Why is Tony Burke dodging the Bonnie Blue visa issue?
by PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA · Mail OnlineWhy is immigration minister Tony Burke dodging the Bonnie Blue visa issue? He's been more than happy to declare a willingness to intervene and use his powers to revoke visas before.
For the uninitiated, Bonnie Blue is a British sex worker now living in Queensland on a visa.
During Schoolies Week, she is planning to head to the Gold Coast to offer free sex to 'barely legal 18 years olds' as long as they let her film the encounter and upload it to her Only Fans account.
Although she sleeps with a diverse range of men of all races, ages and appearances, she does not deny that her most prolific and controversial content involves sex acts with 'barely legal' teenagers.
'There's two reasons,' she told the Daily Mail.
'One: the teen category has been the most searched category online for a very long time, people have always done schoolgirls. And I was like, there's a gap in the market for someone being with a schoolboy. If that's how we want to word it.
'From a business point of view, I knew there was a massive, massive gap that I could (exploit). And sleeping with 18-year-olds makes the content a lot more relatable to the subscribers, who are younger.'
A petition has started to have her visa revoked on character grounds, and for the discord her actions are causing in the community. So far more than 20,000 people have signed it.
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Burke has previously said that he would 'consider refusing and cancelling visas for anyone who seeks to incite discord in Australia'.
He recently used those powers to reject a visa application by Trump supporter Candace Owens, whose offensive commentary included antisemitic remarks.
When the immigration minister intervened in that case he said Owens had the 'capacity to incite discord' so it was better to keep her out of Australia.
But Burke doesn't seem to want to extend that approach to Bonnie Blue. Why not?
Child safety expert Kristi McVee pointed out 'if this was a male (OnlyFans) creator targeting 'barely legal' young women, we would be up in arms, they would be called paedophiles'.
It is hard not to agree that were Bonnie Blue a male sex worker targeting female 'barely legal' 18-year-olds, Burke would certainly use his powers. Standing on principle condemning the behaviour.
But when Daily Mail Australia reached out to Burke to find out whether or not he was willing to act as things actually are, he didn't even bother to respond.
When we followed up the request, not content to let him hide his head in the sand, one of the minister's staffers confirmed that the immigration department would do its thing in the ordinary way - whatever that means - but the minister couldn't comment on individual cases.
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Really? Even though he's been more than happy to comment on 'individual cases' when it suits him in the past.
It is hard not to conclude that Burke hides behind departmental due process when it suits him, but will burst out from that restriction whenever political expediency demands it.
That just isn't the case (yet) when it comes to Bonnie Blue.
Perhaps that will change if momentum builds demanding Burke take action.
Sex work is the oldest profession in the world, as the saying goes. That famous saying took hold after a 1889 Rudyard Kipling story referencing the notion.
The situation involving Bonnie Blue isn't about stigmatising sex work. Concerns about her actions are confined to the context of the way in which she is practicing her profession during Schoolies.
While those she targets are consenting adults, albeit only just, the change.org petition claims that Bonnie Blue is a 'predatory sex worker', adding that she 'finds (Schoolies) the perfect opportunity to find young boys to prey on and record sexual content to sell'.
Immigration minister Tony Burke has decided to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, for now. In sharp contrast to his blow hard commentary on other issues whenever it politically suits him.