Go Back Where You Came From

Roderick Schneider was one of six participants in the ground-breaking SBS show Go Back To Where You Came From, the first episode of which screened last night. In a Punch exclusive, he shares some of his thoughts on the experience of completing an asylum seeker’s journey in reverse:

When setting out on the refugee journey in reverse for SBS’s “Go Back To Where You Came From”, all we were told was that we would be following the path of refugees who come to Australia.

I anticipated exposure to extreme poverty and people who had been subject to persecution in their home country while on the journey. What I didn’t anticipate was the undertone of the questions asked of me when I returned.

First, there was a comment made (and it’s been made repeatedly since) that as the documentary is on SBS it will merely be “preaching to the choir”. The premise of this statement is that SBS viewers are all better educated on refugee issues, and people who only watch commercial television are ignorant. It’s ironic that people who generalise that others are ignorant do so based on something as insubstantial as a person’s preferred television channel.

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