Illegals??

The Dream Folly.

‘Let’s call her Paula’ The lady has a Freudian dream, in the dream Australia has a  government Paula does not agree with, they promote a foreign religion and different customs. Fearing reprisals she pays her life savings to people smugglers for her passage on an overcrowded leaky boat to NZ.

Upon arrival she seeks asylum – as is her right. She is neither an immigrant nor are her actions illegal. She is granted a temporary visa whilst waiting her review for refugee status.

In the meantime she is given humanitarian aid in the way of shelter, food and other necessities.

Waking from the dream a hot cup of Milo is in order.

Drifting back to sleep, the dream changes tempo. No longer is she housed in acceptable quarters, but finds herself in a concentration camp. It looks just like the one at Woomera. Razor wire and guards. Her requests for information are met with the standard ‘you will be told in due course’.

When  a newspaper does reach the facility and is passed around, Paula is disgusted to read the letters to the editor section. Writer after writer does not want the asylum seekers on their land. Send them home – send them anywhere! They are subversive and alien. They want to change the local way of life. Talk back radio echoes the theme. The newcomers are labeled illegal immigrants. They are accused of receiving welfare benefits that should be given to locals.

Waking from this dream, a scotch is required.

Back to sleep and a new set of circumstances. The leaky boat is intercepted by a gun boat one hundred miles off  the NZ coast. The people are supplied with food, water and fuel and told to turn back. As the government refuses to supply information regarding the wellbeing of the asylum seekers, and monitoring is at a minimum, no one will ever know where or when they drowned.

Paula is lucky, she can wake up from the nightmare.

While the politicians and media keep the pressure on to maintain the paranoid xenophobic bigotry, the immediate issues are relegated to the too hard basket. For example, in Australia a woman is eighty thousand times more likely to be killed, maimed, seriously injured or mentally abused (conservative – there are eighty thousand calls to help centres each year by domestic violence sufferers) by her partner each year, than she is to be a victim of an attack by a foreign source. For a child, make that nearly fifty thousand times. No one wants to tackle real issues hence the aiming at soft targets. A redirected anger at the issues in the hard basket would be much more appropriate and palatable to the thinking populace.

A terrorist is one who terrorises, one who causes or instigates terror. The wife and child bash-artists, the meth fueled road rage morons and the drunken gutter thugs are the ever present current threat. They are a much greater danger to the well being of ordinary Australians than radical insurgents.

Just my thoughts!