Giving substance to wind

Moreover, refugees have the lowest offending rate of any community in Australia.99.87% of asylum seekers currently do not have a criminal record and have not been charged with a criminal offence. That's about 40 times below the national average. In fact more refugees were the victims of hate crimes in Melbourne in 2013 (20 people) than charged with crimes themselves (28 people nationally). It's refugees who need protection, not us!

Politicians suggest that they are concerned about the boat people who die in their effort to get to a safe country. But their concern is absolutely bogus. Instead of directly attacking refugees, which is their actual objective, they criticise the people smugglers. They have constructed the notion that people smugglers are the "scum of the earth," conveniently forgetting that Oskar Schindler was also a people smuggler. Australians have disregarded the fact that, without the assistance of people smugglers, asylum seekers are left to face persecution or death in their countries of origin, by any cruelty which threatens them.

Those of us who think Australia is greater than its behaviour are perplexed at how rapidly the country has misplaced its moral bearings. As Julian Burnside remarked: "Australia has constructed a myth about itself which cannot survive unless we forget a number of painful truths. We draw a veil of comforting amnesia over anything which contradicts our self-image."

Australians in 2013 have forgotten their fortuitous origins and are blinded by the politics of protectionism. We hold tight to a national myth of a kind and liberal society that welcomes new arrivals, a land where everyone gets a "fair go". It is agonising to recognize that we are now a country that chooses to exploit vulnerable people with the intention that other people in the same position will choose not to come and ask us for protection.