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Asylum Seekers in
Australian News Media
Mediated (In)humanity
Ashleigh Haw
Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media
 Ashleigh Haw

Asylum Seekers in
Australian News
Media
Mediated (In)humanity
Ashleigh Haw
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Deakin University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-3-031-18567-0    ISBN 978-3-031-18568-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 This book was written in Naarm (now known as Melbourne, Australia),
primarily on the stolen lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin
nation. Parts of it were also written on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri
people, and the research project at the centre of the book was completed on
the stolen lands of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people in Boorloo (now referred
to as Perth, Australia).
I acknowledge that I am an uninvited settler on these lands and I pay my
respects to their Elders, past and present. Indigenous sovereignty has never
been ceded and this always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

v
 Acknowledgements

The ideas presented in this book are a product of many fruitful discus-
sions with peers, mentors, students, research participants, friends,
and family.
First and foremost, I want to thank the 24 research participants who
donated their valuable time, ideas, reflections, and recommendations to
this project. Your candour and generosity is greatly appreciated and this
book would not exist without you. I would also like to acknowledge the
contribution of Candice Bydder, who assisted with the transcription of
my participant interviews and did an incredible job.
This work would also not have been possible without the opportuni-
ties offered by the University of Western Australia’s School of Social
Sciences, where I completed this research (funded by an Australian
Government Research Training scholarship). Special thanks to the
School’s Graduate Research Coordinator, Steven Maras, for your invalu-
able advice and support.
This brings us to my primary PhD supervisor, Farida Fozdar, whose
thoughtful and incisive observations and critiques—coupled with her
wisdom, patience, and, at times, brutal honesty—played a significant role
in helping me nurture the research, writing, and critical thinking skills
necessary to complete this project. The same goes for my co-supervisor,
Rob Cover, whose insights enabled me to broaden my understanding of
various critical media theories and pivotal work in this field.
vii
viii Acknowledgements

I am immensely grateful for the brilliant feedback offered by the exam-

iners of the research thesis this book is based on, David Nolan, Jennifer
Cheng, and Simon Goodman. In particular, I want to thank David for
his additional mentorship in the years since, and Jennifer for her excellent
pointers about publishing doctoral research as a book. On a similar note,
I want to thank the anonymous reviewers of the initial proposal I submit-
ted to Palgrave for their sharp and judicious advice and suggestions,
which enabled me to strengthen the final manuscript substantially.
A special thank you must also be extended to the wonderful people at
Palgrave Macmillan and in particular, Alice Green and Emma Sheffield
who offered incredible support throughout this process. I also want to
acknowledge the efforts of the team at Springer, notably Geetha
Selvapandiyan, Petra Treiber and Steven Fassioms. Thank you all for your
enthusiasm about this project and for being such a dream to work with.
It really does take a village! And a special thank you to Rebecca Hazleden,
Senior Academic Editor at ‘Edit My Thesis’, for your thorough and care-
ful editing work on an earlier draft of this book.
I am fortunate to work at an academic institution filled to the brim
with creative, talented, and encouraging social scientists. Thank you to all
at Deakin University, notably Anna Halafoff and Andrea Witcomb, for
providing me with the space and intellectual environment I needed to get
through the final push of this book. I am also indebted to the University
of Melbourne—notably the people in the School of Social and Political
Sciences and Melbourne Social Equity Institute—for the research, teach-
ing, and collaborative opportunities they facilitated upon completion of
my PhD, teaching me skills I’ll carry with me forever. And for the seem-
ingly endless prospects for idea sharing and professional development, I
want to extend an enormous thank you to my colleagues within the
Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA)
and The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), especially TASA’s
Executive Officer, Sally Daly, who has been a tremendous source of sup-
port for many years.
A highlight of my academic career to date has been working with
Karen Farquharson, a whip-smart, benevolent, and, above all, kind
scholar whose approach to researching race issues in the media has
strongly enriched my understanding of this field. Karen, you have been
 Acknowledgements ix

an infallibly wise mentor and soundboard, and I am a better person for

knowing you. It has also been an immense privilege to work with Val
Colic-Peisker and Karien Dekker, both of whom have taught me a great
deal about collaboration and collegiality.
On a similar note, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of wonderful
friends, colleagues, and peers whose insights have been integral—not just
in terms of my capacity to write this book—but for my continued devel-
opment as a scholar. These people are Sylvia Ang, Emma Barnard, Phillipa
Bellemore, Earvin Cabalquinto, Sal Clark, Andrew Dalziell, Tanja
Dreher, Claire Fitzpatrick, Renae Fomiatti, Heidi Hetz, Charmaine Lim,
Catherine Martin, Maree Matinussen, Alanna Myers, Varunika
Ruwanpura, Kurt Sengul, Aimee Smith, Catriona Stevens, Jay Daniel
Thompson, Verity Trott, Enqi Weng, Blair Williams, Sybil Woolfson,
and Charlie Young. I’d also like to acknowledge my aunty, Narelle Jay,
who generously let me stay in her beautiful home for some much-needed
quiet time during the early stages of writing this book.
To my amazing parents, Rex and Fiona Haw aside from your unwaver-
ing support (both morally and fiscally) during my decade of study, the
most significant thing that stands out for me is that I have never felt
discouraged from pursuing my goals (no matter how strange), and on my
own terms no less. You have both consistently emphasised the impor-
tance of me forging my own path and pushing against the status quo. For
this, I am eternally grateful, even if I don’t say it enough.
And last, but certainly not least, thank you to my amazing partner
Dean Tunbridge. I don’t know how to articulate how grateful I am for
your love, support, pep talks, and endless laughs—throughout both my
PhD and the completion of this book. These past few years of uncertainty
have been tough for both of us, but you have consistently reminded me
to celebrate the ‘ups’ while making the ‘downs’ more bearable. You are my
favourite person to think and grow with, and I am in awe of your tenac-
ity, humour, and fortitude every day.
 Contents

1 I ntroduction  1

2 Asylum
 Seekers in the Australian News Media: What Do
We Know So Far? 11

3 Concepts, Methods, and Ethical Considerations 43

4 ‘Open
 the Floodgates’: Metaphor as a Tool for Legitimising
Australia’s ‘Invasion’ Panic 85

5 ‘Nation
 Prepares for War’: The Discursive Securitisation of
Asylum Seekers119

6 ‘Fight
 Against Illegals’: Constructing Asylum Seekers
Through Frames of Criminality and Illegitimacy151

7 ‘Taxpayers
 Foot the Bill’: Scapegoating Asylum Seekers
Through ‘Economic Migrants’ and ‘Burden’ Narratives181

xi
xii Contents

8 C
 onclusion211

I ndex217
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Participants’ demographic details and stance on people

seeking asylum in Australia 50
Table 3.2 Key discourse categories arising in participant interviews 72

xiii
 1
Introduction

Thinking critically about how polarising topics are presented to us in the

media is a difficult task, especially when we have become so accustomed
to learning about what is happening in the world by engaging with the
news. And the more polarising the topic, the harder it can be to make
sense of it as an audience member. One issue that we repeatedly see
debated in news and political discourse is that of race and cultural differ-
ence, especially in the context of migration and asylum seeking in wealthy,
western nations where white supremacy has permeated the language sur-
rounding diversity and nationalism for centuries.
I first started researching the broader issues surrounding the media’s
treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in 2012. I had been working in
the family violence sector in Western Australia for five years, and I was
struck by how news discourse constructs women who have experienced
any form of abuse, especially those from migrant or refugee backgrounds.
My observation was that these women are routinely framed as either pas-
sive victims with no agency, or as deserving of their plight—typically on
the basis that they ‘chose’ to come to Australia with an abusive partner,
whose actions were often explained away by a cultural incompatibility

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

A. Haw, Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7_1
2 A. Haw

with Australian society (despite the fact that white, Australian-born men
perpetrate the vast majority of the country’s reported incidents of vio-
lence against women).
I wanted to delve into these issues further and find out what impact
they may have on the national conversation about migrant and refugee
women experiencing family violence. But when I started digging into the
available scholarly literature, I kept coming up short. Few Australian stud-
ies had examined how members of the public engage with media represen-
tations of people from asylum seeking backgrounds, and among those
that had, the focus was predominantly on ‘letters to the editor’ (see, for
example, McKay et al., 2011; Mummery & Rodan, 2007; Nolan et al.,
2016). Qualitative explorations into how people talk about their engage-
ment with media discourse surrounding people seeking asylum were vir-
tually non-existent. When I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity
to pursue my PhD in 2014, my chosen topic was a no-brainer.
While I was interested in investigating audience responses to news dis-
course about asylum seekers and refugees, specifically in the family vio-
lence context, a distinct lack of scholarship about how the Australian
public responds to news constructions of asylum seekers led me to focus
on this. Tony Abbott had recently been elected as Australia’s Prime
Minister—a win largely attributed to his staunch position on restricting
refugee arrivals and his ‘stop the boats’ campaign slogan (Marr, 2013)—
which piqued considerable media interest and political debate surround-
ing Australia’s asylum policies (and position on immigration more
broadly). Discussion and debate concerning the impact of resettling refu-
gees proliferated throughout the nation (and arguably the western world)
during this time. Here, terms like ‘economic migrants’, ‘queue jumpers’,
‘boat people’, and ‘illegals’ were routinely applied to asylum seekers
(Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2017; Muller, 2016; Pedersen et al., 2006;
Pickering, 2001). These discourses are reminiscent of John Howard’s
constructions of asylum seekers during his Australian Prime Ministership
from 1996 to 2007 (Brett, 1997; Peterie, 2016) and former One Nation
Senator Pauline Hanson’s now infamous maiden speech upon her elec-
tion to the House of Representatives in 1996, during which she railed
against immigration and warned that Australia was at risk of being
‘swamped’ by Asians (Sengul, 2020).
 1 Introduction 3

It is not uncommon for the arrival of asylum seekers to be regarded as

an undue threat to national security and sovereignty (Higgins, 2017).
And ensuing discussions surrounding the policies and practices of
refugee-­receiving nations are largely centred upon two competing priori-
ties: an obligation to protect people escaping persecution, versus a desire
to control national borders. It is within these discussions that we continu-
ously see ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ refugees pitted against one another
(Peterie, 2017) in a manner that is long argued to legitimise harmful and
exclusionary policies, including mandatory detention, offshore process-
ing, and restrictive visa conditions (Every & Augoustinos, 2008a, b;
Louis et al., 2007). Numerous measures of social cohesion, including
social interactions, English language proficiency, educational attainment,
and economic success, are said to be profoundly affected by how refugees
are supported during the early stages of their resettlement, including
when they first seek asylum in Australia (Colic-Peisker & Walker, 2003).
Understanding societal attitudes that underscore exclusionary treatment
of people seeking asylum—and how these ideas are communicated (and
engaged with) en masse—is therefore an urgent area of sociological
inquiry.
Given widespread global interest in discursive constructions of refu-
gees and asylum seekers, one might expect that media coverage of the
issue (and its role in shaping public opinion) would be the focus of much
academic attention. Some international studies have examined how
media discourse influences societal attitudes about people from refugee
backgrounds (e.g., De Poli et al., 2017; Kaye, 1998), and highlighted
potential democratic consequences (see, for example, Philo et al., 2013).
However, qualitative explorations into how democracies engage with and
reflect upon news representations of the issue remain rare, especially in
the Australian context. To address this, I chose to undertake research into
how members of the Australian public engage with, and evaluate, medi-
ated constructions of people seeking asylum. Of particular interest, and
at the centre of this book, are the specific aspects of news media construc-
tions of asylum seekers that audiences trust and distrust, especially in
terms of the media’s capacity to inform them about the issue.
Previous explorations of audience responses to news depictions of sim-
ilarly divisive topics have tended to implicate news media discourse as a
4 A. Haw

key driver of public attitudes (De Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006; Gunther,
1998). My research, by contrast, reveals a slightly more complex and
nuanced picture. While news coverage was noted as the main source of
information about asylum seekers for most of my sample, all participants
critiqued news portrayals of the issue, with many noting specific media
discourses they either question or reject. These observations led me to
shift my focus away from merely ascertaining media effects on public
opinion and instead, move toward an analysis of what the public is saying
about media coverage as well as how they construct these perspectives.
The focus of this book is threefold. First, I am concerned with contex-
tualising my findings regarding audience conceptualisations of news
depictions of asylum seekers within the broader national context, taking
into account previous scholarly contributions and debates. Second, my
discussion focuses on how publics construct their responses to mediated
constructions of asylum seekers and refugees. Here, by focusing my anal-
ysis on the various mechanisms by which audiences use language to eval-
uate news media messages, I highlight how publics both adopt and resist
dominant constructions of people seeking asylum. Lastly, I conclude by
considering the far-reaching implications of our current state of empirical
and theoretical knowledge, from both a research and policy/practice per-
spective. Do publics feel informed by media coverage on the topic of
people seeking asylum? Why/why not? What facets of news depictions do
they identify as informative? What aspects do they see as problematic,
and why? Where do audiences feel that news representations can be
improved to more adequately help publics understand the plight of peo-
ple seeking asylum and the true impact of their resettlement?
I completed this research within the University of Western Australia’s
School of Social Sciences, collecting my data between May 2015 and
April 2016 via semi-structured interviews with 24 residents of Western
Australia. All participants volunteered their time and were generous with
their offerings. They spoke insightfully, frankly, and at times, self-­critically.
While I cannot claim my sample is representative of the wider Australian
society, they do represent a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences,
and viewpoints concerning people seeking asylum. This book presents
the findings arising from these interviews, situating my analyses within
relevant national and global scholarship and highlighting some
 1 Introduction 5

important implications for public opinion, democracy, political commu-

nication, scholarship, and above all, the well-being of Australia’s asylum
seekers and refugee populations.
In Chap. 2, I present an overview of the current socio-political context
surrounding asylum seekers in Australia, including poignant observations
and arguments within the existing literature. I then move on to discuss-
ing approaches to researching media audiences in the context of their
engagement with politicised topics involving marginalised communities
in Chap. 3. Here, I outline the key concepts employed in my argument
and provide an overview of the research methods used in my study, pay-
ing particular attention to ethical and practical considerations.
In Chap. 4, I begin to present my research findings, starting with the
issue of sensationalism in Australian news media depictions of asylum
seekers. Here, I conceptualise key scholarly debates and trends surround-
ing news media discourses that exaggerate the threat and impact of peo-
ple seeking asylum. I also discuss the prevalence of metaphorical
constructions within these representations, whereby asylum arrivals are
likened to water disasters that ‘flood’ and/or ‘invade’ Australia. I then
explain how my participants both reproduced and resisted such narra-
tives and, in some cases, cited sensationalism as a feature of Australian
news media discourse that adversely affects their trust in the veracity of
these messages. In addition to situating these findings within the litera-
ture surrounding moral panics (Cohen, 1972), I discuss how metaphori-
cal exaggerations of the scale and impact of people seeking asylum—using
terms such as ‘floods’, ‘waves’, ‘influx’, and ‘hordes’—reflect longstanding
settler colonialist rhetoric that situates the non-white ‘other’ as a danger-
ous and unpredictable threat (Elder, 2003; Hage, 2000; Moreton-­
Robinson, 2004, 2015; Perera, 2009; Wolfe, 1999).
In Chap. 5, I draw attention to how publics engage with securitisation
discourses in media depictions of asylum seekers, which has been a defin-
ing feature of the Australian national conversation on migration and asy-
lum seeking for many years. I also discuss how some of my research
participants accepted and reproduced notions of asylum seekers as a
threat to national security and sovereignty while others opposed such
coverage and, in some cases, discursively oriented their own perspectives
to challenge these framings. I connect this analysis to existing scholarship
6 A. Haw

focused on the discursive securitisation of people seeking asylum in

Australia, highlighting how this plays into Australia’s politics of ‘border-
phobia’ (McDonald, 2011) and longstanding anxieties surrounding the
non-white ‘other’ (Hage, 2003a, b).
Chapter 6 focuses on Australian news media framings of asylum seek-
ers as ‘illegal’ and/or ‘illegitimate’, and how such terms deny their human-
ity through criminalising language. I discuss key arguments in the
literature, where the illegality trope is said to reorient societal understand-
ings of the asylum issue from a humanitarian problem to an issue of
criminality and deviance. I also discuss how, for many years, such repre-
sentations have been deployed to lend credence to calls for more stringent
border policies. And in presenting my own research findings pertaining
to the illegality/illegitimacy trope, I point out some interesting linguistic
features of how some of my interviewees opposed and problematised
mediated discourses that pit asylum seekers against one another based on
perceptions of what constitutes a ‘genuine’ versus ‘bogus’ refugee.
In Chap. 7, I explore how people make sense of news depictions of
asylum seekers as scapegoats for a range of social and economic problems
facing society. In my research, I observed both acceptance and opposition
to such scapegoating in media and political discourse. Drawing on the
literature surrounding resource scarcity and the role of economic precar-
ity in the formation of racialised scapegoats, I highlight several interest-
ing features of language deployed in publicised accounts of national
‘crises’, where we regularly see exclusionary asylum policies framed as a
necessary means of alleviating society’s most pressing problems, such as
housing shortages, unemployment, and general economic downturn.
In the concluding chapter, I pull together the key arguments presented
in the book, highlighting their implications for research, journalistic
practice, democracy, and social progress. I argue that my own research
challenges the idea of media coverage as a sole driver of attitudes about
asylum seekers, instead suggesting that personal connections to the issue
(or a lack thereof ) may have a stronger role in opinion formation.
Nonetheless, when considered alongside the vast body of literature on
political news engagement (and its influence on public opinion), my
findings illuminate the important democratic function of mediated rep-
resentations of people seeking asylum, which I unpack in the concluding
 1 Introduction 7

chapter. I also highlight some remaining questions from a research per-

spective, suggesting future avenues of inquiry with respect to understand-
ing how audiences engage with news media constructions of asylum
seekers, as well as issues of race and multiculturalism more generally.
Overall, I find that by analysing how publics critically discuss medi-
ated constructions of asylum seekers, we can more adequately account for
personal experience and individual context as shapers of attitudes, both
toward media discourse about seeking asylum and toward seeking asylum
itself. Rather than assuming a direct, causal relationship between media
discourse and societal perspectives, the discursive approach documented
in this book enabled the identification of specific elements of news media
coverage that affect how informed audiences feel about this important
and polarising topic. Moreover, this approach allowed me to access the
complexities of the audience response to Australian news coverage of
people seeking asylum, illuminating how mediated constructions of this
issue are evaluated in vastly different ways, with some people accepting
dominant hegemonic narratives while others either challenge or
reject them.

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and asylum seekers in Australia. Journal of Refugee Studies, 14(2), 169–186.
Sengul, K. (2020). ‘Swamped’: The populist construction of fear, crisis and dan-
gerous others in Pauline Hanson’s senate speeches. Communication Research
and Practice, 6(1), 20–37.
Wolfe, P. (1999). Settler colonialism. A&C Black.
 2
Asylum Seekers in the Australian News
Media: What Do We Know So Far?

Introduction
At the time of writing, there are an estimated 89.3 million displaced
people worldwide—the highest figure in recorded history—most of
whom are fleeing civil wars in Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar,
and Ukraine (UNHCR, 2022). As a signatory to the 1951 United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees (and its 1967 protocol), Australia allo-
cates approximately 13,750 places to refugees each year under the
Government’s Humanitarian Program (Refugee Council of Australia,
2021). The UNHCR grants most of these places to those who have
sought asylum offshore; however, some people, known as asylum seekers,
arrive in Australia by plane or boat and then lodge their claims onshore
(Phillips, 2015). But despite the country’s long history of providing pro-
tection to people seeking asylum, the Australian government routinely
constructs their arrival as an unwelcome challenge to national security
and sovereignty (Higgins, 2017). Similar rhetoric has been observed
among the broader Australian population, with studies indicating that

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 11

A. Haw, Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7_2
12 A. Haw

many Australians hold hostile attitudes toward asylum seekers that largely
reflect ideas presented in media and political discourse (Augoustinos &
Quinn, 2003; McKay et al., 2012; Pedersen et al., 2006).
It is not surprising, then, that media and political discourses play an
integral role in how the Australian public makes sense of asylum seeking,
especially given that most people lack direct contact with people from
asylum seeking backgrounds (Muller, 2016). Inquiry into media dis-
course about the issue tells us much about the kinds of ideas presented in
the public sphere where we see strong parallels with the kinds of attitudes
observed among the general population, suggesting some influence of
media discourses on broader societal opinion. The extent of this influ-
ence, however, is unclear and hotly debated. In this chapter, I contextual-
ise our current state of knowledge surrounding people seeking asylum in
media, political and societal discourse by offering an overview of the
available literature before highlighting some of the remaining questions
this book seeks to address. I begin by outlining the political context in
Australia, illuminating how the country’s policies and public representa-
tions of people seeking asylum have long shaped the national conversa-
tion on this issue.

 eeking Asylum in Australia:

S
The Political Landscape
Although cultural diversity is continually lauded as a defining feature of
Australian national identity, the legacy of colonialism and the White
Australia Policy (1901–1966) remains deeply embedded within political,
media, and societal discourse surrounding the country’s immigration
policies. Hostile and exclusionary ideas about migrants, refugees, and
asylum seekers are therefore inextricably connected to the country’s set-
tler colonial history. The White Australia Policy both symbolised and
embodied prevailing wisdom surrounding belonging (and non-­belonging)
during and following Federation in 1901. The first legislative tool of the
policy was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which purported to
“protect the nation from the external Other” through the prohibition of
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 13

non-European immigration (Kamp, 2010, p. 412). This legislation—

premised on conceptions of an Australian national identity characterised
by the exclusion of the non-white ‘other’—informed the country’s
approach to immigration and Indigenous affairs for over six decades
(Elder, 2005; Fitzgerald, 2007). After the policy was dismantled in 1966,
the Australian government started to offer a more accepting stance regard-
ing multiculturalism, with the country beginning to receive migrants
from all over the world during the 1970s. Today, Australia is one of the
most culturally diverse countries on the planet, yet both overt and covert
forms of racism remain entrenched within the country’s migration and
refugee policies, as well as in broader societal discourse surrounding new-
comers (Dunn et al., 2004).
The politicisation of asylum seekers in Australia as we know it today
can be traced back to the 1970s, when the country saw increasing num-
bers of refugees arriving via boat from Vietnam and surrounding coun-
tries in response to the fall of Saigon. Between 1975 and the mid-1980s,
Australia resettled approximately 10,000–12,000 Vietnamese refugees
each year (Barnes, 2001), and much of the public discussion focused on
Australia’s sovereignty and capacity to sustain ongoing arrivals. The asy-
lum issue became intensely political during this time, especially as the
Vietnamese arrivals coincided with a federal election in December 1977.
In the lead-up to the election, opinion polls indicated that most of the
general public supported the halting of further boat arrivals (Betts, 2001),
but the approach of the Coalition government, led by Malcolm Fraser,
focused on regulating arrivals rather than completely stopping them.
Furthermore, analyses of political discourse during this time revealed a
considerably more compassionate stance on people seeking asylum than
that of subsequent governments (Peterie, 2016).
From 1989, in what became known as Australia’s ‘second wave’,
Australia experienced an uptick in people seeking asylum by boat, largely
from China and Cambodia. The total number of these arrivals, however,
was much smaller than the Vietnamese ‘wave’, averaging roughly 300 per
year (Betts, 2001). It was in response to these arrivals that One Nation
senator Pauline Hanson gained national and international notoriety for
her anti-Asian sentiments and infamous maiden speech in Australian
Parliament where she claimed Australia was being ‘swamped’ by Asians
14 A. Haw

(Sengul, 2021), intensifying public debate and division surrounding the

impacts of multiculturalism in Australia. This division was exacerbated
further with the arrival of the so-called third wave in the late 1990s, con-
sisting predominantly of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq. Here
we witnessed a significant change in political, media, and societal rheto-
ric, with the focus shifting from how to respond to the needs of new
arrivals to how to control Australia’s borders. Public anxieties concerning
asylum seekers during this period were further compounded by wide-
spread media coverage of a series of sexual assaults perpetrated by so-­
called Lebanese gangs in New South Wales (Poynting, 2002). These
incidents led to a sharp increase in verbal and physical attacks against
Muslims, and exclusionary attitudes toward migrants and asylum seekers
intensified.
Many argue that it was the events of late 2001 that solidified Australia’s
politics of exclusion of the asylum seeker ‘other’. On 26 August 2001, the
Norwegian cargo ship Tampa rescued 438 asylum seekers en route to
Christmas Island from Indonesia. Because the ship’s captain, Arne
Rinnan, was prohibited from entering Australian waters, Special Air
Service troops boarded the Tampa and held it in place while the Australian
government introduced legislation to prevent the vessel from reaching
Christmas Island. The asylum seekers on board were later transferred to
the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, where they were detained until
their asylum claims could be processed, which for many, took several
years (Fleay & Hoffman, 2014).
On 6 October 2001 (six weeks after the Tampa incident), the HMAS
Adelaide intercepted a ‘Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel’ (SIEV 4), which
was heading to Australia with 223 passengers and crew on board, most of
whom were asylum seekers. On 8 October, the SIEV 4 began to sink,
during which several passengers were evacuated into the ocean.
Photographs emerged of some of these asylum seekers in the water and
were subsequently publicised in the Australian media in what became
known as the ‘Children Overboard’ affair.1 Offering an explanation for
the photos, the Howard government and then Defence Minister Peter

1
For a more comprehensive analysis of the ‘Children Overboard’ incident, see Macken-Horarik
(2003), Mares (2002), and Slattery (2003).
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 15

Reith claimed that asylum seekers on board the SIEV 4 had deliberately
thrown their children into the ocean to manipulate authorities into gain-
ing entry to Australia—claims that were later revealed to be incorrect.
The falsity of the story, however, did little to quell the government’s hard-­
line stance on people seeking asylum. Shortly thereafter, Australia entered
into bilateral agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea officials to
set up Regional Processing Centres on Nauru and Manus Island (Mares,
2002)—a policy known as the ‘Pacific Solution’.
John Howard’s subsequent victory in the 2001 federal election, which
he had been predicted to lose mere months prior, has been widely attrib-
uted to the Coalition government’s management of the Tampa and
‘Children Overboard’ events (and the stringent anti-asylum legislation
enacted as a result) (Mares, 2002; Marr & Wilkinson, 2003). An impor-
tant point to raise about both incidents is that they occurred during the
same year as the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States. Some argue that
9/11 further legitimised the demonisation of asylum seekers and migrants,
particularly Muslims and people of so-called Middle-Eastern appearance
who faced considerable scrutiny while the ‘war on terror’ discourse per-
meated Australia’s asylum policies (Osuri & Banerjee, 2004; Tufail &
Poynting, 2013). The government exploited public anxieties in the wake
of 9/11 by conflating asylum seekers with terrorists to justify restrictive
immigration policies in the name of ‘border protection’ (Hugo, 2002;
Pugh, 2004). During this period, we saw asylum seekers’ racial and cul-
tural differences ubiquitously connected to a moral incompatibility with
so-called mainstream Australia (Randell-Moon, 2006), and anyone who
challenged or resisted the Howard government’s values was deemed ‘un-­
Australian’ in what Halafoff (2006, p. 5) aptly referred to as a “new patri-
otism”. This discursive strategy of positioning asylum seekers as an
undesirable ‘other’ was designed to appeal to widely held Anglo-centric
attitudes that punctuated Australia’s settler colonial history (Marr &
Wilkinson, 2003). It was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in a land-
slide victory for Howard and the Liberal party.
Upon being re-elected, the Howard government amended existing leg-
islation to excise several islands from the country’s migration zone,
including Christmas Island, severely limiting asylum seekers’ rights to
obtain refugee status (Every & Augoustinos, 2008). They also
16 A. Haw

commenced a military campaign entitled ‘Operation Relex’, which

sought to turn back boats carrying asylum seekers before they could reach
Australian waters (Marr & Wilkinson, 2003). But in 2007, Australia wit-
nessed some shifts to its asylum policies (and the ensuing focus of rheto-
ric surrounding asylum seekers) following the election of Kevin Rudd
and the Labor government. While the Rudd government upheld the exci-
sion of islands from Australia’s migration zone, the ‘Pacific Solution’ was
repealed and offshore processing facilities were closed (Phillips & Spinks,
2013). By 2012, however, asylum seekers again became a key focus of
political discourse due to a notable increase in boat arrivals. However,
rather than being framed as a matter of ‘border protection’, the Rudd
government adopted a seemingly more humanitarian position, with the
focus primarily on preventing deaths at sea and impeding the people
smuggling trade (Peterie, 2017). This led the Opposition to accuse the
Labor government of being ‘too soft’ with their border security measures
(McKay et al., 2017).
With the 2013 election looming, both Liberal and Labor placed their
strategies for managing boat arrivals at the centre of their campaigning
efforts, working hard to convince the Australian electorate of the strengths
of their respective asylum policies in what former Liberal minister Bruce
Baird referred to as a ‘race to the bottom’ (Hawley, 2013). Here, it was
rightly predicted that the government with the ‘toughest’ asylum policies
would triumph, and after the Coalition government was elected in 2013
under the leadership of Tony Abbott, they enacted ‘Operation Sovereign
Borders’ (OSB), reinforcing the Howard government’s hard-line approach
by asserting that anyone who attempted to seek asylum in Australia by
boat would not be resettled in Australia. It therefore comes as no surprise
that this hard-line stance, articulated widely via the catchcry ‘Stop the
boats’, was a key driver of the Coalition government’s successful cam-
paign. OSB served as reassurance that the government was acting in the
best interests of the country’s predominantly white populace to keep
migration under control, despite the significant human rights conse-
quences for the people detained in regional processing centres as a result
of the policy. At the time of writing, the Labor government, led by
Anthony Albanese, is in power, having won the most recent federal elec-
tion on 21 May 2022. Despite this, OSB remains in place.
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 17

The Geneva-based Global Detention Project (2020) recently labelled

Australia’s immigration control regime as the most restrictive in the
world. For the past two decades, however, data concerning Australian
public opinion has consistently revealed that many believe the country’s
migration policies are not strict enough and that mandatory detention is
a necessary means of managing new arrivals (Betts, 2001; Markus, 2010;
Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018). This highlights the influential
communicative function of the country’s asylum policies. For instance,
the act of detaining asylum seekers lends credence to the idea that they
pose a threat to Australian society, reinforcing their criminalisation and
effectively rendering them pawns who are harnessed by political elites to
win votes (Isaacs, 2015). Publicised discussions about people seeking asy-
lum have indeed formed a significant component of Australian political
campaigning for several years, with some victories—notably Howard’s in
2001 and Abbott’s in 2013—largely attributed to promises of highly
restrictive migration policies (Marr, 2013a). What the Australian public
understands about the issue is therefore closely tied to both political and
media rhetoric. The following discussion, in turn, synthesises the existing
literature surrounding media and societal constructions of people seeking
asylum in Australia.

News Media and Societal Discourses

It is well documented that societal perceptions concerning people seeking
asylum largely reflect the ideas presented in media and political discourse
(Elias et al., 2021; Hartley & Pedersen, 2007; McKay et al., 2011a). One
of the most insidious of these discourses relates to the perceived illegality
of seeking asylum, particularly for those who arrive in Australia by boat.
Numerous investigations into societal perceptions about forced migra-
tion have revealed a tendency for people to conflate asylum seekers with
illegal immigrants (Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2014; McKay et al., 2012;
Sulaiman-Hill et al., 2011; Pedersen et al., 2006)—an idea that has heav-
ily featured in Australian news and political discourse, particularly fol-
lowing 9/11 and the Tampa affair (Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018;
Pickering, 2001; Saxton, 2003). McLaren and Patil’s (2016) critical
18 A. Haw

discourse analysis of 100 Australian newspaper articles revealed a domi-

nant theme of deviancy and illegality in descriptions of asylum seekers,
and Australia’s policy of mandatory detention was presented as a reason-
able policy response for managing asylum arrivals. Furthermore, we have
long witnessed political and media discourse where the ‘illegal’ trope is
called upon to justify exclusionary policies, such as mandatory detention,
boat turn-backs (i.e., Operation Sovereign Borders), and restrictive visa
conditions for asylum seekers living in the community (Every &
Augoustinos, 2008; O’Doherty & Lecouteur, 2007). For example, in
their analysis of Australian broadsheet, television, radio, and online news
content, O’Doherty and Lecouteur (2007) observed that the term ‘ille-
gal’ was voiced predominantly within arguments in support of “sending
them [asylum seekers] home” (p. 6).
The pervasiveness of themes of illegality and deviance in constructions
of people seeking asylum is closely connected to the discursive pitting of
‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ refugees against one other (Peterie, 2017).
Here, we see the differentiation between so-called genuine and bogus
refugees used as a communicative strategy to position hostile attitudes
toward asylum seekers as reasonable (van Dijk, 1997). According to van
Dijk (1997), this notion of ‘bogus’ versus ‘genuine’ refugees first emerged
in the mid-1980s following large numbers of Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka’s
civil war to seek asylum in Europe. Here, the ‘bogus’ idea was regularly
deployed to justify policy responses that heavily restricted resettlement
for these arrivals. Fast forward 25 years, and we continue to see the ‘bogus’
versus ‘genuine’ dichotomy applied in hegemonic, ‘common sense’ depic-
tions of asylum seeking on a global scale. Respondents to the Scanlon
Foundation’s Social Cohesion Surveys, for instance, have been found to
voice welcoming views only toward asylum seekers regarded as ‘genuine
refugees’ (see Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018). Likewise, an analy-
sis of letters to the editor published in eight United Kingdom tabloids
and broadsheets revealed a common belief that ‘genuine’ refugees deserve
to be offered protection, whilst ‘bogus’ refugees should be expatriated
(Lynn & Lea, 2003).
Embedded within the ‘genuine’ versus ‘bogus’ trope—particularly in
the Australian political landscape—are debates surrounding asylum seek-
ers’ methods of arrival. A vast body of Australian research, for example,
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 19

has highlighted the prevalence of societal belief in a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’

way to seek asylum (Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018; McKay et al.,
2011a, 2012). For example, in their survey research with members of
Australian public, McKay et al. (2012) found that many respondents
posited that asylum seekers should be treated with fairness provided they
have followed the ‘proper processes’ to enter Australia. This notion of
‘proper processes’ as a condition for the acceptance of people seeking
asylum is a product of longstanding fear and anxiety around people
smuggling and boat arrivals in Australia—fears that are exacerbated and
reinforced by political rhetoric such as the slogan, “If you come here by
boat without a valid visa, you won’t be resettled in Australia”, issued by
the Australian Government under Kevin Rudd’s leadership in July 2013,
which ran concurrently with the Coalition government’s ‘Stop the boats’
campaign leading up to the 2013 federal election.
The ‘right processes’ and ‘genuine refugees’ discourses are often
deployed during arguments that frame asylum seekers as ‘queue jumpers’
(Martin, 2020; McKay et al., 2012). The notion of a ‘queue’ has been a
pervasive feature of political and news discourse surrounding people
seeking asylum in Australia, with the ‘queue jumper’ moniker widely
used to justify asylum seekers’ exclusion from society on the grounds that
they have used the ‘back door’ to enter Australia and thus, acted unfairly
(Clyne, 2005; Gelber, 2003). The ‘back door’ is a metaphor for the act of
seeking asylum after arriving onshore rather than lodging an application
offshore via the UNHCR’s resettlement program. Mediated representa-
tions of asylum seekers have persistently aligned the ‘queue jumper’ and
‘back door’ metaphors with the concept of ‘Australian values’ (Clyne,
2005; Martin, 2020), reminiscent of how so-called queue-jumpers have
been presented in parliamentary discourse as a threat to Australian ideals
of fairness (Every & Augoustinos, 2008; Haw, 2021). This fuels Australia’s
already pervasive ‘us versus them’ mentality where asylum seekers are
viewed as an undesirable and threatening ‘other’ that the civilised broader
society must be protected from. Epithets such as ‘invaders’ conjure up
ideas of asylum seekers as threats to the values, safety, and security of the
wider society (Jacobs et al., 2018; van der Linden & Jacobs, 2016), typi-
cally as a means of justifying exclusionary humanitarian policies (Welch
& Schuster, 2005). Indeed, the idea of the threatening asylum seeker
20 A. Haw

‘other’ regularly features in discourses that endorse policies such as man-

datory detention (Hartley & Pedersen, 2007; Louis et al., 2007) and a
need to control the nation’s borders (Every, 2008; O’Doherty &
Augoustinos, 2008).
Returning to the Tampa incident as an example, we can see how asy-
lum seekers were positioned as an urgent threat that legitimised the gov-
ernment’s implementation of more stringent border control policies (see
Gale, 2004). As O’Doherty and Augoustinos (2008) explain, Australian
news coverage of the Tampa affair reproduced the notion of Australia’s
right to detain and/or deport asylum seekers who arrive by boat in the
interests of upholding “national sovereignty” (p. 577). As Devetak (2004,
p. 107) asserts:

By asking Australians to believe that asylum seekers pose an existential

threat to the nation, the government exploited a persistent fear, perhaps
paranoia, in Australia’s national psyche—one that extends from the
Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 to the Border Protection Act of 2001.

Discourses of control and security in the name of Australian sovereignty

play into common fears and anxieties about those who cross the nation’s
borders (Hage, 2003a, b), and these nationalist narratives are inherently
racialised as they situate Australia as homogeneously Anglo-Celtic by
framing the national ‘self ’ as under threat from the non-white ‘other’.
Much of the racism and white supremacy that underpins exclusionary
rhetoric about Australia’s asylum policies are, however, disguised. Here, as
Peterie and Neil (2020) point out, we see conspicuous references to race
“replaced by ‘dog-whistle’ condemnations of ‘cultural’ (as distinct from
biological) difference” (p. 26). These cultural conceptions of nationhood
are grounded in ideas about familiarity and community whereby domi-
nant, Anglo-Celtic members of society are seen to belong, while (per-
ceived) culturally incompatible ‘others’ see their belonging denied (Hage,
2000). The resulting policy implications confine non-white asylum seek-
ers to their status as ‘non-citizens’.
Much research has shown that political, media, and public discourse
surrounding people seeking asylum (and migrants more generally) regu-
larly include calls for newcomers to ‘fit in’ with Australia’s customs and
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 21

beliefs (Fozdar & Low, 2015; Moran, 2011; Nolan et al., 2016). In 2017’s
Challenging Racism Project, the notion that minority groups should
behave more like ‘mainstream Australians’ was shared by 49% of survey
respondents (Blair et al., 2017). This mirrors findings reported by
Laughland-Booÿ et al. (2014), who found that many Australians express
concerns about asylum seekers’ cultural practices and beliefs jeopardising
the ‘Australian way of life’. Additionally, Saxton’s (2003) analysis of
Australian newspaper discourses and public sentiments (expressed via
‘letters to the editor’) following the 2001 Tampa incident revealed a prev-
alent belief that Australia has the right to protect its territory by dictating
how many migrants and asylum seekers the country will accept (and the
circumstances by which they are accepted), closely reflecting the senti-
ments in former Prime Minister John Howard’s infamous 2001 declara-
tion, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances
in which they come” (McKay et al., 2017).
The idea of preserving and protecting Australian national identity
through increasingly stringent measures to ‘control’ asylum arrivals
became a central component of election campaigning during the Howard
era. In her book How Australia Decides: Election Reporting and the Media,
Sally Young (2011) documents the ways in which asylum seekers were
presented in Australian election coverage between 2001 and 2008, much
of which was peppered with false or misleading claims. A prominent
example is the Australian media’s treatment of the ‘Children Overboard’
affair. As a constructed media event, ‘Children Overboard’ was called
upon to reaffirm a highly insulated idea of Australian identity (character-
ised by family morals and responsibility), which is distinct from that of
the threatening asylum seeker ‘other’, which, according to Slattery (2003)
is “signified by extremist Islamic principles attached to the people who
were apparently prepared to risk their children’s safety” (p. 94). This vigi-
lant alertness—dubbed a ‘culture of worrying’ by Ghassan Hage (2003a,
b)—enabled Howard and his conservative Government to “pursue an
aggressive attitude to asylum seekers, even those from countries on which
we wage war” (Macken-Horarik, 2003, p. 284).
Such attitudes are further reinforced through sensationalist media
depictions that paint an exaggerated picture of how the Australian popu-
lation is impacted by resettling asylum seekers (McKay et al., 2011b;
22 A. Haw

MacDonald, 2017). Many argue that these representations contain the

hallmarks of a ‘moral panic’ (see, for example, Haw, 2020; Marr, 2013b;
Martin, 2015; Morgan & Poynting, 2016). Initially conceptualised by
sociologist Stanley Cohen in response to UK press depictions of crime in
the 1970s (see Cohen, 1972), a moral panic is said to occur when an
event, phenomenon, or person becomes the focus of sensationalised mass
media attention. Moral panics trigger and exploit societal anxiety con-
cerning a real or imagined social problem by framing the issue as ‘out of
control’, often using melodramatic language and/or imagery. Additionally,
and perhaps most importantly, a particular group or individual is
maligned as responsible for the problem at hand, resulting in ‘moral
entrepreneurs’ and professional experts offering solutions and endorsing
punitive policy changes to appease the panicked public (Cohen, 1972).
Cohen later posited that any issue relating to migration, multicultural-
ism, and/or people seeking asylum would be a frequent subject of moral
panics because such issues are “more political, more edgy and more ame-
nable to violence” (2011, p. 242). This is of particular relevance when we
consider the widespread use of metaphors to describe asylum seekers in
political and media discourse, such as discussions of them arriving in
‘tides’, ‘waves’, and ‘floods’—depictions that serve to dehumanise asylum
seekers while exaggerating the scale and impact of arrivals (Nguyen &
McCallum, 2016; Welch & Schuster, 2005).
Closely connected to discussions of asylum seekers ‘flooding’ into the
country is the notion that people from asylum seeking backgrounds are a
drain on Australia’s resources. In their content analysis of Australian
media releases published between 2001 and 2002, Klocker and Dunn
(2003) observed a prevalent framing of asylum seekers as an ‘uncontrol-
lable burden’. Furthermore, Klocker (2004) found that societal discourse
is often preoccupied with concerns about Australian taxpayers being bur-
dened with the costs of detaining asylum seekers. These concerns are
largely reflective of political and media discourse, which has been found
to focus heavily on the ‘burden’ of managing new arrivals (Sulaiman-Hill
et al., 2011). This ‘burden’ narrative has also been reported in the inter-
national literature, particularly in the UK where KhosraviNik (2010)
observed dominant newspaper constructions of asylum seekers as a strain
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 23

on Britain’s resources, and Philo et al. (2013) found that the UK televi-
sion news reports routinely constructed narratives of asylum seekers as a
welfare burden.
The ‘burden’ discourse is thought to be triggered by scarcity—either
real or perceived (Sanchez-Mazas & Licata, 2015). In this context, the
social and political categorisation of asylum seekers as ‘economic migrants’
takes on added significance (Burroughs, 2015; Every & Augoustinos,
2007). An economic migrant is commonly understood to be a person
whose decision to migrate is motivated by a desire to improve their socio-
economic standing through employment and financial success. According
to van Dijk (1997), the term originated during political discourse sur-
rounding Tamil asylum seekers arriving in Europe in the 1980s. Australian
and international literature has documented the ‘economic migrants’ dis-
course as a recurring theme in societal, media, and political discussions
about asylum seekers and refugees (see, for example, Gabrielatos & Baker,
2008; Goodman & Speer, 2007; Saxton, 2003). Here, we see a common
belief that asylum seekers who wish to advance their career prospects do
not have a legitimate claim for refugee status. Economic migration is
therefore invoked as yet another argument against welcoming and inclu-
sionary asylum policies.
The persistence of both the ‘burden’ and ‘economic migrants’ narra-
tives places asylum seekers and refugees in a lose–lose position. On the
one hand, they face hostility and exclusion for not being productive
enough (and thus ‘burdening’ the host society), but when they express a
desire to gain employment and become financially independent, they
earn the ‘economic migrants’ label, which, in most iterations, positions
their asylum claim as illegitimate. A common pushback to the ‘economic
migrants’ idea is the fact that an asylum seeker can simultaneously seek to
improve their socioeconomic standing while holding a valid claim for
refugee status. These arguments often emphasise the humanitarian needs
of people seeking asylum, highlighting the push factors that have led
them to flee in the first place. An unintended consequence of these argu-
ments, however, is that these can further feed the constructions of asylum
seekers as passive and hapless ‘victims’ who lack agency.
Despite its widespread use within welcoming and pro-asylum argu-
ments, the ‘victim’ trope can reduce asylum seekers to what Malkki
24 A. Haw

(1996) calls “speechless emissaries” (p. 390). For instance, Parker’s (2015)
analysis of Australian and UK news coverage revealed that constructions
of asylum seekers as ‘victims’ tended to emphasise their perceived defi-
ciency, aligning with Hoenig’s (2009) finding that Australian news repre-
sentations of asylum seekers often portray them as having no agency
while further dehumanising them through the exclusion of their perspec-
tives. This supports the findings of research by Cooper et al. (2016),
whose analysis showed that Australian news coverage contains very few
asylum seeker ‘voices’, which highlights their “lack of agency to frame
their own depictions” (p. 83). Similarly, an analysis of visual depictions of
people seeking asylum in Australian newspapers by Bleiker et al. (2013)
found that asylum seekers are predominantly depicted in large numbers
and through dramatic images of boats—visual patterns that reinforce
conceptions of asylum seekers as numerous, faceless, inhuman subjects
(Bleiker et al., 2013).
Some scholars, however, have observed calls for more compassionate
responses to asylum seekers in political, media, and public discourse
(Anderson et al., 2015; Austin & Fozdar, 2018). Here, we see more cos-
mopolitan ideas about newcomers, where ethnic, religious, and cultural
differences are presented in a more positive light and—in the case of
asylum seekers—with less focus on the impact on Australian society of
their resettlement and more emphasis on their basic human rights
(Cheng, 2017; Fozdar & Pedersen, 2013; Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2014).
For example, Laughland-Booÿ et al. (2014) found that Australian com-
munity members often construct ‘fairness’ as an obligation for the coun-
try to share its ‘good fortune’ with those in need. This echoes discourses
observed within positive news media portrayals of people seeking asylum
in Australia. For example, an analysis of newspaper coverage of Sudanese
refugees revealed some discussions about Australia’s obligation to accept
and support refugees (Nolan et al., 2011). Likewise, Gale’s (2004) critical
discourse analysis of national and regional newspaper coverage of the
2001 federal election revealed a common conceptualisation of Australia
as a charitable nation with shared humanity with asylum seekers.
Constructions of Australia as a charitable nation, however, are also com-
mon within calls to restrict refugee resettlement on the basis that charity
must ‘begin at home first’ (see Hebbani & Angus, 2016). The charity
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 25

discourse has thus been used in arguments that both support and oppose
Australia’s acceptance of asylum seekers.
The idea that the mass media occupies a unique degree of power to set
the parameters for national and international discourse is well established
(Cottle, 2004; Hall, 1995). When members of a given society lack expo-
sure to certain minority groups, many rely on dominant (and often nega-
tive) constructions of the minoritised ‘other’, which can, in critical
discourse scholar Teun van Dijk’s view, lead them to “generalise these to
general negative attitude schemata or prejudices that embody the basic
opinions about relevant minority groups” (van Dijk, 1989, p. 202).
Collectively, the prior literature presents a compelling case for the idea
that public hostilities and anxieties about people seeking asylum are
largely shaped and reinforced through media discourse. But in some
research, a more complex relationship between media messages, govern-
ment policy, and societal attitudes is apparent. Here, we see media organ-
isations, political actors, and publics engage in a ‘feedback loop’, as
articulated by Klocker (2004, p. 14):

Negative government and media representations of asylum seekers foster

negative public perceptions and fears, which in turn provide justification,
legitimation and electoral support for increasingly exclusive, harsh and
deterrence-oriented asylum policies.

In a similar vein, Pedersen and Hartley (2015) contend that “if people are
prejudiced, they are more likely to believe negative reports about asylum
seekers” (p. 8), indicating that false beliefs about asylum seekers are, at
least in part, a product of confirmation bias. While the available literature
gives us some indication of how certain media and political discourses are
reproduced within broader societal attitudes, research into how news
audiences evaluate and reflect upon mediated constructions of people
seeking asylum is scarce. Further, audience reception work surrounding
similarly politicised topics—especially those involving racial minori-
ties—paint a considerably nuanced picture of how news media consum-
ers make sense of the innumerable ways in which society’s most vulnerable
people are depicted in the public sphere. I now turn to this literature
before highlighting the remaining questions this book seeks to address.
26 A. Haw

 udience Perspectives and the Questions

A
that Remain
Scholarship surrounding news media consumption paints a clear picture
of a hybridised and polarised media ecology, where publics are engaging
with news content on a regular basis and from a wide range of sources
and mediums (Alcorn & Buchanan, 2017; Park et al., 2018). These
include television broadcasts, print publications, radio, online news, and
social media (Szostek, 2018; Young, 2011). But what are publics saying
about the plethora of news media attention surrounding people seeking
asylum in Australia? With the exception of examinations of letters to the
editor in response to newspaper articles (e.g., McKay et al., 2011a;
Mummery & Rodan, 2007), no prior research has specifically delved into
how Australian media audiences respond to news coverage of asylum
seekers. Furthermore, letters to the editor are typically regarded as exam-
ples of media texts (rather than audience reception), because they are
curated by newspaper editors and are thus subject to careful selection on
the basis of the ideas they espouse. While letters to the editor can offer
interesting data about how some news media consumers have reacted to
coverage about people seeking asylum, it is difficult to obtain a compre-
hensive picture of the overarching ideas they have been exposed to about
the issue (and how these relate to their own perceptions of asylum seek-
ers) without digging a little deeper.
A vast body of literature has, however, looked at how audiences evalu-
ate news media messages concerning other topics that are subjected to a
similar degree of polarisation and politicisation. These include climate
change (Feldman & Hart, 2018; Wonneberger et al., 2020), illicit drugs
(Lancaster et al., 2012), homelessness (Iyengar, 1990), AIDS (Kitzinger,
1990; Miller, 1998), and more recently, COVID-19 (Jurkowitz &
Mitchell, 2020; Koinig, 2021; Tam et al., 2021). Overwhelmingly, audi-
ence reception scholarship indicates that news consumers have a highly
complex, and, to borrow from Denemark (2005, p. 237), “love–hate”
relationship with the mass media. While audiences are highly selective
about the sources they engage with (Ewart, 2014; Perala, 2014;
Wonneberger et al., 2011), engagement does not necessarily equate with
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 27

trust. Indeed, some people have been found to question the veracity of
the news content they wilfully consume (Lancaster et al., 2012; Swart
et al., 2016; Vidali, 2010), while others are more inclined to switch off
from coverage they perceive as lacking in credibility (McCollough
et al., 2017).
Findings from 2017’s Digital News Project, based on survey data from
nine countries (the US, UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Greece, France,
Denmark, and Australia), revealed substantially low levels of trust in the
news media, primarily due to perceived bias, with a significant portion of
the sample believing that most news media organisations favour the
political and/or economic agendas of powerful elites, rather than acting
in the interests of the broader population (Newman & Fletcher, 2017).
In Australia, Park et al. (2018) found that common grievances audiences
voice when evaluating news coverage relate to factual mistakes, such as
misleading claims and sensationalistic, ‘clickbait’ headlines. Similarly,
Alcorn and Buchanan (2017) reported that 65% of their survey respon-
dents raised concerns about news accuracy and 77% believed they had
been exposed to deliberate disinformation in the Australian media.
While the ubiquitous expansion of social media as a source of news in
recent years is regularly cited as a key factor in declining levels of news
trust and audience disengagement (see, for example, Newman & Fletcher,
2017; Park et al., 2018, 2020), low levels of news trust have been observed
(both locally and internationally) since before social media’s inception.
Data from the early 2000s indicated significant mistrust in the news
media with audiences reporting that they often felt misinformed about
key events and issues affecting society (Heider et al., 2005; Pew Research
Center, 2004; Philo, 2002). And in the US, Tsfati and Cappella (2003)
found that news audiences routinely cited accuracy as the most impor-
tant factor in establishing their degree of trust in (and likelihood of fur-
ther engagement with) a given news source.
As noted, it is well documented that Australian societal discourses
about people seeking asylum closely reflect dominant ideas presented in
news media discourse. Some research, however, has taken this a step fur-
ther by highlighting some of the ways in which news media discourse has
influenced Australian public sentiment concerning people seeking asy-
lum. For instance, Lynch et al. (2015) exposed a sample of University of
28 A. Haw

Sydney students to one of two stories concerning government policies

toward asylum seekers: one deployed a war journalism framing, which
treats conflict as a news value and is often characterised by vague and
sensationalist language, while the other presented a peace journalism
stance, whereby ethnic and/or religious differences are downplayed in
favour of promoting conflict resolution and reconciliation (Galtung,
1986, 1998). Participants were then surveyed on their attitudes toward
people seeking asylum in Australia. Those who were exposed to the peace
journalism story were significantly more likely to empathise with asylum
seekers than those exposed to the war journalism frame, who voiced more
conditional views about Australia’s acceptance of asylum seekers, with
many positing that the country’s asylum policies should prioritise new-
comers’ capacity for labour market participation as a means of ascertain-
ing their ‘value’ to the Australian economy (Lynch et al., 2015).
While these findings lend further credence to the idea that news media
framings of asylum seekers can affect how members of the public perceive
the issue, Australian research has not yet addressed how audiences are
evaluating and reflecting upon news coverage itself. Some international
scholarship, however, has shed light on this. For example, Donald (2011)
interviewed audiences about their perceptions of how asylum seekers are
represented in UK television news broadcasts. These discussions largely
focused on perceptions of negativity in these broadcasts and the tendency
for the stories to frame asylum seekers as a burden to UK taxpayers
(Donald, 2011). Additionally, participants with direct experience with
people seeking asylum were more critical of news representations (and
more inclined to reject or challenge them) than those with no such expo-
sure, who were instead, more likely to voice hostile views about asylum
seekers (Donald, 2011). This suggests that audiences are, in many cases,
resisting dominant ideas presented to them in news media coverage,
while their prior experiences and knowledge play an important role in
how they evaluate representations of the asylum issue.
More recently, De Coninck et al. (2018) examined how Belgian audi-
ences evaluate news media depictions of refugees, finding that positive
attitudes were correlated with higher trust in political news content.
Conversely, engagement with tabloid news sources, coupled with a pre-­
existing fear of terrorism, typically aligned with more negative attitudes
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 29

toward refugees (De Coninck et al., 2018). This further emphasises the
mitigating role of pre-existing beliefs while also suggesting either that
people with negative views on asylum seekers are more likely to engage
with tabloid sources, or that their consumption of tabloid content may
increase their likelihood of adopting negative asylum views. This brings
us to an important point about the relationship between social attitudes
and media discourses. There is evidence to suggest that audiences’ pre-­
existing political views influence how they perceive news content, as well
as the general ideas they take away about the issues presented (e.g., Coe
et al., 2008; Morris, 2007). It appears, however, that the jury is still out
with respect to whether media and political discourse is a key driver of
public opinion or if public opinion reinforces political rhetoric and in
turn, influences media framings. I don’t believe such questions can be
properly addressed in one book, and I make no claims of doing so. I do,
however, recognise that the sheer complexity of the relationship between
media discourse and societal perspectives requires further attention, in
both scholarly work and the wider national conversation about migra-
tion, race, and difference. As such, this book critically unpacks the issue
of mediated societal understandings of the asylum issue in Australia, pre-
senting the findings of the first known study to investigate how a sample
of Australian voters perceive news media coverage of the issue.
Despite a plethora of evidence that Australian news media depictions
routinely depict people seeking asylum in a negative light, no prior
research has employed discursive and interview-based approaches to
explore how publics evaluate news discourse about people seeking asy-
lum. Rather, much of the literature that sheds light on how publics make
sense of news representations of the asylum issue has taken place interna-
tionally, while Australian research has tended to focus on either media
discourse or public attitudes toward asylum seekers. Of these, some have
utilised survey approaches to quantitatively measure the prevalence of
certain attitudes (and who is most likely to voice them) (e.g., Markus &
Arunachalam, 2018; Pedersen & Hartley, 2017) while others have
employed qualitative methods to discursively analyse how the ideas peo-
ple express about asylum seekers reflect wider social rhetoric and power
structures (e.g., Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Carson et al., 2015; McKay
et al., 2012; Saxton, 2003). The value of discursive approaches is that
30 A. Haw

they enable us to evaluate how discourses can both produce and trans-
form social realities (Talja, 1999); such research is concerned with how
everyday conversation interacts with ideological positions that either
maintain or oppose the status quo (Wooffitt, 2005). In other words, criti-
cal discourse approaches emphasise how the language we use can shape,
reinforce, and challenge inequitable power divisions in a given society.
As asylum seekers in Australia face considerable marginalisation, xeno-
phobia, and ostracism (both physically and discursively), it is critically
important to examine how publics are making sense of their plight, as
well as how dominant ideas about people seeking asylum, communicated
through media and political discourse, work to uphold ideas that ulti-
mately maintain the power imbalances that contribute to, and justify,
asylum seekers’ continued exclusion. Indeed, there is much discursive
research and theoretical work highlighting how language is weaponised
in the public sphere to exclude and vilify racial minorities (e.g., Potter &
Wetherell, 1988; van Dijk, 1993, 2015), including the discursive tools
(also known as ‘interpretative repertoires’) contained within these dis-
courses that serve to legitimise exclusionary, and in many cases, racist
attitudes (Nairn & McCreanor, 1991; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). The
research I document in this book therefore employs a critical discourse
approach, largely informed by the work of Norman Fairclough (1989,
1992), Ruth Wodak (2001, 2009), and Michael Billig (1988, 1991), to
address two central research questions:

1. What are Australian voters saying about news media coverage of peo-
ple seeking asylum in Australia?
2. What rhetorical and linguistic strategies are employed within these
discussions, and what can these tell us about how publics reproduce,
resist, and in some cases, challenge dominant discursive framings of
the asylum issue in Australia?

I tackle these questions in the ensuing chapters by presenting my find-

ings and situating them within the existing scholarly literature, drawing
on the theoretical work of Ghassan Hage (2000), Aileen Moreton-­
Robinson (2004, 2015) and Patrick Wolfe (1999) surrounding the role
of settler colonialist discourses in shaping and upholding national
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 31

sentiment toward multiculturalism. I also draw on Teun van Dijk’s semi-

nal work on the discursive analysis of race and migration in mass com-
munication (1993, 1997), as well as elements of Audience Reception
Theory (Hall, 1980), informed by the vast body of scholarly work on
media effects (Chaffee, 1977, 1980; Katz et al., 1974; Lazarsfeld &
Berelson, 1960) and news values (Bednarek, 2016; Bednarek & Caple,
2012, 2014). In doing so, I unpack what my findings reveal with respect
to the communicative and democratic function of discourse surrounding
asylum seekers in Australia. In the following chapter, I describe in more
detail the methods I used to carry out this research and how my analysis
is informed by, and builds upon, the work of those who have addressed
similar questions.

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 —Dans quel guêpier suis-je donc, s’écria-t-il? Tout s’embrouille autour
de moi; je n’y reconnais plus rien; jamais pareil fait ne s’est produit; jamais
aussi ce stupide règlement dépourvu de sanction ne m’a paru aussi ridicule
qu’aujourd’hui. Je ne veux dénoncer personne, mais je ne veux pas qu’on
me dénonce; cela n’en finirait plus. Continuez à jouer aux cartes, jouez
toute la journée, si le cœur vous en dit, mais laissez-nous la paix.
—Avant de vous en aller, voulez-vous me dire pourquoi la Compagnie a
imposé ce règlement? Pouvez-vous lui trouver une excuse, j’entends une
excuse rationnelle, plausible, et qui ne soit pas l’élucubration d’un cerveau
d’idiot?
—Certainement, je le puis; la raison en est bien simple. C’est pour ne
pas heurter les sentiments des autres voyageurs, de ceux qui ont des
principes religieux; ceux-ci ne supporteraient pas que le jour du Sabbat fût
profané en jouant aux cartes en wagon.
—C’est juste ce que je pensais. Ils ne regardent pas, eux, à voyager le
dimanche, mais ils ne veulent pas que les autres...
—Par Dieu! vous voyez juste! je n’y avais jamais pensé avant; au fond
quand on y réfléchit, ce règlement paraît stupide.
Sur ces entrefaites le surveillant du train arriva et fit mine de vouloir
faire cesser le jeu; mais le conducteur du wagon l’arrêta et le prit à part pour
lui expliquer la situation. Tout en resta là.
Pendant onze jours, je séjournai à Chicago, malade dans mon lit; je ne
vis donc rien de la foire et je dus retourner dans l’est, dès qu’il me fut
possible de voyager. Le major prit la précaution de retenir un wagon-salon
pour me donner plus de place et rendre mon voyage plus confortable; mais
quand nous arrivâmes à la gare, par suite d’une erreur, notre wagon n’était
pas attaché au train. Le conducteur nous avait bien réservé une section du
compartiment, mais, nous assura-t-il, il lui avait été impossible de faire
mieux. Le major déclara que rien ne nous pressait et que nous attendrions
jusqu’à ce qu’on ait accroché un wagon. Le conducteur lui répondit avec
une certaine ironie:
—Possible que vous ne soyez pas pressé, comme vous le dites, mais
nous n’avons pas de temps à perdre; veuillez monter, messieurs, et ne nous
faites pas attendre.
Mais le major refusa de monter en wagon et il m’engagea fort à l’imiter.
Il déclara qu’il voulait son wagon et qu’il l’aurait; le conducteur impatienté
s’écria:
—Nous ne pouvons mieux faire, nous ne sommes pas tenus à
l’impossible. Vous occuperez ces places réservées ou vous ne partirez pas.
On a commis une erreur qui ne peut être réparée au dernier moment. Le fait
se produit quelquefois et personne n’a jamais fait autant de difficultés que
vous.
—Ah! précisément; si tous les voyageurs savaient faire valoir leurs
droits, vous n’essaieriez pas aujourd’hui de trépigner les miens avec une
pareille désinvolture. Je ne tiens pas spécialement à vous causer des
désagréments, mais il est de mon devoir de protéger mon prochain contre
cette sorte d’empiètement. J’aurai mon wagon-salon ou bien j’attendrai à
Chicago et je poursuivrai la Compagnie pour violation de son contrat.
—Poursuivre la Compagnie pour une telle bagatelle?
—Certainement.
—Vous le feriez réellement?
—Oui.
Le conducteur regarda le major avec étonnement et ajouta:
—Décidément vous avez raison; j’y vois clair maintenant, je n’y avais
jamais songé auparavant. Tenez, je vais envoyer chercher le chef de gare.
Ce dernier arriva et parut plutôt ennuyé de la réclamation du major (mais
pas du tout de l’erreur commise).
Il accueillit la plainte du major avec brusquerie et sur le même ton que le
conducteur du train au début; mais il ne sut fléchir le major qui réclama
plus énergiquement que jamais son wagon-salon. Cependant le chef de gare
s’amadoua, chercha à plaisanter, et esquissa même un semblant d’excuses.
Cette bonne disposition facilitait un compromis, le major voulut bien faire
une concession. Il déclara qu’il renoncerait au wagon-salon retenu par lui à
l’avance, à condition qu’on lui en fournît un autre. Après des recherches
ardues on finit par trouver un voyageur de bonne composition qui consentit
à échanger son wagon-salon contre notre section de compartiment. Dans la
soirée, le surveillant du train vint nous trouver et, après une causerie très
courtoise, nous devînmes bons amis. Il souhaitait, nous déclara-t-il, que le
public fît plus souvent des protestations; cela produirait un très bon effet
d’après lui, les Compagnies de chemin de fer ne se décideraient à soigner
les voyageurs qu’autant que ces derniers défendraient eux-mêmes leurs
propres intérêts.
J’espérais que notre voyage s’effectuerait maintenant sans autres
«incidents réformateurs», mais il n’en fut rien.
Au wagon-restaurant, le matin, le major demanda du poulet grillé; le
garçon lui répondit:
—Ce plat ne figure pas sur le menu, monsieur, nous ne servons que ce
qui est sur le menu.
—Pourtant je vois là-bas un voyageur qui mange du poulet grillé.
—C’est possible, mais ce monsieur est un inspecteur de la Compagnie.
—Raison de plus pour que j’aie du poulet grillé; je n’aime pas ces
récriminations, dépêchez-vous et apportez-moi du poulet grillé.
Le garçon appela le maître d’hôtel qui expliqua très poliment que la
chose était impossible; des règlements très sévères s’y opposaient.
—Soit, mais alors vous devez appliquer impartialement ces règlements
ou les violer avec la même impartialité. Vous allez enlever à ce monsieur
son poulet ou m’en apporter un.
Le maître d’hôtel resta aussi ébahi qu’indécis. Il esquissait une
argumentation incohérente lorsque le conducteur survint et demanda de
quoi il s’agissait. Le maître d’hôtel expliqua qu’un voyageur s’obstinait à
avoir du poulet, tandis qu’il n’y en avait pas sur la carte et que le règlement
s’y opposait. Le conducteur répondit:
—Cramponnez-vous au règlement, vous n’avez pas autre chose à faire.
—Mais un instant, s’agit-il de ce voyageur? Dans ce cas, continua-t-il en
riant, croyez-moi, ne vous occupez plus du règlement; donnez-lui ce qu’il
demande et ne le laissez pas énumérer tous ses droits. Oui, donnez-lui tout
ce qu’il demande et si vous ne l’avez pas, arrêtez le train pour vous le
procurer.
Le major mangea son poulet, mais il avoua qu’il l’avait fait uniquement
par devoir, pour établir un principe, car il n’aimait pas le poulet.
J’ai manqué la foire, il est vrai, mais j’ai recueilli dans mon sac un
certain nombre de tours diplomatiques qui, plus tard, pourront m’être très
utiles; le lecteur les trouvera sans doute comme moi aussi pratiques que
subtils.
 UN VEINARD!
Ceci se passait à un banquet donné à Londres en l’honneur d’un des plus
illustres noms de l’armée anglaise de ce siècle. Pour des raisons que le
lecteur connaîtra plus tard, je préfère tenir secrets le nom et les titres de ce
héros, et je l’appellerai le lieutenant général Lord Arthur Scorosby V. C. K.
C. B. etc.... Quel prestige exerce un nom illustre! Là, devant moi, était assis
en chair et en os l’homme dont j’entendis parler plus d’un millier de fois,
depuis le jour où son nom, s’élevant d’un champ de bataille de Crimée,
monta jusqu’au zénith de la gloire. Je ne pouvais me rassasier de
contempler ce demi-dieu; j’étais en extase devant lui, je le buvais des yeux;
son calme, sa réserve, son attitude digne, la profonde honnêteté qui
s’exhalait de toute sa personne faisaient mon admiration; ce héros n’avait
pas conscience de sa valeur; il semblait ne pas se douter que des centaines
d’yeux admirateurs étaient fixés sur lui et que de toutes les poitrines des
assistants montait vers lui un culte profond d’adoration.
Le Clergyman assis à ma gauche était une de mes vieilles connaissances.
Clergyman aujourd’hui, il avait passé la première moitié de sa vie dans les
camps et sur les champs de bataille, comme instructeur à l’école militaire de
Woolwich.
A ce moment un éclair singulier illumina ses yeux, se penchant vers moi
il murmura confidentiellement à mon oreille, en désignant d’un geste
discret le héros du banquet:
—Entre nous, sa gloire est un pur accident; il la doit à un coup de veine
incroyable.
Cette déclaration me causa une grande surprise; s’il s’était agi de
Napoléon, de Socrate ou de Salomon, mon étonnement n’eût pas été plus
grand. Quelques jours plus tard, le Révérend me fournit l’explication
suivante de son étrange remarque:
—Il y a environ 40 ans j’étais instructeur à l’école militaire de
Woolwich; le hasard voulut que je me trouvasse là lorsque le jeune
Scorosby passa son examen préliminaire; sa nullité m’inspira une profonde
pitié: tandis que les autres élèves de sa section répondaient tous
brillamment, lui se montra d’une ignorance crasse. Il me fit évidemment
l’effet d’un brave garçon, doux et sans astuce, mais c’était navrant de le
voir planté debout comme un piquet et décocher des réponses d’une
stupidité et d’une ignorance prodigieuses. J’eus vraiment compassion de lui
et je me dis: «La prochaine fois qu’il passera un nouvel examen il sera
certainement renvoyé; aussi serait-il plus charitable d’adoucir sa chute
autant que possible.»
Je le pris à part et m’aperçus qu’il savait quelques mots de l’histoire de
César, mais c’était là tout son bagage; je me mis donc à l’œuvre et lui
rabâchai un certain stock de questions sur César, qui devaient
infailliblement être posées aux élèves. Vous me croirez si vous voulez: le
jour de l’examen il se montra transcendant dans ses réponses, si
transcendant qu’il recueillit force compliments pour ce «gavage» purement
superficiel; tandis que les autres, mille fois plus instruits que lui,
répondirent mal, et furent fruit-sec. Avec une veine fantastique qui ne se
reproduira peut-être pas deux fois dans un siècle, il n’eut pas à répondre à
d’autres questions. C’était stupéfiant. Pendant le temps que dura son
examen, je restai à côté de lui avec la sollicitude qu’éprouve une mère pour
son enfant estropié; il se tira toujours d’affaire comme par enchantement.
A n’en pas douter, les mathématiques allaient le couler et décider de son
sort; toujours par bonté d’âme pour adoucir sa chute, je le pris de nouveau à
part et je lui serinai un certain nombre de questions que l’examinateur ne
manquerait pas de poser; puis je l’abandonnai à son triste sort. Eh bien!
vous me croirez si vous voulez: à ma grande stupéfaction il mérita le
premier prix et reçut une véritable ovation de compliments.
Pendant une semaine il ne me fut plus possible de dormir: ma conscience
me torturait nuit et jour; par pure charité j’avais essayé de rendre moins
dure la déconfiture de cet infortuné jeune homme sans me douter du résultat
qui allait se produire. Je me sentais coupable et misérable: comment, par
mon fait, cette pauvre cervelle bornée allait se trouver en tête d’une
promotion et supporter de graves responsabilités! A n’en pas douter, à la
première occasion, un effondrement ne manquerait pas de se produire.
La guerre de Crimée venait d’être déclarée.
«Quel malheur, pensai-je, voici maintenant la guerre; ce pauvre âne va
avoir l’occasion d’étaler au grand jour sa nullité.» Je m’attendais à un
désastre: ce désastre se produisit: j’appris avec terreur que le jeune
Scorosby venait d’être nommé capitaine d’un régiment de marche. Qui eût
pu supposer qu’un tel poids de responsabilité dût peser sur des épaules aussi
faibles et aussi jeunes? J’aurais encore compris sa nomination au grade de
porte-étendard, mais à celui de capitaine, songez quelle folie! Je crus que
mes cheveux allaient en devenir blancs. Moi qui aime tant la tranquillité et
l’inaction, je me tins le triste raisonnement suivant: «Je suis responsable de
ce malheur vis-à-vis de ma patrie; j’accompagnerai donc cet incapable, je
resterai à ses côtés pour sauver ma patrie dans la mesure du possible.» Je
rassemblai le pauvre petit capital péniblement économisé pendant mes
années de dur labeur, je me mis en route avec un gros soupir et j’achetai un
grade de porte-étendard dans son régiment. Ainsi nous partîmes tous deux
pour la guerre.
Là, mon cher, quel spectacle effroyable! Il ne fit que des bévues, inepties
sur inepties; mais, voyez-vous, personne ne connaissait à fond cet individu,
personne n’avait mis au point ses capacités; aussi prit-on ses bévues
navrantes pour des traits de génie. Le spectacle de ses sottises me fit crier
de rage et délirer dans ma fureur; j’étais exaspéré de voir que chaque
nouvelle insanité de sa part augmentait sa réputation; je me disais: «Le jour
où les yeux de ses admirateurs s’ouvriront, sa chute sera aussi grande que
celle du soleil tombant du firmament.» Montant de grade en grade, il passa
par-dessus les cadavres de ses supérieurs; au plus chaud de la bataille, notre
colonel tomba frappé, et mon cœur se mit à battre affreusement, car
Scorosby allait prendre sa place. «Pour le coup, pensai-je, avant dix minutes
nous serons tous perdus.»
Le combat fut acharné; sur tous les points du champ de bataille les alliés
lâchaient pied. Notre régiment occupait une position de la plus haute
importance et la moindre bévue pouvait tout perdre. A ce moment critique,
notre fatal insensé fit quitter au régiment la position qu’il occupait, et le
lança à la charge contre la colline opposée où on ne voyait pas trace
d’ennemis.
«C’est la fin de tout, pensai-je cette fois. Le régiment s’ébranla; nous
avions franchi le faîte de la colline avant que ce mouvement insensé ait pu
être découvert et arrêté. Nous trouvâmes de l’autre côté une armée russe de
réserve au grand complet, dont personne ne soupçonnait l’existence.
Qu’arriva-t-il? Nous avions 95 chances sur 100 d’être massacrés. Mais non,
les Russes en conclurent que jamais un seul régiment ne se serait hasardé
dans une passe aussi dangereuse; ce devrait être l’armée anglaise tout
entière! Se croyant bloqués et découverts, les Russes firent demi-tour,
repassèrent la colline dans un affreux désordre. Nous les serrions de près
dans notre poursuite; arrivés sur le champ de bataille, ils se heurtèrent au
gros de l’armée ennemie; ce fut un chaos et une confusion épouvantables, et
la défaite des alliés se transforma en une éclatante victoire. Le maréchal
Canrobert contemplait ce spectacle avec ravissement, émerveillé, trépignant
de joie. Il fit appeler Scorosby, l’embrassa et le décora sur le champ de
bataille en présence de toutes les troupes.
Quelle avait donc été la fameuse bévue de Scorosby? Il avait tout
bonnement pris sa droite pour sa gauche, et rien de plus.
Il avait reçu l’ordre de se porter en arrière pour soutenir notre droite; au
lieu de cela, il chargea en avant et escalada la colline par la gauche. Il acquit
ce jour-là la réputation d’un grand génie militaire; la gloire de son nom
répandue dans tout le monde brillera dans les annales de l’histoire. Aux
yeux de tous, c’est un homme bon, doux, aimable et modeste, mais, en
réalité, il est au-dessous de tout comme incapacité. Une veine phénoménale
l’a servi jour par jour, année par année. Pendant un demi-siècle il a passé
pour un soldat des plus brillants; sa carrière militaire est émaillée d’un
nombre incalculable de bévues, cela ne l’a pas empêché de devenir
chevalier, baron, voire même lord; voyez plutôt sa poitrine, elle est
constellée de décorations. Eh! bien, monsieur, chacune de ces décorations
représente une gaffe colossale; prises dans leur ensemble, elles constituent
nettement la preuve qu’avant tout, pour réussir en ce monde, il faut être né
«veinard»!
 TABLE
LES PETERKINS 5
PERCE, MON AMI, PERCE 19
POURQUOI J’ÉTRANGLAI MA CONSCIENCE 29
LES AMOURS D’ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE ET DE ROSANNAH ETHELTON 59
LE CHAT DE DICK BAKER 95
LA FÊTE DISPENDIEUSE DU COLONEL MOSES GRICE 101
SUR LES BEBES 129
CONSIDERATIONS SUR LE TEMPS 135
UN SAUTEUR MEXICAIN_PUR-SANG 143
L’HOMME LE PLUS MÉCHANT ET LE PLUS STUPIDE DE TURQUIE 153
QUELQUES HÉROS D’OCCASION 165
A LA CURE D’APPÉTIT 179
EXTRAIT DU TIMES DE LONDRES EN 1904 201
NOS DIPLOMATES 223
EN VOYAGEANT AVEC UN RÉFORMATEUR 239
UN VEINARD 267

ACHEVÉ D’IMPRIMER

le vingt-deux mai mil neuf cent dix

PAR

BLAIS & ROY

A POITIERS

pour le

MERCVRE
 DE

FRANCE
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LES
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