Have you had a fistful of Christmas party invitations this month? In between the hangovers, have you been glued to the TV, savouring the slow, torturous thrashing of England's visiting cricket team as Australia regains the Ashes? If so, you are probably like many other Australians: and the sinister new Government of Tony Abbott has decided that at this moment, when the force of distraction is at its peak, there is no better time to try something truly evil.

When Australians were leaving work on Friday afternoon for another Christmas party or shopping escapade, the Government made two particularly sinister announcements, no doubt hoping that they would be missed by the press and the public at large. One announcement involves blocking the Salvation Army's assistance to refugees and the other was abolishing a team of expert medical advisors who provide for the needs of refugees.

What this boils down to is a complete elimination of the last traces of independent oversight of the refugee program. Gillard, Rudd and Abbott have dramatically ramped up the racist, anti-refugee propaganda over the last year, all in the hope of bolstering their own political standing. Billions of dollars in contracts have been awarded to foreign firms such as G4S (fresh from their London 2012 Olympic scandals) and Serco (currently under investigation for claiming money fraudulently in the UK). Even if you don't have a care in the world for the plight of refugees, do you really want to see billions of dollars of your money handed to these foreign firms with no oversight? Isn't it bizarre that our fear of refugees receiving handouts (they actually pay taxes) drives us to give money to companies that have a history of taking handouts for themselves?

To put it in perspective, the billions of dollars wasted on the offshore concentration camps would by enough to fully retain the manufacturing operations of Ford and GM Holden in Australia or continue rolling out full speed, future proof fibre-to-the-home as part of the National Broadband Network.

With Australians dutifully looking the other way and independent, professional oversight fully eliminated, what can go wrong? It is not hard to find the chilling answer, it is there for all to see in the infamous 1971 Stanford prison experiment, a scientific investigation with such disturbing results that it has been made into movies several times over, most recently in 2010. I doubt it was on your list of things to watch this holiday season but with two and half more years of Tony Abbott ahead it appears to be mandatory viewing.