I wonder if Rupert Murdoch ever wonders how to get red wine stains out of his shirt. I wonder if the Sultan of Brunei ever wonders how you cook a steak medium rare. I wonder if Sheikh Al Maktoum ever wonders how to change the tyre on his bulletproof range rover. I wonder if Prince Charles wonders how much time people allow in peak hour traffic to get to Heathrow.
When you are wealthy, when you are spoiled for choice, when you are a platinum level resident of the first world, do you ever really take a moment to think about the rest of the un-gilded universe? Do the goings on of the little people trouble your 10000 thread-count nights? Do you ever wonder how the other half is forced to live? Do Australians realise how bloody lucky they’ve got it?
Australia, a country blessed with more than she requires, her ground bursting with the richness of treasured minerals, an island the size of Russia, home to the population of Scandinavia. Australians are doted with more space than they know what to do with; so they invariably play cricket on it…for five days at a time. Australians eat well. Australians breathe fresher air than anyone North of the Equator. Australians can pray to Allah, Buddha, God or Yoda, simultaneously, without fear of torture or execution. Australia has known only one terrorist attack upon her soil, an attack that killed three people and 35 years later, no one knows who did it. Once the site of the worst mass homicide committed by a single person, Australia quickly changed her laws and is now a land free of semi-automatic weapons and the right to bear arms requires a truckload of paperwork, a psych test and a litre of blood to prove you aren’t Dexter.
Recently, Australia, the Lucky Country, the land girt by sea, the land where we can all advance fairly has become a victim of its worst characteristic; distance. Australia is Eden on earth but for one thing, it is really, really far away from the rest of the world (except New Zealand, which counts only if you are Bilbo Baggins). Being so far way from what’s going on everywhere else (let’s say real problems) lends itself to an insularism and an ignorance that has dumbed down the everyday lives of everyday Australians.
Listening to the news, or watching the television, you may be forgiven for thinking that Australia is under constant threat of alien invasion. Not a day goes by without some reference, in any or all of Australia’s media, to the ‘invaders’. While I was in Sydney, the national, public broadcaster, the ABC, made constant reference to the ‘boat people’ to ‘people smugglers’ and to ‘asylum seekers’.
It is true that thousands of refugees attempt to illegally enter Australia via overcrowded fishing boats. Many of these people are from the Middle East, many of them pay people smugglers to bring them in, and most of the dangerously overcrowded boats sail from Indonesian ports. Some of them die trying, some of them don’t make it and some of them do. Those that do are then shoved into detention centres while they wait for their cases to be heard, sometimes for years, before they are granted the right to stay in Australia or sent home.
It is wrong; refugees should not circumnavigate the system…because no one in Australia ever does.
No one in Australia ‘chucks a sickie’. No one in Australia leaves work early on a Friday afternoon to suck down the first weekend beer. No one in Australia cheats the welfare system. No one in Australia remembers that modern Australia began as the UK’s biggest prison; a beachside colony surrounded by barbed wire, filled with convicts who were obviously sent to die in Sydney because they always followed the rules.
So refugees should follow the rules. They should apply for asylum in their home country, they should await ‘processing’# in a desert camp on the border of Sudan, Somalia and the Styx and pray that Angelina and her new boobs come to save them. Refugees should follow the rules and do what they are told, just like Australians do.
[The preceding paragraphs were written two weeks ago when I was in Sydney, the remainder was written the morning after Kevin’s Rudd announcement]
Last night, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new Prime Minister who, up until a month ago was our ex-Prime Minister, and member of the left leaning Labour Party, announced that no person who arrives in Australia on a boat would be resettled in Australia. Instead, they will be sent to Papua New Guinea, where they will be processed (more sausage) and resettled if they meet requirements.
On the surface, this would appear to be in no way connected to the fact that there is a Federal Election later this year. It would also appear that in an effort to combat the increasing approval ratings of the budgie-smuggling, homophobic, misogynist, conservative Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, Kevin has become about as “left leaning” as Alexander Putin. It would also appear that everyone in Australia has forgotten about what a government should focus on; schools, health, economy, education, transport, welfare, in fact anything at all that occurs within Australia, rather than an exaggerated, FOXnews’ed problem of a twenty thousand people who arrive each year by boat. Sort of like squeezing a pimple on your nose while your legs rot with gangrene. I am guessing that they don’t mean the people who arrive on the Sapphire Princess of the Queen Mary II. Those people are wealthy octogenarians so they are allowed to arrive by boat.
Maybe Kevin, a born again Christian, has forgotten that Jesus, and all of his people, were refugees too. Maybe Kevin doesn’t sing the second verse of the Australian national anthem; a few lines that bang on about us welcoming people from afar to join our happy sunbathing family. Maybe Kevin should go and visit some of the countries from whence these people flee, countries where setting fire to sleeping children in a school dormitory is an acceptable method of encouraging people to join your religion.
Papua New Guinea, a country known for its rock solid human rights record, if by rock solid you mean constructed upon the San Andreas Fault, is an island nation of about 7 million people. Given the absolute absurdity of Kevin’s oxymoronic ‘solution’, I can only imagine that he has paid the good people of PNG enough money to retire early, encouraging them to take on a responsibility that Australia, a much bigger, richer, developed country, won’t.
Forgive me, but, what the unimaginable fuck?!
I’m going to take a moment to think about the Australians I know. Me, and half my family are either born in Britain, or half British. On the non-British side, there are some Polish ones, some Maltese ones, and among my generation of ones that are for lack of a better word pure Aussies, by marriage there are Argentineans, yet more British and even a rogue Russian. Perhaps my family are a rare multicultural exception; so let’s examine my friends and exes.
I’ve had one long-term Australian boyfriend whose entire family were from Northern Ireland and the short-term boyfriends, Lebanese, Korean, Pakistani and a parade of POMs. My friends are a mash up of Jewish, South African, German, Greek, Italian, Kiwi and naturally, more Brits.
Let’s face the undeniable truth; all Australians who aren’t Aborigines are immigrants, maybe eighth generation, but immigrants all the same. Many of the immigrant populations of Australia were at some point refugees. The Eastern Europeans after WWII, The Lebanese and The Greeks after their civil wars, Koreans after the Korean War and half of Central Europe after the Balkan conflicts. We had Vietnamese, the original Boat People, arrive after the US napalmed their country and more recently, we’ve welcomed Iraqis and Afghans.
The British, who aren’t known for their flamboyant spending, could only be encouraged to come when the air ticket price was reduced to be the same as a train ticket to London and many of them were fleeing Thatcher. Ironically, I’ve only ever known one person who lived illegally in Australia, and that person was a British backpacker who overstayed his visa by 12 months. Many of them do it. They know they’ll never be allowed to return but they figure the risk is worth it. They don’t follow the rules, but we don’t send them to detention centres. I wonder if it is because they speak the same language as Australians? I wonder if it is because they are white? I wonder if it is because they pray to God? I wonder if it is because their Airlie Beach tan and Havianas renders them so much more attractive than a man with a beard and a long white robe?
That these people, even the English, fought to get to and then remade their lives in Australia is what makes Australia great. It is the reason that the batting order for our cricket team reads like a menu written in South East Asia, it is the reason that Australia has developed to become the regional power she is. It is what makes us a largely peaceful nation, made entirely of people who sought to better their personal circumstances, people who’ve worked hard to make a better life for their children.
Kevin, in 2008 shortly after I arrived in Paris, you made a speech that made me proud that I’d voted for you. The Sorry Speech has gone down in history as your finest moment. You apologised for the wrongdoings of governments past, shameful wrongdoings that by today’s standards, were contrary to our native people’s basic human rights. Last night, for the first time in 7 years, I was ashamed to be Australian. I was ashamed that my nation, blessed with so much, would act like a spoiled child, holding onto all of her toys so no one else could play with them.
Last night I wondered who will be the brave person to make a Sorry Speech a few years from now, a Sorry Speech apologising for your heinous, election-grabbing mistake.
#Because they are sausages and we process them?
Beautifully articulated as always Marissa!! I'm proud of you for speaking out!!
Posted by: Michelle | 07/21/2013 at 12:16 AM