Australian Values?

One of our Batgrans has written this powerful piece (ironically?) titled 'Australian Values'

Can we think for a few minutes about Australia and Australian Values?

Australia likes to think of itself as a caring country. A country which prides itself on being civilised. We talk about fairness and freedom, equality and respect, integrity and trust, the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. We claim to believe in the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples, and that we are a just and humane society. We call Australia the land of the fair go. We talk about mateship and think of Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop standing up, literally, putting his life on the line for the most vulnerable people in his world. We remember Fred Hollows saying that the basic attribute of mankind is to look after each other. Values. Morality. What is right and good. To build up, not knock down. To love the good and love our neighbour, our fellow human beings. The Golden Rule. Do unto others.

Well, ongoing detention, especially of children, is cruel, unjust and unfair. Professor David Isaacs, a Paediatric Specialist from Sydney went to Nauru to see the children and was horrified by the reality of the shocking distress he witnessed there. He says that prolonged detention without knowing what is going to happen to you is a form of torture. The worst thing he saw was the mental health of the children; the effects of trauma and anxiety at an early age will be lifelong. These children will be scarred for life.

The detainees on Nauru live in appalling conditions. Have you been there or spoken with people who have lived there? 

The secrecy surrounding Nauru is frightening but we know enough about the neglect, the abuse, the vulnerability especially of women and children, to say that this is systematic deliberate cruelty which amounts to torture and it is shameful. (This, especially when we are currently reeling from the report from the Royal Commission into Child Abuse.) The inhumanity of what is being done to children is an assault on our human values. When we know the damage that is being done and when we know it is wrong and when it is being done in our name how can we feel anything other than ashamed? We are better than this.

We used to have a Department of Immigration which welcomed people from all over the world. Now we have a Department called Border Force and Homeland Security which contains a unit which deals with immigration. And there is fear and distrust. The context of Nauru, a brutal prison island where people are numbers, is the essence of a shameful inhumanity.

Can I say that I see a sad irony in the fact that the European settlement of what has become Australia was as a penal colony on an isolated island prison and also in the fact that, as is the case with many Australians, all my forebears came from overseas, by boat, to make better and safer lives for themselves and their children.

Helen Thompson Shinkfield

Batman Grandmothers February 2018