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Kingdom of nothingness.

Article Excerpt
Listeners to the ABCs Late Night Live program were treated to an extraordinary radio event some weeks ago. With the release of 'Sending Them Home', the latest Quarterly Essay, which deals with mandatory detention, a debate was set up between the principal author Robert Manne and Liberal MHR Christopher Pyne, who has a fearsome reputation as the Coalition's attack dog.

Those expecting a snarling defence of the indefinite detention of 'queue jumpers' etc. were initially not disappointed. However, as the encounter modulated to a simple consideration of the catalogue of cruelty and misery unleashed by the policy, Pyne adopted a tone somewhere between uncertain and contemplative, and admitted that were he faced with a situation such as those faced by the Afghan refugees he, too, would take his family on such a journey. The response struck everyone I have spoken to who heard it, but no-one could say quite what it was that was so strange. It seemed to be the voice of someone who was distant from himself--or from the persona he had displayed earlier in the piece--but not dissociated. It was a voice that seemed to be ha the act of distancing itself from its own speaker.

Presumably Pyne has previously encountered the incidents of unnecessary human suffering collected...

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