over more information than I was anywhere near comfortable doing (in short: everything) to get a partner visa, this fuckwittery has left me stunned

I've not tried it myself, but I gather getting a Green Card for the US is even more invasive.

Fuck this, fuck them and fuck their wet dreams of an ass-backwards panopticon of a society.

Well, there's an election coming up next year.
Or next month, if you think Canning will kill Tony, and scare the bejesus out of them.
posted by Mezentian at 4:27 AM on August 28, 2015

Much like Cato the Elder, feel free to assume a postscript to everything I write, to the effect of:
Moreover, fuck Tony Abbott.

Antonio Delenda Est?
posted by Sonny Jim at 4:30 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Antonio Delenda Est?

BORDER FORCE!!! needs to see your papers, sir.
posted by Mezentian at 4:32 AM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

Or next month, if you think Canning will kill Tony, and scare the bejesus out of them.

Only problem is, Abbott's replacement may be Scott Morrison, who is genuinely scary. While Abbott is an incompetent petty authoritarian with a laughably backward vision, Morrison is the kind of dead-eyed psychopath one could imagine signing off on genocide, were it expedient.
posted by acb at 4:34 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was in meetings all day, so I emerged from a meeting room around 4pm and caught up on the announcement, outcry, protest, commentary and backpedaling. Fun times.

I'm in Australia on a working visa. I have no idea how I would even begin to prove that were I stopped in the street. I don't carry my passport with me, I'm not eligible for Medicare (so I don't have a card), I don't have a driver's licence. How would a check even go down??

I've not tried it myself, but I gather getting a Green Card for the US is even more invasive.

Meh, we could probably do without a "it's worse in the US!" derail.
posted by third word on a random page at 4:51 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Any protest led by Ezekiel Ox has my unquestioning support.

But what IS all this? It's everywhere. UK politicians are spluttering with fury that we're being overrun by illegals who can only be controlled by new laws, new powers.

Borders are bullshit. We can't afford them. Is here a Citizens Without Borders I can sign up to?
posted by Devonian at 4:52 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

What the actual %$#@.
posted by Coaticass at 4:55 AM on August 28, 2015

I don't have a driver's licence. How would a check even go down??

Congratulations! You've won an all expenses paid Pacific holiday!
posted by Mezentian at 5:06 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

gloriously excruciating press conference . I still say Dutton was involved somehow. This smacks of govt incompetence.

Oh, and piss on bill shorten for his typically mealy mouthed and timid response.
posted by smoke at 5:22 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the facts, Mezentian and Talez.

I'm so angry about this. I can only imagine how scared other people who might be targeted by this kind of racist dick-waving.
posted by harriet vane at 5:24 AM on August 28, 2015

Papieren bitte, mate.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:29 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Next up on Tony Abbott's plans to make Australians safer: The government will issue all non-citizens with gold stars for picking such an awesome country to visit!
posted by Talez at 5:40 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Australian security continues to prove a reliable joke. Although overshadowed by today's events, another amusing story was the NSW government closing the wrong barn door.

The original release has been removed.

Still accessible on the ABF website.
posted by kithrater at 5:41 AM on August 28, 2015

Youse'll be laughing on the other side of yer faces when the death cult comes knocking.
posted by Wolof at 5:49 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Remember when the Western propaganda would vilify Eastern countries for the totalitarian practice of demanding papers? Good thing we won the cold war!
posted by srboisvert at 6:42 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

To be fair, Australia is even further east than Russia.
posted by No-sword at 6:46 AM on August 28, 2015

To be fair, Australia is even further east than Russia.

Well, New South Wales seems to have borrowed Russian policies* on banning “gay propaganda” to minors (currently in kneejerk decree form, rather than a “gay propaganda” law), so parts of Australia would feel right at home in Putin's “Conservative International”.

* which, to be fair, were probably more than a little influenced by Thatcher's Section 28 in the 1980s.
posted by acb at 6:54 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

What powers do Border Force!!! officials have?

Border Force officials have a range of powers to enforce migration laws, including the power to compel a person to produce such documents as visas and tax file numbers to check whether they are an unlawful non-citizen.

And, of course, the flying motorcycles.
posted by Naberius at 7:00 AM on August 28, 2015

Youse'll be laughing on the other side of yer faces when the death cult comes knocking.

This Death Cult? I'd be down with that incursion.
posted by Mezentian at 7:44 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Because those people don't look like they were profiled at all, huh?

I wonder if #borderfarce hashtag-users might have a sample bias?
posted by Sunburnt at 9:48 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Running gag among Aussies in my social circles is "At least the Nazis shouted please when demanding to see your papers!"

As dystopic as Britain sometimes strives to be, carrying ID in public is still neither expected nor required.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 10:59 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

You guys, you guys. There's nothing in this. These are dummy law enforcement groups set up to distract us from the real invasion landing site, which I understand to be somewhere in Norway or perhaps the Pas de Calais, according to like, everyone on my payroll.
posted by Hypatia at 11:14 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

First Dog On The Moon is on the case today.
posted by Mezentian at 7:24 PM on August 28, 2015

And just as I am about to possibly return to Australia, since I finally have PR (only took about 5 years of anguish and tens of thousands of dollars) and theoretically should find it easier to get a job. Maybe. Who knows.

(Also, having dealt with long-term visa stuff from US and Australia, Australia is by far worse. Though granted I haven't tried getting a US green card yet. Nothing tops Malaysia though.)
posted by divabat at 7:46 PM on August 28, 2015

"low level official"

Sandi Logan explains how press releases usually work in DIBP.
posted by kithrater at 8:58 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sandi Logan explains how press releases usually work in DIBP.

The only issue I have with that:
1. Not enough layers.
2. If PDuddy was involved, why wasn't he at the press conference, show-boating?
posted by Mezentian at 9:56 PM on August 28, 2015

three blind mice wrote: "There aren't any brown-shirted government agents patrolling the streets looking for foreigners and demanding that I hand over my ID card to prove legal residence, but there are enough instances in ordinary life where I have to that it serves the purpose without being intrusive and selective. I don't know why every country doesn't do this."

Try being non white in Belgium (where ID cards are compulsory from the age of 10) and see how many times you get stopped for an "ID check".
posted by humph at 1:31 PM on August 29, 2015

It's time for Shorten to go, preferably with a knife to the back so he can discover how it feels. If he isn't gone before the next election we. are. really. fucked. As much as I might like the Greens I would still rather a Labor victory with the Greens holding upper house balance of power.
Also: fuck the border force. What an outrageously wasteful and unnecessarily provocative sleight of hand. Fuck you Tone, you wanker.
posted by peacay at 12:32 AM on August 30, 2015

As much as I might like the Greens I would still rather a Labor victory with the Greens holding upper house balance of power.

How far are we from the nearest possibility of the Greens forming government? A few election cycles at least, I'd guess, assuming that Labor remain spineless and devoid of purpose, vaciliating between the government line, the Murdoch tabloids and the most recent focus group reports, and the Tories remain in power.
posted by acb at 10:16 AM on August 30, 2015

The great Australian author Richard Flanagan writes on Border Force in The Guardian.

"Australia's treatment of asylum seekers was bound to lead to something like Border Force"
posted by chris88 at 6:48 PM on August 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks chris88 - I came back here to post that article.

acb, the big problem as I see it, is that Labor has very very little talent now. The only way that sorry lot will get past the post is on the back of Lib-hate; it won't be because they shine with eloquence or policy chops. And after the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd fiasco, there's about zero% possibility of Shorten being removed. We live in sad and stupid times.
posted by peacay at 2:40 AM on August 31, 2015

No talent? I'm a greens vote through and through, however if you don't think Wong, Plibersek, Leigh, Butler, Albo, Carr, Dreyfus etc don't have the chops, I'm genuinely surprised. Even Shorten, while not exactly killing it in the charisma department did very good work on the NDIS. The Rudd/Gillard govts may have not been great at leading, but don't confuse that with an inability to govern. Those parliaments were, on the whole, effective from a public policy point of view and it's a record they should mostly be proud of. Don't swallow Abbott's nonsense about a dysfunctional parliament; we have one of those now, and the difference in terms of legislation put up, passed, and the quality thereof is pretty stark, imho.
posted by smoke at 5:44 AM on August 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

No talent?

Despite the talent on the Opposition front bench, they're also all party hacks who'll back the public line no matter how absurd or demeaning it may be. Comparatively, Turnbull is allowed to do a lot more to distinguish himself from the Abbott.

Labor's the party of bland technocrats working to semi-competently implement the vestiges of the 1980s neoliberal revolution. They're a refreshing contrast to the incoherent ideologues that control the Coalition, who's only agenda is to re-enact the Culture Wars and hope they win this time, oblivious to the fact that the rest of the country moved on a long time ago.
posted by kithrater at 6:49 AM on August 31, 2015

On a slight tangent, a piece on how the Religious Right took over the Liberal Party in Australia, despite Australian public opinion being a lot less pro-theocratic than in the US.
posted by acb at 8:03 AM on August 31, 2015

I said "little", not "no", talent. While I might have a bit of a disagreement about the political virtues of some Labor ranks, let it be recorded for posterity that I regard the current govt. as about the worst in my lifetime and I would gladly hand the reins of the country to the Greens before seeing any Lib govt be returned. I just have perhaps a longer memory and a greater belief in the Labor depth of past decades.
posted by peacay at 10:01 AM on August 31, 2015