In sending a tweet critical of the UK’s Australian-exported approach to asylum seekers and refugees, which prompted an almighty uproar, suspension from his profession as sports host with the government-funded broadcaster, and colleagues to step down in solidarity, Gary Lineker raises important questions.

When is speaking out against government policies that are contrary to accepted and adopted international law, that put people at extreme risk by forcing them into either persecution or destitution, and challenging the language designed to turn a public against an entire cohort of people, inappropriate, partisan or partial?

The answer is that there is a fundamental difference between calling out human rights abuse and being politically partisan. While there is confusion around whether Lineker is technically and legally an employee of the BBC, others are rightly expected to be politically impartial. But there is no “impartiality” on human rights abuse. How can one be impartial to the stoking of division and hate?

There is no such thing as taking a “neutral” approach to racism, the marginalisation of groups, hate speech, violence and a descent into treating people like animals. Human rights, which are independent of any party, politician or government of the day, provide us with the only true neutrality.

Criticising policy that manifests these dangers is a duty we all hold. Otherwise, when does our profession start and our humanity end?

These are not new concepts to Australians, since we underwent the same process. We should be deeply ashamed that our own policy – that has cost billions and destroyed many lives – is now travelling the world and taking our reputation with it.

Loading

The Sunak government has copied Australia’s policy right down to the simplistic, diversionary slogan: Stop the Boats. Of course, it is boats that must be stopped, rather than desperate humans in them.

Language has proven highly successful in numbing the Australian public to the reality of human mobility and suffering. To ensure that ordinarily caring Australians would turn a blind eye to suffering and death, it is fundamentally necessary to portray a group as unworthy, improper, criminal and dangerous. One must also take their identity and thereby their humanity by giving them numbers, ensure that no media can access them, even criminalise doctors who uphold their Hippocratic oath and call out the human cost, as Australia did with the Border Force Act in 2015.