A few weeks ago I tried to caution the Australian government against pressing ahead with its proposed refugee-swapping deal with Malaysia's Umno/BN regime by citing the proverbial warning that "if you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas".

But I now realise that I vastly understated the danger of close contact with Umno/BN, as now it appears that the Australian Labour government hasn't caught just a few pests, but a potentially fatal dose of the plague.

Stubbornly pressing ahead with proposed parliamentary changes to the Migration Act designed to circumvent the Australian High Court's ruling that it would be illegal to send boat-people to a country that is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention, this already somewhat sickly government now finds itself in mortal danger of collapse.

And worsening the political prognosis for Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and their colleagues in the administration is the considerable public resentment at their callously considering sending refugees to Malaysia in the first place, let alone refusing to take the High Court's "no" for an answer.

Australians, admittedly, are by and large as ignorant about Malaysia's political and social affairs as the reverse is true. But a great many are aware, or at least believe, that whipping and other punishments that they see as inhumane are routinely practised by the Malaysian authorities on people in their custody.

If only they knew how dire the situation really is under the pestilential Umno/BN regime, with robbery, extortion and people-trafficking widely practised by crooked immigration officers and agents, and also, of course, by members of Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein's venomous ‘volunteer force', Rela.

Not the only malady plaguing Australia

But the asylum-seeker fiasco isn't the only malady plaguing Australia as a result of infectious contact with Malaysia's pestilential ruling coalition.

The scandal surrounding the alleged bribery of officials in Malaysia and elsewhere by government-linked banknote printing company, Securency, still continues to fester in the Australian press despite the best efforts of senior executives of the company and the Reserve Bank to persuade official inquiries to give them a bill of health.

Then there's the rash of business and real-estate investments in countries including Australia, Canada and the UK by Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul "The Termite" Taib Mahmud and his family, whose case has reportedly been drawn by the Bruno Manser Fund to the attention of authorities responsible for policing the trans-national transfer of the proceeds of crime.

In fact, the Malaysian malaise seems to be increasingly infecting everything it touches around the world, from the incumbent government of Australia to French submarine and other arms suppliers and Australian and other manufacturers using illegally-logged Malaysian rainforest timber in their products.

And, of course, the Umno/BN disease continues to rage unabated in Malaysia itself, causing chronically running sores like the the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder and the deeply-suspicious deaths of A. Kugan, Teoh Beng Hock, Ahmad Sarbaini Mohamed and countless others in official custody; endlessly festering financial frauds involving untold quantities of public money; and a suppurating situation in which the media collude with the regime to maintain its secrets and spread its pernicious propaganda, and the Election Commission conspires against the nation's need to cure itself of this sick state of affairs.

In fact, many, if not the majority of Malaysians, have become so debilitated by decades of living with the Umno/BN disease that they're ready to resort to the slightest sign or even illusion of relief.

Desperately hoping, despite all previous evidence that their Umno/BN misleaders are pathological liars, that regular false promises of ‘reform' as recently made by Prime Minister Najib Razak may this time turn out to be true.

And meekly choking-back their nausea at Najib's squandering of public money on self-promotional luxury pleasure trips for himself, his family and cronies, and his wife's Imelda-Marcos-style lust for designer goods and diamonds.

Those who resist being bitten by Umno/BN bug

World's best democracy? World's pest democracy, more like it. And the pestilence has prevailed for so long that it's no wonder so many people have either succumbed to its deadly effects or learned to live with its crippling symptoms.

So I've long have boundless admiration for those intrepid Malaysians who have always had the fortitude to resist being bitten by the Umno/BN bug and thus stay healthy enough to speak, write, draw, sing, organise and march against it.

And I'm also greatly encouraged by the fast-growing numbers of their fellow countrymen and women who appear to be becoming immune or outright allergic to this deadly political pandemic.

Especially as it now appears to be threatening to spread to what has long stood as one of Malaysians' last lines of defence against its ravages, Malaysiakini .

The Umno/BN germs have previously attacked Malaysiakini with police raids and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but this week has been the first time, as far as I'm aware, that they have tried the kiss of death.

The recent no doubt Umno/BN-invented rumour that Malaysiakini management was contemplating a share-swap deal with the leprous regime-owned tabloid, The Malay Mail , struck most supporters of a healthy democracy for Malaysia as somewhat akin to their best friend's exchanging body fluids with a stranger in the terminal stages of AIDS or Hepatitis-C.

So, thank goodness, did Malaysiakini co-founder and editor-in-chief Steven Gan, explaining that Malaysiakini was offering content to other news media, which is a perfectly respectable and traditional commercial practice.

But he made it crystal-clear that he and his partners have no intention whatever of endangering the portal's tenaciously-preserved well-being by inviting the vicious and virulent virus in to infect it, as in the tragic case of Malaysia's diseased and dying mainstream media.

Or, to quote Gan's own statement on the subject, "Malaysiakini selling out to Umno? Over our dead bodies."

I hope his resolve never has to be tested to its ultimate extreme, as the forces of truth and justice in Malaysia can't afford to lose such a champion. The world's pest democracy has already sustained itself at the cost of a great many dead bodies, and, as it's high time the slaughter was stopped.

In other words, it's time for Malaysiakini and all the rest of us devoted to restoring healthy democracy in Malaysia to paraphrase one of Arnie Schawarzenegger's most favourite movie lines and remember that "Umno/BN is the disease. We're the cure."

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia' and ‘1Malaysia.con'.