We’ve forgotten what being the Lucky Country means

AS we trade refugees to Donald Trump like the unwanted assets of a shop liquidation, we should never forget most of us are here through luck, Martin Newman writes.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton. (Pic: Kym Smith.)

THERE’S a skit the British comedian Michael McIntyre does about disabled parking spaces.

As non-disabled motorists cruising for an elusive spot we tend to look ruefully at those often empty reserved spaces right in front of the shops. And sometimes scrutinise those parking in them to satisfy ourselves they are legit.

“What do we want?” asks McIntyre. “For the door to open and a minute-and-a-half later someone falls out.” He then starts crawling across the stage shouting ‘get me a trolley’.

Peter Dutton’s comments on the Manus Island refugees who flew into New York this week (as part of the deal with the US), wearing sunglasses and looking like tourists, fell into the same basket.

“They’re economic refugees,” he told 2GB. “They got on a boat, paid a people smuggler a lot of money, and somebody once said to me that we’ve got the world’s biggest collection of Armani jeans and handbags up on Nauru waiting for people to collect it when they depart.”

Perhaps he wanted them in rags, walking on crutches... emaciated.

Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton. (Pic: Mick Tsikas/AAP.)

The detention centres in the North Pacific are certainly not holiday camps and even if you’re in agreement with the Manus and Nauru detainees being denied entry to Australia, it’s no time to gloat.

Weighing up the cost of compassion is very different from just being self-righteous.

It’s easy in the affluent country we live in to pontificate about economic refugees and how they don’t deserve what Australia has on offer because they weren’t born here.

Nevermind that our own birthright is a quirk of fate.

I commented to a colleague recently: ‘It’s good being a white bloke.’ He thought about it for two seconds and agreed.

If you’re a ‘white bloke’ born into the middle classes of Australia it doesn’t get much better.

You aren’t born smarter, you aren’t more able. But your path through life inevitably is smoother than if you were born black, or poor, or a woman.

In Australia we have developed an enormous sense of entitlement. We sneer at the poor and dispossessed, blame them for their own misfortune and equate worth with earning potential.

Manus Island asylum seekers seen leaving Papua New Guinea for the United States. (Pic: Supplied.)

Throughout the 20th century, as immigration became the norm, it was de rigueur to refer to any immigrant or their offspring with some derogatory term, whether it was dago, or slope or Pom. Each new wave of migrants copped it. Each was made to feel that they hadn’t earned the right to be here.

The term ‘assimilation’ has been used like a blunt object to batter people into conforming and often renouncing their own heritage.

How many people do I know who became ‘proper Aussies’ never speaking of their background, brought up with that ignorant, spiteful word ‘wog’ ringing in their ears? Too many.

I’d ban it. Make it a hate crime. Make it like the ‘n’ word.

The ‘w’ word.

The children of immigrants in this country, who were bullied and belittled, will never get an apology. And what lesson did it teach us as a people?

Now, as we trade away human beings to Donald Trump like the unwanted assets of a shop liquidation, let’s not lower ourselves any further.

We are the Lucky Country, but we’ve forgotten what that means. Luck is not about being deserving, it’s providence — a cosmic flip of the coin.

We should never forget that.

Martin Newman is the Saturday Extra and Premium Content editor at the Daily Telegraph.