"Look Kevin, enough is enough when it comes to asylum seekers. For the last six weeks it's been going around and around in circles. Why don't you take the opportunity to completely change the discourse, the way that Australians think about asylum seekers and stop this around in circles business and just stop this fear mongering?"
From there Elysha's week went Crazy. The PM said that she knew nothing about Asylum seekers, so Channel Nine flew her to Indonesia to try and get first hand experience. I spent a lot of time hanging with Brayden (Elysha's partner) and helping him deal with the magnitude of it all. But what it really did was allow me the opportunity to spend some time thinking about the issue.
Personally I think the entire problem with Asylum seekers comes back to the whole problem with our money system, but that isn't a practical way to think today in Australia. What it comes down to is that the overwhelming view in Australia seems to be that people fear that allowing people in need to come to our country will put a strain on our economy, infrastructure and resources and lower the standard of living in this country. For people living in a capitalist system that is a very fair point.
However, one of the points Elysha has argued is that Australia as a nation is far more compassionate than that. They are allowing fear mongering by the media and politicians to make them forget about their fellow man. They take the human away from the issue and say its about People Smugglers. They call the refugees 'illegals' or 'terrorists', suggesting that they are breaking the law and are thus sub-human. They don't acknowledge that these are people that were like us in every way at birth, and their only difference is where they live and who has persecuted them.
I agree that given the current system simply opening the doors and letting anybody who wants to come here would not work. But if were we to go with what appears to be the current attitude, "Fuck Off, We're Full", we become people filled with hate and not compassion.
I propose that our politicians need to acknowledge the plight of these people, recognise that they are more than likely refugees and completely change the discourse of the Australian people. If Kevin Rudd were to simply say something like "We acknowledge that these are people in need and that we, as citizens of Earth, need to do all that we can to help them. Sadly though, we cannot help all of them, only some. It is our responsibility to do something and it is time to work out exactly how much we can do." then I believe we would be taking the first steps in the right direction.
How we choose which refugees we take, or how many, I don't know. But to encourage this attitude of fear, to lock people up for simply fleeing persecution... we can do better as a people.
