Shame, Australia, Shame

The Australian people I meet going in and out of Baxter each day are also victims of the insanity of Australian concentration camps. Every day I work with and hear from many ordinary people, old and young, who write to or phone detainees or work with those out on temporary visas. We might be in a minority, those of us who worry and try to help refugees, but we are hundreds of thousands in number - lawyers, artists, public servants, teachers, nurses, doctors, grandparents, cricketers, even a few politicians. We are all "bleeding hearts" and we are suffering because of this inhumanity.

This issue has deeply divided Australia and I don't think our politicians and everyday Australia have any idea of how deeply this unbelievable cruelty has touched our lives. We are in grief. Many of us sadly may never feel the same about Australia again.

Many people I meet just don't believe what is happening. Others shrug it off and say, "We can't help everyone!" As Robert Manne pointed out, you cannot help every bashed and raped woman in Australia either but his does not give you excuse to refuse to help the one who happens to come to your door one night in the midst of her distress.

We are about 40th in the world in the numbers of asylum seekers we take (worked out on a per capita basis) and in 2001 we took 1600 less than the quota of 12000 the government set itself. In the eighties we managed to take 20,000 a year and to process them with kindness. And we also make it so hard for people to prove their cases. One man I know is so desperate to prove one point of his case that he has contacted a friend in a neighbouring country to his own asking him to travel secretly to his country and try to bribe someone in a specific office to give him a copy of a document. How extreme, I think.