I fear that the Australia I love; the Australia that prides itself on the ideal of a fair go, is rapidly vanishing.
If we the people, you and I, do not stick our hands up now and say “STOP this is not right” I despair to imagine what the Australia of 2023 will look like.
Our Government is lying to us. We are not about to be swamped by hordes of refugees whose express purpose in life is to steal our jobs and clog up our roads. We are being asked for help by desperate people and we are kicking them in the teeth as they lie begging for mercy at at our feet.
By using words like “illegal queue jumpers” and emphasising the need for border protection, our Government both past and present, implies that the refugees who arrive here are breaking the law, and as lawbreakers, refugees are to be feared and disdained.
The Government, the opposition, and the tabloid newspapers encourage our belief that we need to be protected from refugees, which then in turn hardens our collective hearts to the plight of the refugees, allowing us to safely ignore them because they are lawbreakers.
It is not against the law to seek asylum.
We are encouraged to believe that there is a queue somewhere, that people fleeing for their lives can safely run to.
There are NO orderly checkout queues in war zones. There are no giant signs telling terrified people to stand to the left. There are only innocent people displaced by war who need our help.
I often wondered how the German people could have stood by and let the Jews and other minorities be exterminated in Concentration Camps.
I wondered how ordinary everyday people could sit back and either ignore the evil that was happening on their doorsteps, or willingly participate in it.
Now I know how the Holocaust happened because I see parallels here in my own community. There is a Concentration Camp on my very own doorstep and I drive past the rotten bloody thing every day and I DO NOTHING.
Each time I look at the razor wire and think of the children in detention at Pontville, I feel an overwhelming despair and yet I still do nothing about it.
I make excuses for my inertia. I lie to myself that I am too busy. I ask how could one woman help, what can I really do, how is it possible for one person to make a difference.
I dismiss my own power because maybe I have also bought into the government’s lie, and maybe I too am a little bit frightened of Muslim men.
And so I keep on driving past the Pontville Detention Centre, thinking thinks about the wrongness that emanates from the place and I don’t do a bloody thing.
I am ashamed of myself, Internet, deeply ashamed.
Australia is the supposed lucky country, the land of a fair go and mateship.
We have an idea about ourselves that is based on the myth of the Gallipoli digger and Lawson’s sheep stealing swaggie. We seem to think that we are a cross between Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee and Mel Gibson in Mad Max, when in fact we are really Sir Les Patterson bumbling along on the world stage with an idiotic smile on our faces, congratulating ourselves for our Government sanctioned cruelty and inhumanity to our fellow man.
Today this inertia of mine stops. I will no longer sit quietly by and do nothing. Apparently one paper letter is worth 20,000 signatures on a Get Up campaign, so today I am going to use an old fashioned method of having my concerns heard.
I am going to write a letter on actual paper with a real pen and I am going to post it off to my local federal member Eric Hutchinson and I am going to ask Eric some questions.
I refuse to be ashamed of myself any longer and I refuse to ignore the concentration camp that is on my doorstep. I ask you to please watch this film trailer and to also open your hearts.
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While you’re ashamed of yourself, I’m proud of you:)
Beautifully written post. Thank you. Don’t be ashamed. You have been brave enough to write about this and hopefully to awaken others from their Mainstream Media fear-induced thoughts.
Oh Kimmy…this post made me cry….I am sharing it and sharing it and sharing it xx
There is no razor wire at pontville , so you didn’t look at razor wire at pontville, did you
Thank you. I have been writing (emailing) politicians about this very issue. I am so ashamed of of our treatment of asylum seekers. Who want a chance. And instead we lock them up and torture them.
I need to start writing using pen and paper.
Thank you so much for the reminder.
But I don’t have a heart. I locked it away somewhere safe and now I can’t find it…….
But I do wish our governments would realise these are just people who need somewhere to live, a chance to work and to raise their children in a peaceful environment.
There’d be a hue and cry if our people went to their countries and got locked away in camps for no other reason than being strangers of a different religion or belief system.
I totally agree. It makes me very sad. After the White Australia policy was slowly abandoned I thought we had started to improve. Sadly that is not so.
idiot.
Good.
It made me so furious to hear the likes of people in Western Australia say how frightened they were after a recent escape from detention and how they weren’t kept informed, locking their doors, blah, blah, blah that I wanted to physically shake them til their heads rocked back and forth (to dislodge the lying crap from their brains) and screech in their faces “They are NOT criminals! They have done NOTHING illegal! There is NOTHING to be afraid of! They are bloody human beings, you fuck knuckle!”
But I will refrain from that and follow your example by beginning a letter writing campaign.
Visiting Detention Centres is easy to organise:
https://www.immi.gov.au/managing-australias-borders/detention/visiting/
I visited the family detention centre at Villawood and met the kids, had lunch with a family and spoke to anyone we met. It was not at all how I expected. Yes, detention but with regular external visits to the community (beach, Bunnings), schooling via many visiting teachers preparing the kids to join the appropriate level once they leave Villawood. I completely disagree with Detention but I saw many things different to the mainstream media presentation when I visited. Villawood though has a tiny proportion of family detention and the detainees are housed in a suburban setting (street with rubbish bin collection along with the rest of the local area.)
Adult Detention at Villawood was a different matter: that’s behind razor wire and I didn’t visit that area. It houses people who have illegally over-stayed visas in Australia as well as asylum seekers.
Beautiful words from a beautiful lady.
For about 18 months now, I have been following the plight of Ranjini. I have sent some emails on her behalf and I thought, given the subject matter of this post you might not mind if I shared this. I would really appreciate it if you could look at the site and maybe share her story.
FARK. I swear I put the link. Apparently not. Trying again 🙂
http://lettersforranjini.com/ranjinis-story/