IT’S NOT ABOUT SAVING LIVES: IT’S ABOUT THE XENOPHOBIA OF AUSTRALIA’S RIGHT-WING

The right-wing of Australia like to tell the rest of Australia that their motives and the governments policies are all about saving the lives of people travelling to Australia in unseaworthy boats.

This is a blatant lie.

If all it was about was saving lives as the right-wing of Australia claim, then it would be a simple matter of finding other ways of getting asylum-seeking refugees safely to Australia. It’s a dead giveaway, however, when they start imprisoning those that have the audacity of making it to Australia in hell-hole camps, that the true motives of Australia’s right-wing are actually far from altruistic.

For some reason there seems to be a fear of calling this for what it really is: racism. The advocates for ‘stopping the boats’, both among the commentariat and politicians – from both sides of mainstream politics – give every reason under the sun other than their real reason as to why the boats need to be stopped. They range from; stopping the drownings, stopping terrorists coming into the country, accusing them of being nothing more than economic refugees, through to being unable to assimilate, resorting to crime and forming gangs, and – most ludicrous of all – wanting to force Australia to become part of some Islamic caliphate where Sharia law is imposed.

All of this, regardless of the excuses, is nothing other than straight out racism.

Whether we like it or not, we are well beyond the point of no return of living in a globalised world where transport to any part of the planet is reasonably priced and easily accessed by most people in our world. We obtain and exchange goods and services from and to places all around the world. We are able to quickly and easily communicate with just about anyone anywhere. We are able to access books, films, music and news from around the world. We are able to join social networks and forums that link the planet; yet, for some reason, despite seeming being able to integrate through all of these means with the rest of the world, there are some amongst us that are unable to accept actually being part of a multicultural society in our own neighbourhood.

Scaremongering, demonising, Islamophobia and just plain flat out lies are the tools of racists. The mainstream media needs to expose Australia’s treatment of boatpeople for what it really is; racism, and we need to tell those that treat asylum seeking refugees as criminals that it is they that are not wanted in Australia.