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Archive for the 'environment' Category

Boat Refugees in Australia are NOT Criminals

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Something that pisses me off no end about this fair and lucky land of ours (Australia) is our obsession with border protection. Not against invasion, drugs or terrorists – but protection against women and children and people we are busy shooting the shit out of in foreign lands.

As long as Australia is contributing to the displacement of people in the world we cannot ignore our responsibility to house and protect the displaced from those conflicts (and other conflicts caused by globalisation and our voracious consumerism).

What makes me so mad is that our Federal Government (and each new government that gains power) incessantly rant on in Parliament about this issue as thought 3000 refugees will sink our economy or water down the master race. Let’s face it guys – Italy had around 30,000. And when the tide starts to come in we’ll be seeing a million or more knock on our back door for their right to life. How can we deny them that right?

All sides of the Australian political system have bought into the idea that refugees in boats are criminals. They certainly are not criminals – they are REFUGEES and displaced people. Our politicians frame this as border protection to stop queue jumpers and asylum seekers and bicker over the ability of one or the other party to keep these refugees, many of them women and children, in our purpose built maximum security prisons.

Hint: when boat numbers increase it does not mean our immigration policies have been wrong – it means our foreign policies have been wrong.

Here is a novel idea… but one I have heard bandied around the actual population before today. How about just letting the refugees into Australia with automatic temporary visas until it can be ascertained that they are bona-fide displaced people.

That means no prison. You are only a queue jumper (where is the queue anyway?) if you are just another immigrant flying under the radar. You ARE NOT a queue jumper if you have been bombed and shot and raped and crawled thousands of miles over five countries to get your family to safety.

Currently we treat everybody by default as a criminal. That is abhorrent behaviour from a civilised people towards victims of abuse.

So let’s start by just telling our politicians we don’t want to be totalitarian pricks anymore – we don’t have limited space on our lifeboat. Either that or they stop bombing the rest of the world in a bullshit war against terrorism (that incites more to become terrorists and insurgents against our invasion).

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Steven Clark Steven Clark - the stand up guy on this site

My name is Steven Clark (aka nortypig) and my passions are business, web development, photography and writing. My current CV [PDF 775KB] is available for download. Currently I'm completing my 2 final units of a post-graduate university degree of MBA (Journalism and Media Studies) at the University of Tasmania.

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My fine art photography is available online at Steven Clark Studio. You may also enjoy my photo blog Walk a Mile in my Shoes.

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Light Science and Magic by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua - cover

The time has come for me to get more involved in upping my technical photography skills if I hope to embark on a Master of Fine Art and Design (Photography) next year. To that end my first book is the highly recommended Light Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting (Third Edition) by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua. What really differentiates this book is the comprehensive set of exercises and the detailed explanation of the underlying science of light in the real world that encompasses the reader's journey.