I’m Ashamed to be Australian
Despite my having compiled a list of almost 107 things Howard has done wrong in the past 4 years off the top of my and a friend’s heads, I decided I couldn’t vote for Howard and have any self-respect a long time ago. I don’t need 107 issues. I only really need 1 specific horrific issue. Maybe 2.
I grew up an extremely proud Aussie. I learned both verses to the national anthem. I used to be able to recite all Australia’s Prime Ministers from 1901 with their dates and parties. I led Aussie Aussie Aussie chants to 10,000 fans at Sydney 2000.
The thing I was always proudest of was the way we opened our arms to humans from other countries. I grew up with racially and culturally diverse friends. We knew that other families did things differently, had different beliefs, and had different cultural practices, and we found that exciting and interesting. I met the occasional racist but I felt comforted that our Government was leading an example to counteract this.
We all knew of Australia’s racist past. We all at least felt deep regret, if not complete shame at the way our country had treated Aborigines. We were all of the opinion that nothing like this should ever happen again. We were equally ashamed of the White Australia Policy.
Today’s Australia is a foreign country. One that I am as ashamed of as I am of Australia’s past. Despite our immense wealth and privilege, we do not accept the small numbers of refugees the UN has said we should. Not only that, we are in breach of our UN Human Rights obligations through our poor quality detention centres. That cannot be taken seriously enough. The UN’s International Human Rights Laws were the best things to have ever come out of the UN.
With the many genuine refugees that have been detained in Woomera and Baxter under Howard, we are creating a new generation of people we will one day have to say “Sorry†to. When the children are let out of the hell houses, when the men who were so depressed and desperate they sewed their lips together are released, when the women who have been driven to suicidal tendencies are allowed into the Australian community, Australians will not be able to blame it on a previous generation. Every Liberal Party voter will have to look their grandchildren in the eye and say “Yes, I created an Australia that used military force against people fleeing war-torn countries. I helped create an Australian history that caused serious psychological and physical damage to people who turned out to be refugeesâ€. Liberal Party voters should know that there will be no hiding behind the olde “it was a previous generation that did that, not me†this time. You are making yourselves complicit.
Prolonged detention has serious mental and physical effects on detainees, especially child detainees. Vanstone is taking such little care to look after these people that maggots were found in their food. More disturbingly, the Government has employed prison guards to keep order in the centres. Because these guards have been trained to keep hardened criminals in line, they treat these refugees in a similarly aggressive way.
Even former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser has been quite active in campaigning against Howard’s hard line refugee policy. Fraser, the man who appointed Howard as his Treasurer thinks that this policy is morally wrong.
Priest guy quote
A vote for Howard, Ruddock and Vanstone is a vote in favour of this policy. It places you at the Right of Malcolm Fraser! Few people believed there was such a place on the political spectrum. It shows you think that your being able to buy a new CD or chocolate bar was more important than the long-term imprisonment of innocent children. I am not so poor that I am going to sink into poverty if Labor fixes up our refugee detention centres.
If you truly believe that Costello is a good economic manager, do you really believe that you are about to hit the poverty line if Labor gets in? If you truly believe that free trade is good economic policy, is this really a concern that can outweigh this sort of treatment of human beings? Whatever God you follow, Jesus, Buddha, or whoever, can you imagine them approving of this or letting it continue?
When you place a 1 next to the words “Liberal Partyâ€, remember that you are complicit in imprisoning innocent children. I’m not saying we don’t need to run checks on people coming into Australia, but no other Western country has wide-scale mandatory detention of refugees. Not even the Brits, Americans or French. We can look after these people better and we can process them quicker