Two cents – the value of humanity

Two cents is what it cost each taxpayer to pay for Christmas Island funerals in Sydney last week. Two cents for little orphaned nine year old Seena to say goodbye to his dad who drowned in the Christmas Island tragedy. Two cents for Madian to bury his beautiful eight month old baby Zahra.   As I watched the backlash this week on letting people say goodbye to their families, I wondered whether or not Australians have two cents worth of compassion?

Grieving the loss of one’s child or parent is meant to be a sacred moment, beyond the reach of opportunism and politicization. The experience is one of raw human pain and emotion. It is what binds us as human beings and reminds us that life is precious. It should invoke compassion and empathy.  Our precious losses and experiences should not be hijacked for any reason.

More than anything else I know that saying goodbye to one’s family is something precious. When my dad died, being at his funeral was the single most important moment in my life. It allowed me to honour and mourn my dad and face the reality that he had suddenly been taken from me. If any one had taken that away from me, well, I don’t think I would have made it through the grief, it would have finished me. How about you?

All week I kept hearing so many angry (and perhaps misinformed) Australians demanding to know why their money was being spent on funeral services, why asylum seekers were getting ‘special treatment’ and why people were not buried on Christmas Island.  Comments fuelled and lead by the opportunistic Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott and filling radio talk back and newspaper letters.

What no one ever cared to mention in this midst of this hysteria was that the grieving families in detention had no means or right to go to their families’ funerals unless facilitated by the Government. For all intensive purposes, they are locked up in there.  They can’t just get up and go.

We need to look at what has changed in the Australian mindset that our political leaders feel so confident in being able to exploit tragedy like this in the full knowledge that they will get support. The language used by Morrison and Abbott implied that the people who had died were to blame for their deaths and deserved no proper funeral. It was also argued that by allowing families to attend their lost loved ones’ funeral – more people would be encouraged to seek asylum.  Both defy logic, common sense and decency.

What such debased comments and crass political opportunism make frightfully clear is that asylum seekers are not seen as human beings. They are seen as something to be feared, despised and punished. We have allowed fear and intolerance to take us hostage and are witnessing the possible death of real compassion in our country.  Asylum seekers are people, just like us.

Asylum seekers have unfairly become political fodder with convenient untruths about asylum seeker thrown around.  It only takes a moment to these set the record straight on these untruths.

• Asylum seekers are not taking our jobs – many are not even allowed to volunteer by law.
• Asylum seekers are not getting 4 times our pension – in fact they are not allowed a single dollar from Centrelink.
• Asylum Seekers are not ‘illegals’ they are exercising their legal right to seek asylum under a Refugee Convention the Menzies’ Government signed up to 57 years ago.
• The reserve bank does not raise interest rates by 0.25% after every boat arrival.
• 100,000 Australians are not homeless because of asylum seekers – but because of a failure of our Government to provide a safety net and affordable housing.
• Asylum seekers are not cheating by jumping a queue. There is no queue in Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq.
• Asylum seekers don’t stay in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand because they have their eyes sets on Australia and are country shopping. Instead none of these countries accept refugees. In fact just last week footage came out of Indonesia showing that they are physically caned in Australian funded detention centres there.
• Asylum seekers turn to people smugglers not because they are ‘cashed up migrants’ but rather because it’s the only way out to save their families lives. They do what you would do: sell all they have, borrow and beg every dollar they can get to rescue their family from certain death.

No one chooses to be an asylum seeker – they flee as a matter of life or death.  We should remember this as we question their right to bury their dead.  We should open our hearts and compassion to asylum seekers instead of fearing, questioning and abandoning them.  It’s time for us to reclaim a compassionate and humane Australia.