Kevin Rudd must secretly love Wilson Tuckey, in the way that one might value a psychopath who happens to inhabit the enemy bunker and can’t actually fire a weapon. In other words, Tuckey plays right into Rudd’s political message.
Perhaps feeling a little defensive over all the condemnation of his [intlink id=”935″ type=”post”]boat terrorist hypothesis[/intlink], Tuckey latched onto a breadcrumb left by one Dr Victor Rajakulendran:
That is a probability, that is what I have been told, so out of 200 Tamil asylum seekers, there could be a Tiger. They are also fleeing the country like any other Tamils because their life is also in danger and I would say their life is in more danger than a common Tamil civilian. The common Tamil civilians are leaving the country because of fear of their lives – these people also will definitely flee the country so they could be in the boat.
There you go. Terrorists on boats – case closed. I won’t make too much of Tuckey himself supposedly using this as evidence to support his position. It doesn’t, of course, for reasons that I think are obvious given the above quote. Tuckey previously referred specifically to people coming to Australia with hostile intent, and I doubt that blowing things up in Australia is a terribly appealing strategy for someone fighting for a homeland in the north of Sri Lanka.
In this instance, all he had to say was: “Well, I think it authenticates it. It is quite interesting of course.” As silly as this is, it sounds like a throw-away response to a journalist’s question, which raises two points:
- It’s not clear what the question actually was (cue Douglas Adams); and
- Tuckey may not have heard the actual quote before he responded, but merely an interpretation of it.
If I had more time to dig up useless factoids, I might be able to figure that out. However, I don’t, and so I’m going with my own theory that someone was simply pushing Tuckey’s buttons, which I imagine isn’t a terribly hard thing to do.
Not to leave us too disappointed, however, Tuckey offers us this additional morsel of insight:
What is [the asylum seekers’] health status and what threat, unfortunately, might they represent to children and others within Australia.
To children, Wilson? Terrorism isn’t enough for you, eh? Now you’re sagely warning us that they might be terrorist paedophiles?