Refugees, Foreign Aid and Aussie Anger

We claim to be a generous, compassionate people. Yet when it comes to refugees and foreign aid those claims are challenged. On one side there are those who claim we should be doing more for refugees and giving more in foreign aid. The other side say we should stop all foreign aid and forget refugees and look after our own.

I believe there are some on the 'put Aussies first' side who are racist, Islamophobic, Neo-nazi or whatever label you want to give them. Yet these groups do give voice to the discontent and anger felt by too many of us.

Suicide rates in rural areas are consistently 40 per cent higher than the rates in metropolitan areas, according to Sane Australia ... "We know from the research that 50 percent less money is spent on mental health services in rural and remote Australia, so access to medical help is compromised. (ABC Rural, 12/11/17). Drought, cheap imports, green tape and more is really hurting the bush with farmers being forced off farms that have been in their families for generations.

Police, emergency workers and veterans to name a few suffer the scourge of PTSD. My interest is more with Veterans and I am more familiar with their situation. Whether on active or peacekeeping service these people see things that human being shouldn't - and the same is true of the police and others. Vet's are drowned in red tape, an obstructive Dept of Vet Affairs that some advocates claim has driven their mates to suicide. Many vets, not just those with mental issues, feel betrayed and let down by the Government - and there is plenty of evidence to support that claim.

The globalisation of the economy that started back the Hawke/Keating days has led to the loss of many manufacturing and other jobs.

Many of our fellow Australians are hurting, feeling betrayed, forgotten, abandoned by Government and the comfortable metropolitan majority.

How do these people feel when they see comfortable, educated elite on 'our ABC' dismissing them as racist, Islamophobic and more. How do they feel when they see someone who is obviously a refugee or the child of one who has the privilege of an Australian University education and a comfortable job lecturing them on white privilege, someone who has opportunities given them by this country that many of them didn't have?

I believe we should not limit our generosity and compassionate to our own. We are are wealthy country by world standards and if there was a will to do so we should be able to strike a fair balance between one and the other. Let's face it, our foreign aid is rarely for purely altruistic purposes - it is driven my national self-interest.

Every problem in the world happens within a broader context. If we fail to recognise the bigger picture, focusing on simplistic solutions we are likely to make things worse, not better. We will never change things for the better by preaching, yelling, lecturing and abusing. Those who go down this road will only entrench the very attitudes they say they want to change.

I do feel for refugees and asylum seekers. I support foreign aid, seeing it as part of our being a good international citizen.
Maybe if those hurting, angry Australians felt their plight was been understood by the many advocates for those off shore, if they felt these advocates were as passionate about their cries for help, there would not be the antagonism that now exists.

We need to look for win-win solutions.

What About the Children?

I have wondered for some time if we are not seeing widespread social re-engineering with little thought given to the long-term consequences. Last Thursday night the ABCs 7.30 Report included a segment that only reinforced that view for me.

Over the last 20 years or so we have seen how important it is for many adoptees to reconnect with their birth mother and family. This for many has not been in any way a rejection of their adopted parents. To the contrary, many have known nothing but love in their adopted families and have been grateful for what they have been given.

Obviously, it seems, deep within our psychology who we are really matters to us. And that was the subject discussed on the 7.30 Report. The Prime Minister has promised to streamline overseas adoption and that proposal has met with opposition by some adoptees. Professor Nahum Mushin, Monash University, who met with hundreds of adoptees, believes it is time to rethink the whole process. He says many are troubled and have mental health problems and that this should not be ignored.

The fact that many of these may have been forced adoptions seems irrelevant. The adoptees could not have known the circumstances of their birth. One of those interviewed on the program was Korean, adopted by an Anglo-Saxon-Italian family. She was to find out the story she had been told about her family of origin was false.

Our world is not perfect. There will always be orphans or children who have lost one parent. In different times and places these have been adopted, raised by a single parent, extended family, tribe or community. They may have been raised in single parent families, as was my grandmother, or by any possible combination of siblings – brother/sister, sister/sister, etc.

Now science is opening up a whole new world – one of surrogacy and same sex couples. In some places birth certificates legally record two parents of the same sex. I acknowledge research that has shown these relationships do not harm the children and some claim that same sex couples can be better parents. But all research can and should be challenged, for it is only as research is challenged and repeated in different ways that we begin to understand.

Regardless of the relationship of the adopting parents, or that of a couple and a surrogate, the first consideration should always be the long-term interests of the children. Children were never meant to be fashion accessories, status symbols, or simply to fill maternal or paternal instincts. The future of any society is dependent upon its ability to raise children in a loving, supportive and safe environment. And where there is evidence that what we are currently doing fails to do this, we should give careful consideration to what that means for our future.

Interestingly, around the same time I saw the 7.30 Report I saw a YouTube post of an Irish gay couple opposing marriage equality. They had concerns over the future implications of gay marriage and the welfare of children. Their belief was that the welfare of the child should always come first. I concur.

Personal Stories

Nothing like a personal story.

Many years ago I read a story 'My Place' by Sally Morgan. It told of her search for identity, of not knowing as a child that she was aboriginal because her family kept that from her. It told me that there was something wrong with this country that made that necessary. For me, it was also personal. I have an adopted cousin who worshipped me as a kid, so much so that she was devastated when I married for the first time. I always thought she was Indian, or Pacific Islander or something. It was only around the time I read Sally's book that I learned that my cousin was also aboriginal. Why did families feel they had to protect kids by not telling them who they really were.

Then, some years back I was staying in a motel room in Hobart. The paper I picked up had a piece on Bob Brown, not his politics, but his struggle with his sexuality, of knowing he was different and wanting to be normal. As a young person he was told by his Christian counsellor to pray about it and it would work out. He did, nothing changed. Finally, while studying in England a GP told him to accept who he was. For Bob, that was liberating.

Not long ago I saw on Australian Story the story of an Australian Army Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Cate McGregor, who had lived all her life being mixed up until she accepted and acted on the fact she was a woman trapped in a man's body.

I can't really identify with Sally, but listening made a big difference to the way I see our indigenous Australians. I have no idea why it is that some people are homosexual or transgender or anything else. The evidence that I have seen tells me that for some, if not all, it is not a lifestyle choice. Rather it is something complex that perhaps no one really understands.

But listening evokes empathy, and empathy leads to acceptance. This does not mean that I need in anyway to change my personal values on how I should live. But when it comes to the way adults relate to one another, so long as one is not hurting another, lets live and let live. And lets work with one another to try and make our world a better place for all.

We lose when

When we become that which we oppose, we loose. We loose when we respond to:

1. Hate with hate.
2. Abuse with abuse.
3. Violence with violence (not precluding reasonable force to restrain).
4. Lies with lies.
5. Slander with slander.

The Truth Will Set You Free

"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).

I had a mate at Richmond in the mid 70s that had married a girl from Sri Lanka or another former British colony in that part of the world. At school she had been taught about the terrorists in her country. Following independence school children were taught about these same people - except that they had become freedom fighters.

There are always two sides of history - that of the victor and that of the vanquished. That of our political masters and that of the other peoples political masters.

We in the west are not taught the same history as those in the Middle East. From our perspective the Crusaders were defending the holy land from the infidel. From the Moslem perspective it was the Moslems defending the holy land from the infidel. I remember as a kid watching a TV show about Richard the Lion Hearted and his noble conquests on the crusades.

We know the history of the holocaust and the settlement of the modern state of Israel as a safe haven for Jews. Moslems can tell us every act of terrorism carried out by the Zionists as they displaced the Palestinians.

Arabs and Persians (Iranians), and the various tribes of each, have hated each others guts for centuries. But all these tribes also know the history of Western interference and betrayal and it is this hatred of the West that can unite them.

A mate of mine spend a few years working in Dubai. He was told one day by one of his Arab mates that if it was not for Israel the Arabs would be tearing each other apart.
Its not only the Middle East that has long memories. A Catholic mate of mine and his brother were hitch hiking through the Republic of Ireland some years back when they were given a lift by the local Protestant minister.

'What's your name?'

'Fitzgerald'

'You Fitzgeralds! Your great-great-great ... grandfather ...'

Also a long memory that saw decades of violence.

So what am I trying to say?

Perhaps if we in the West were to be honest with our history, to admit to the historical wrongs our side have done, and to try and avoid those same mistakes in the future, we might begin to diffuse some of the anger on the other side. And if we did that perhaps we could give ISIS and their ilk less ammunition to play with in their appeals to the Arab/Iranian world.

Reformation and Islam

The Church of the Middle Ages was no better than the Islamic State of today. Heretics were tortured on the rack, burnt at the stake, and hunted down by the Church. It has been said that the Waldensian Valleys ran red with the blood of the martyrs - those who refused to bow to the bishop of Rome.

Crusaders were sent to the Holy Land to fight the Infidel on the promise that if they died on the crusade they would go straight to Paradise, bypassing Purgatory. Sound familiar?

The Church controlled the universities and the educated used their authority to reinforce the doctrines and corrupt practices of the Church to protect their own vested interest. The Bible was printed in Latin and interpreted by the Priests in harmony with the decrees of the Bishop of Rome. Those who challenged the authority were given the choice of recantation or excommunication - or worse. I suggest some similarities to the fundamentalist mullahs of today.

There were, however, courageous men and women who gave the people the Bible in their own language, who challenged the authority of the Church, and encouraged people to interpret the Bible for themselves.

The Protestant Reformation and the accompanying Renaissance liberated Europe and broke the power of the Church in those lands that embraced the Reformation. And that gives us hope.

Taliban and IS hate education, unless of course the educated are those that back their cause. The last thing they want is for people to think for themselves, hence the attack on schools and women who want an education.

Some Moslems will always buy into the hate doctrine, and some people will always seek to use education for evil. But history tells us that education liberates. It took centuries to beat the Medieval Church, so we should not expect IS and their ilk to be defeated over night. But, with proper support, I believe we can encourage educated Moslems around the world to challenge the crazed, especially where they have begun to enjoy the freedom of the West and can make comparisons with life 'back home'.

Modern Australia - mate, we've come a long way

Australia. Ok, we're not perfect and have a few skeletons in the cupboard. But compared to a lot of other places we have done pretty good.

White Australia started out as a dumping ground for convicts and then became a land of hope for people who had no future in the UK. Our forebears worked hard to build a decent future for their kids.

They pulled together through famine, flood, fire, depression and war.

We talk of Aussie values - standing by your mates, sticking up for the underdog, giving a bloke a fair go. That's where we came from.

And, as we developed we began to do things for the next generation - universities, health care, education, and a social welfare net to look after those who had somehow fallen through the cracks through no fault of their own.

But somehow its all gone wrong. Now those government support systems that were meant to look after the battler, those down on their luck, or to give someone a hand up are seen as entitlements without obligations. No need to work, no need to go without, just squeal about entitlements, especially if it looks like they might be reduced or you might have to do something for them.
We are fast becoming a two tiered society - those who have and those who have not. Pull together - stand by your mate. What does that mean? The underdog - kick him in the guts while he's down.

Modern Australia - mate, we've come a long way.