Asylum Seekerd
Another day brings another Defence scandal, prompting a colleague of mine to quip that the people of Inverbrackie and Woodside are probably grateful now there are refugees in the housing estate rather than military personnel.
He said it with a smile, but serious intent.
The Adelaide Hills’ Inverbrackie Detention Centre has not been without its own scandals since it became home to families from Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq.
First there was the Fruit Picking Incident. About six young asylum seekers scaled a fence - an internal fence, mind, they never got as far as the outside world - to pick fruit. They spent at least ten minutes picking cherry plums.
Tragedy anywhere in the world tends to bring out a generosity of the human spirit in Australians.
But when it involves asylum seekers on our doorstep the feelings among many Australians can be cold-hearted and callous, even to the extent that some of them say anyone who chooses to sail thousands of kilometres in a rickety boat in search of a safe haven should expect to face death.
The loss of at least 30 lives when a boat packed with asylum seekers tried to reach the shores of Christmas Island in stormy seas last week unleashed a wave of blame and finger pointing among most comments to online news sites. Many showed little sympathy for the boatpeople.
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Gregg says:
You do generalise Clare and we do have people with ancestry links to something over 200 nations. We also have had a very well organised refugee program for many decades and we take refugees from many countries, many people with different physical characteristics including colour as also applies to skilled/family… Read more »
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Gregg says:
@Tripper, You’ve smurfed out in tripping up on lack of knowledge of the refugee system, there being 15M of them in camps run by the UNHCR and other organisations globally. Australia is already among the highest in re-settling refugees and all the lot in Indonesia are doing is bypassing the… Read more »
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