This national shame must end now
IT’S not just the mad lefties and the bleeding hearts wanting to see the end of the Nauru disgrace, writes Michael McGuire. It’s decent humans from all sides who don’t enjoy the suffering of children.
WHEN ideology trumps humanity and decency you have a serious problem.
The increasingly horrifying situation on Manus Island is a deep and serious scar on a nation that once prided itself on notions of tolerance and fairness.
We are using children as pawns in political games to promote the idea of being tough on borders and hard on people smugglers. It is shameful. Nothing more and nothing less.
Why is this a binary question? Why are we torturing children, condemning them to a life of useless misery, just to prove that we can deter people attempting to reach Australia by boat? Is this the only solution we can come up with? The price of the fabled “stopping the boats’’ is destroying the lives of 100 children. Is this the barter we have made?
John Howard may have infamously said: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. But he didn’t say we will then lock up their children indefinitely, deny them basic human rights and medical care and leave them to the predations of Australia’s vassal state Nauru. Maybe that was in the footnotes.
Or maybe our latest prime minister, that proud Christian man, Scott Morrison has simply misinterpreted Matthew 19:14 “But Jesus said, Suffer little children”. Maybe someone should make that into a nice glass trophy he can display on his desk at work.
It’s not just the mad lefties and the bleeding hearts wanting to see the end of the Nauru disgrace. Around 6000 doctors have signed a letter demanding children be removed from their prison on Naura. You have to say that’s a lot of doctors.
The Australian Medical Association may be the nation’s most powerful union but it’s not generally regarded as the last outpost of Marxist thought in Australia. Its paediatric representative Dr Paul Bauert gave a horrifying rundown of conditions on Nauru this week.
Bauert’s expertise is not notional. He has been there. He says almost all have been traumatised in some way.
“I have reviewed many cases of these children myself, it is simply unconscionable that we are keeping these children and their families in a situation which we know is a critical threat to their health and wellbeing,” he said. “The situation for children on Nauru is a humanitarian emergency requiring urgent intervention.”
Morrison’s response was to say: “I will not put at risk any element of Australia’s border protection policy.”
His attitude is emblematic of the growing meanness, stupidity and viciousness in politics. It was evident again in this week’s ludicrous and inane Senate motion moved by professional bottom-of-the-barrel-scraper Pauline Hanson who embraced identity politics with gusto to declare it’s okay to be white. The Federal Government’s subsequent “maybe, maybe not’” support for the motion further eroded what was left of its credibility.
But there are a few cracks appearing. Three Liberal backbenchers have gone public with their view that refugees need to be freed from Nauru. It’s also become an issue in this weekend’s Wentworth by election which could leave Morrison leading a minority government if the independent Kerryn Phelps wins. Labor leader Bill Shorten has been in lock-step with the Liberals, fearful of political backlash if he is seen as “weak” on border protection. But Labor is now at least moving to make it easier for ill people to come to Australia for treatment.
And the expert opinion continues to mount as well.
Last week the non-political Medecins San Frontieres, who had been providing medical care to refugees, was kicked out of Nauru. The group has treated 78 patients who attempted suicide, had suicidal thoughts or self-harmed.
Its Australian director Paul McPhun said the Government must end its policy of indefinite offshore detention.
“Separating families, holding men, women and children on a remote island indefinitely with no hope of protection except in the case of a medical emergency, is cruel and inhumane.”
It’s time to end the Nauru disgrace.
Michael McGuire is an Adelaide Advertiser senior writer.