From the campaign

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Nicholas Gruen
Posted in Politics - national, Economics and public policy, Political theory

Nguyen

11 Comments

  1. Tyler
    August 9, 2013

    no doubt his family was disappointed to avoid TPVs at the time.....

  2. wilful
    August 9, 2013

    Two typos in the short bio too. Tsk tsk.

    And KPMG and Ernst & Young helping small businesses? yeah right.

    But I'm sure he's a decent chap. Asa a matter of fact, he's two degrees of separation from me, I know several people attending his wedding in November.

  3. conrad
    August 9, 2013

    Perhaps he could have his honeymoon in PNG.

  4. desipis
    August 9, 2013
    The 39-year-old fled Vietnam with his grandparents and siblings in 1979 and spent three days and nights on a fishing boat before landing on a Malaysian island.

    He spent nine months in a UNHCR refugee camp in Malaysia before he was accepted as a refugee by the Australian government, and arrived in Melbourne by plane in 1980.

    It's not exactly an experience inconsistent with the pacific solution.

  5. Alphonse
    August 9, 2013

    So? John Howard's people were pommy refugees, probably suffering less oppression to justify their highly inauspicious arrival than John Nguyen's people. (ok, I exempt Bob Howard from inauspicion)

  6. Michael
    August 9, 2013

    I love the term "economic refugee". It more or less describes the majority of the countries forebears, unless of course they can claim bragging rights for being the decedents of convicted criminals transported here. A country built on delusions and hypocrisy no wonder we favour people like JWH.

  7. Patrick
    August 9, 2013

    Beat me too it. I thought Nick's point was that anyone who did get out Vietnam then probably hated Labor.

  8. Tel
    August 9, 2013

    I'm just guessing but when he says, "Secure our borders" he probably still intends to allow people to escape.

  9. whyisitso
    August 10, 2013

    I see the One Nation candidate who committed the unforgivable "gaffe" (the "in" word of the gotcha journalist profession described Islam as a country) has quit.

    After all everyone who know anything is aware that Islam is a race.

  10. whyisitso
    August 10, 2013

    Oops I should have placed {sarc} after my comment above to avoid censorship by the thought police here.

    And of course I realize that I completely messed up the second line of my comment.

  11. whyisitso
    August 10, 2013

    Of course as everyone knows Australia has a closed door migration policy that admits no new immigrants, so anyone who wants to migrate here principally for economic reasons must pay to come on a leaky boat. There is no other way.