Does Home Affairs have any faith in the right to citizenship?

Home Affairs’ latest mask-slip — after a senior portfolio bureaucrat implied that Australian citizenship is a “privilege” — came as little surprise to some Crikey readers, who saw it as merely an extension of the department’s “broken thinking”. Elsewhere. Readers discussed the dangers of Australia’s lagging oil reserves, and asked who had allowed it to happen.

On Home Affairs

John Richardson writes: The claim by Home Affairs assistant secretary Derek Bopping that “citizenship is a privilege” may have come as a shock to some of our precious parliamentarians but Australians should not be under any illusion that this is the view of those who believe that everything should fall within the remit of government. After all, what better way to ensure compliance? This bent and broken thinking has been permitted to infect our nation’s psyche by those who support totalitarianism and care not a jot for our so-called “democracy” and the natural rights and freedoms that all Australians take for granted; including the birthright or lawfully conferred right of “citizenship”. The very last right that should be the gift of any government.

On oil reserves

John Gleeson writes: In the event of a national emergency Australian is reliant on delivery from overseas vessels. Additionally, should ships need major repair work, Singapore is the nearest location for specialist repairs. Add to that the rundown of fuel stocks, especially that fact that there is only 22 days of diesel oil reserves, and we have a potential disaster that has been years in the making. Not discussed either are the reserves of lubricating oils, needed just as much as fuel oils.

Chris Jones writes: On the subject of fuel reserves, the Australian Electric Vehicle Association has long argued that we wouldn’t need to import much oil at all if we just moved to electric vehicles.  We would save tens of billions of dollars each year on oil not being bought — funds we could easily divert into locally produced renewable electricity.

Peter Schulz writes: This idiot government is so obsessed with dog-whistling the national security threat of a few rickety boatloads of asylum seekers that it can’t see the real threats to our national security, such as this one. National security of our energy supplies might be worth a cursory glance or two, but not if it impinges on the sacredness of the market or the short-term self-interest of the big corporates who donate so generously to both major parties and provide all those lovely sinecures to retiring politicians.

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