A new phrase to enter the lexicon, apart from “at the end of the day” and “going forward,” is “virtue-signalling.” I used it in a column recently and a number of people asked me, “What does it mean?”
It appears to have been coined by James Bartholomew writing in the Spectator in April 2015. He defined virtue-signalling as an act that does not require actually doing anything virtuous. He maintains that it “does not involve delivering lunch to elderly neighbours or staying together with a spouse for the sake of the children; it takes no effort or sacrifice at all.”
And now Australian commentators are accusing the New Zealand government of virtue-signalling. In November Jacinda Ardern said she did not regard the plight of refugees, asylum seekers and other detainees on Manus Island and Nauru “as acceptable.”
This was a clear criticism of the Australian government. To add insult to injury Ms Ardern offered to take 150 of the Manus Island refugees and bring them to our shores.
Writing in the Inquirer Gerard Henderson, the executive director of the Sydney Institute, said this sounded very virtuous. “Over the ditch, there is a generous, young, female, left-of-centre Prime Minister, while Malcolm Turnbull is channeling the hard-line policy of his coalition predecessors John Howard and Tony Abbott. However the New Zealand Prime Minister’s gesture disguises one central fact: her country is not as generous to asylum seekers as Australia – and never has been.”
He then goes on to quote some statistics that don’t make us look too virtuous. Australia’s population is close to 25 million where ours is just under 5 million. Under its refugee and humanitarian programme Australia accepts 13,750 persons each year.
NZ’s customary annual refugee intake is 750.
The disparity, on a per-head-of-population basis, is prodigious.
It’s much the same with the response of both our nations to the civil war in Syria. The Abbot government committed Australia to provide an extra 12,000 places for individuals displaced by the conflict. This policy has been continued by the Turnbull government. The 12,000 from Syria is in addition 13,750 regular places each year.
We were not so charitable. In 2015 the National government agreed to accept 750 Syrian refugees, only 600 of whom were by way of special emergency intake above our annual quota of 750.
As far as I am aware our Labour coalition government is continuing this policy.
Australia’s disinclination to take up NZs offer to accept 150 of the Manus Island detainees is understandable. Since our two nations have an effective open border in respect to our citizens, anyone who is accepted by us is entitled to enter Australia in due course. Australia is still recovering from a time when criminal people smugglers played a key role in that nation’s immigration intake, which also saw more than 1000 children, women and men drowning at sea. Any suggestion that asylum seekers can find their way to Australia via New Zealand will encourage people smugglers to revamp their deadly business.
Gerard Henderson is also critical of our commitment to our armed forces. We spend just one per cent of GDP on defence whereas Australia spends two. Henderson reckons we benefit from the actions of the Australian Defence Force in providing security in the South Pacific and as a result we get our national preservation on the cheap.
James Bartholomew might well have had us in mind when he coined the phrase.
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