Category: politics

Refugees Welcome Here

On By More to the StoryIn Australian Asylum Seeking Policy, politics

Refugees not welcome in Australia? NO WAY.  

refugee-week-quote
Placard at a recent Refugee Week event

The Federal Government’s announcement to ban refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru from ever coming to Australia applies to 1,300 people who currently live there.

Seventy-two per cent of those who have been through the camps have been assessed as being refugees, according to the latest information issued by the government. I have no words for this latest cruelty inflicted by my government. What is the point of this when its ‘turn back’ policy is supposedly working?  Fear, confusion of language and violation of international human rights continues in my country.

Malcolm Turnbull is sounding more and more like the previous PM John Howard who said in 2001: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” as he fought against the rising support for Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party.

Can we really be returning to this low point in our history?

There is so much misunderstanding about why and how people seek protection and what happens when they arrive here.   Why as a community are we prepared to accept the lack of information about what is happening in our detention centres?   Asylum seekers are not only the most vulnerable group of people in Australia, but also one of the most marginalised.

Pauline Hansen went further yesterday that “all refugees are not welcome here.”   It’s time that the millions of people who have come to Australia as refugees stood up with people like me and you to loudly say NO.   Refugees ARE welcome here and have contributed positively to our community for decades.

I was please to share the stage at a community event with members of the Australian Red Cross last week. It was heartening to be reminded that they have been working with people impacted by migration – including people seeking protection – for almost 100 years.

There is a lot of great information on the Australian Red Cross website and it’s an interesting experience to take their quiz on asylum seekers and refugees… It reminded me how we have been misled on the facts. I encourage you to take the quiz and see how you go.

gingin-red-cross
Meeting the lovely Natasha Venebles from the Australian Red Cross

Finally, some welcome news

On By More to the StoryIn Australian Asylum Seeking Policy, politics

Some welcome news has come out of Malcolm Turnbull’s attendance at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York this week. Australia has announced it will increase its humanitarian intake of refugees to 18,750.

However that was the limit of any good news. It was extremely disappointing that Prime Minister Turnbull did not mention the 2,000 asylum seekers stuck for months, even years, in limbo on Manus and Nauru. Phil Glendenning, President of Refugee Council of Australia, referred to the omission as the “elephant in the room in the form of our offshore detention system”.  Most of these people have been assessed as refugees and need to be treated as such. And was I the only person horrified as our PM lectured the member nations of the United Nations about border security? Surely not.

The wonderful Tim Costello wrote a thoughtful blog recently published in the Huffington Post Australia called Looking the Other Way is no Longer an Option. It ends with these powerful words:

“Conscience doesn’t always win, and it rarely wins quickly. Most often those who stand up in the public square on matters of conscience face long and lonely battles, even if ultimately vindicated.

But it is nonetheless to be treasured and promoted because it remains one of the major engines of change for good in the world, and in our own country.

There has never been a better time for an earnest and honest national conversation about where our collective conscience is pointing.“

You can read the full blog here.

refugees-rodi-saidreuters

The Politics of Hate

On By More to the StoryIn politics

As I sat listening to Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech in the parliament I was, like many Australians, appalled at what I heard.

Few people get the chance to make a first speech to Parliament, even less manage to deliver two. But Pauline Hanson’s political comeback puts her in this unique club. She returned to Canberra railing against another minority group. In the 1990s it was Indigenous Australians and Asians she targeted, in 2016 Hanson has singled out Muslims.

In the introduction to my book More to the Story –conversations with refugees I said the following:

I left Australia with my husband at the end of 1996 to work in Hong Kong, just as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party began its popular rise, with a focus on race and anti-immigration messages. This increased xenophobia seemed magnified to us as expatriate Australians watching and reading about it from afar. Our Chinese friends started asking us why Australians hated them so much. My standard reply was to deny that Australians hated anyone or were racist. I talked about our long multicultural history of welcoming new arrivals from all over the world, as well as helping those in need. Over the following years, however, I began to worry that this position no longer did reflect Australia.

Yesterday, and today as I listened to callers on talkback radio, my worst fears have been confirmed. Hanson’s election seems to have given permission to the voices of racism in our society to speak more openly. It is hard to understand how a Senator can say we are being “swamped by Muslims” when according to the last census the Muslim community is less than 2% of our total population.

Yes, I accept we live in a free democratic society with the right to free speech, but I don’t believe we live in a society that should tolerate hate speech. I hope everyone I know will stand with the Muslim community against those like Senator Hanson who make wide ranging, factually incorrect assertions about minority groups in Australia. Surely the least we can demand is a fair and factual debate.

There are links below to some thoughtful articles in the Guardian Australia which present a more balanced view. And true to my belief that everyone’s voice deserves to be heard, (something Pauline Hanson is clearly against) here is the link to her speech.

muslim-women-studying