By Cagerattler
I’ve just made contact via a model rail forum site with a new friend. This bloke has just retired, mainly due to illness but is recovering now. A really nice person to correspond with, as is his wife whom he suggested was the main reason his health improved again. His name is Louis – why am I telling you this, you might ask ?
One of Louis’s first admissions was that he knew very little about Australia, and even less about Tasmania. Over the past two weeks I’ve been trying to fill him in about Tassie in particular. He’s done the same about Baltimore and the State of Maryland in return. I haven’t told him anything that’s not true, just about the geographical, cultural and lingual differences that fascinate him no end, and economical issues. HE ALREADY LOVES TASSIE…and has since learned more, as have I about Maryland on the east coast of the US. Louis’s main and succinct comment is “Man, what a great place to live.” How can I disagree?
His neck of the woods is pretty industrialized with a rich history, but many still struggle on the back of the GFC and this leads to so many other things. So why do WE continue to whinge so much? Could it be the case of the old adage – “The grass is always greener?” This leads to the second part of my article.
Boat refugees. I’m ashamed of our politicians of all persuasions at the moment on the “stop the boats” comments. It was revealed just recently that Australia is one of the most well-off countries on the planet…apparently the 8th strongest economy per capita overall, so why can’t we at least process the genuine refugees more quickly and try to encourage those escaping persecution, overcrowding and war zones?
To be frank though, in an ideal world you’d have nice people in clean, airy offices sorting prospective immigrants to our country before those people hop on an aircraft and become new citizens. In the real world, nothing could be further from the truth. The people trying to reach our shores via these boats are often poverty stricken, desperate, ill-informed people; many are or have been mistreated with little or no documents or money to even consider starting a new life somewhere better through the normal channels.
Can you imagine even considering risking your family, not really knowing the outcome on a boat that most of us wouldn’t take up Georges Bay let alone across expanses of ocean? It’d have to be pretty bad where you came from to take that sort of risk wouldn’t it? In this case, the grass is ALWAYS greener.
These people then usually spend months and years in detention, treated like criminals, when many could and should be offered temporary protection visas, and billeted with either family or compassionate Aussies while their suitability for citizenship is determined.
Whilst under protection, maybe a requirement would be that they attend language lessons, engage in community work or go to school wherever possible.
Surely we can reconsider our asylum-seeker process in relation to numbers we can realistically accept, and negotiate alternatives for the people who may be unsuitable, or can’t assimilate or contribute one day as citizens. As a first world country it has to be our responsibility to do a better job and once this expensive involvement in Afghanistan is finished, the many millions of dollars thus spared could be better re-directed to an improved performance on our current refugee policies.
Guess what…we were all refugees once, some sooner than later.
What do you think ? Rod McGiveron
