The Australian LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Jan 30, 2002 WHAT we all surely need right now is information and healthy public conversation on the refugee issue, not secrecy.
And, sure, all Australians who care deeply about the fine men and women risking their lives overseas – whether, like me, they personally support an involvement in the campaign to fight terrorism, or whether they passionately oppose it – can agree on one thing: in any truly civilised society, one of the most important freedoms of all is freedom of the press. JACK ROBERTSON Amnesty International Balmain, NSW SO, Angela Shanahan (Opinion, 29/1), the Government's only hope with the Iranian asylum-seekers is to "wear them down". Sounds like a form of oppression to me. And how do you know that "bloody-minded fanatics" are sewing up their children's mouths, when the rest of us are kept in the dark because of the Government's refusal to allow independent observers (and the press) into the centres. What have they got to hide? MAGGIE DEETH Toowong, Qld THAT a former chief justice of the High Court (Harry Gibbs, Opinion, 28/1) could write such a racist article in defence of the Government's racist immigration policy (and give Mr Howard the opportunity to quote this article in his support) makes this Australian truly afraid for the state of justice in our country. What Mr Gibbs provided in part was a rephrased version of Pauline Hanson's maiden parliamentary speech: "they [foreigners, outsiders] form ghettos and don't learn English . . . ". PETER COLLINS Sandy Bay, Tas SIR HARRY GIBBS, speaking as president of the Samuel Griffith Society, supports the Howard Government's refugee policy. Samuel Griffith was my great-grandfather and was a humanitarian. I am sure he would have been horrified to know we are supporting the US bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan and then refusing to give refuge to the damaged people from that country. ERICA DENBOROUGH Pearce, ACT I AM the barrister who started the Tampa litigation last year on behalf of the asylum-seekers. So I read with interest, and discomfort, Sir Harry Gibbs's defence of the Government's refugee policy. I do not understand how Sir Harry expects any government official to be able to decide – sight unseen – that a particular group of asylum-seekers, such as those on the Tampa, will be unlikely to integrate into Australian society. Does he expect that asylum-seekers can be classified in advance, according to racial, religious or cultural stereotypes? Because that would necessarily involve the same kinds of prejudice that animated Australian policy during the White Australia years. Put aside, if you will, the moral considerations, and the tenets of modern Western culture that forbid any return to that way of thinking. There are still two good reasons why it makes no sense to pre-judge any asylum-seeker as culturally unfit to integrate. The first is that so many asylum-seekers defy stereotyping. Hardly surprising, given that so many are trying to escape the very culture they come from. The second reason lies in the fact that Australia no longer has the largely homogeneous culture that it once did. It hasn't for a long time. Against precisely what, then, are we to test a person's capacity to fit in? JOHN MANETTA Melbourne, Vic JUST short of 60 years ago, my brother gave his life in the struggle to defeat a country where public attitudes and indifference allowed its government to incarcerate innocent "undesirables" in concentration camps, and where censorship prevented facts being known. Today, I find myself living in a country under similar conditions: undesirables in concentration camps and facts hidden behind censorship rules. I am ashamed and ask whether my brother gave his life away in vain. CHRISTOPHER MITCHELL Tascott, NSW ANGELA SHANAHAN shouldn't be carried away by a TV program's poll. She may be too young to remember that Harold Holt won a landslide victory in 1966 with a similar fear campaign, the downward thrust of Chinese communism via Vietnam. It was a total fabrication. We all learned that later, and support for the Vietnam war evaporated. VINCENT MATTHEWS Cleveland, Qld Firstbyte January 30, 2002 Did Angela Shanahan actually see those "bloody-minded fanatics sewing up their children's mouths"? Or did she hear of it from a bloke whose cousin had a friend whose sister was married to a sailor whose mate saw them chucking their kids overboard? Norm Christenson Thornleigh, NSW Those silly bishops, thinking that compassion and care are due to all humans (Letters, 29/1). Lucky we have Angela Shanahan, who, as a mother, knows better. Gordon Kerry Bondi, NSW -- ------------------------------------------------------------ "The power of accurate observation is commonly call cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/ until 11 March, 2001 and Recoznettwo is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznettwo%40green.net.au/ from that date. 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