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Language, Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms pp 291–336Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders—A World Without Others?

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) policy, which became the launch pad for the newly elected Coalition Government in September 2013. OSB is a military-style border protection policy that brings together some 15 Australian Federal Government departments and agencies led by a 3-star army general under the banner of a Joint Agency Taskforce. OSB policy builds on and extends a suite of previous measures and policies focusing on addressing the problem of arrival on Australia’s shores of refugee and asylum seeker boats. The language of Australia’s controversial OSB policy is also analysed against the backdrop about the problematic nature of national borders. The chapter specifically focuses on four interrelated themes: OSB as a policy framework, OSB as political rhetoric, OSB in practice and OSB as reflected in the far-right wing views of Pauline Hanson. It concludes with a summative section looking at how the language of OSB betrays the various ways in which the policy constitutes another bane for Australian multicultural policy.

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  1. Linguistics, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Finex Ndhlovu

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Ndhlovu, F. (2018). Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders—A World Without Others?. In: Language, Vernacular Discourse and Nationalisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76135-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76135-0_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76134-3

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