Fairfax’s Alan Stokes makes the case for (Queensland) refugees

Forget what you may have heard, they’re just like us. So long as they don’t vote One Nation.

Alan Stokes urges us to open our hearts to refugees just as he did, The Sydney Morning Herald, yesterday:

My wife is a refugee. Many in her large family are, too. They took their chances and fled for a better life, away from the stultifying culture and the way they do things “back home”. Did I mention that my wife is a refugee from … rural southern Queensland?

What horrors might she have fled? Subjugation? Sectarian violence? The Western Star News, Roma, Queensland, reports, October 21:

The first official Running of the Weiners has already smashed its first fundraising target, with more than $2000 raised before the dogs even hit the track … the event, which revolves around racing dachshunds …

It’s not just dachshund races. People vote differently out there. Stokes continues, yesterday:

At the July 2 election 17.8 per cent of electors in (the electorate of) Maranoa backed One Nation.

By Stokes’s logic, down-at-the-heel social conservatives in Sydney’s east should be taking the next train to the bush. The Australian, July 26, 2010:

It may be a case of spot-the-difference, but it’s also a recognition that Wentworth is the greenest, gayest, arguably the most socially progressive, and perhaps the wealthiest electorate per capita in Australia.

Though the way he describes it, Maranoa does sound terrible. More from Stokes, SMH, yesterday:

Maranoa is the fifth-highest scoring electorate on the Australian Unity Wellbeing index. It’s No 1 in Queensland and 145 places above Blaxland in western Sydney … (Maranoans) learn crucial skills to survive and get ahead through hard work, often with little government support … Maranoans are more community minded: one in four do regular voluntary work versus less than one in five statewide.

So what’s the problem? Oh … white privilege. Stokes (whose Christmas lunch could be interesting this year) continues, SMH, yesterday:

They owe much to the privilege of being white Anglo-Saxons living in conservative communities that don’t easily tolerate difference because they don’t often encounter, say, Muslim refugees in the flesh … it’s on lack of migrant diversity that Maranoa stands out.

When you take into account the number of refugees these folk take from the bush, they’re actually quite generous. The Australian, May 20:

Greens MPs and refugee advocates who are calling for a huge increase in the humanitarian migrant intake and the end of offshore processing live in affluent inner-city areas that take just a fraction of Australia’s refugees.

Happily, despite coming from a culture that doesn’t accept his values, Stokes ends with a plea for tolerance for his country cousins (and in-laws), SMH, yesterday:

But city-slickers should not fear people from Hanson-backing rural electorates. They should be respected and engaged in the national discourse. When you get to know someone, both of you emerge more tolerant and accepting of your similarities and differences.

And say what you will, this never happens in the bush. Well, almost never. The New York Post reports on an airport incident that has police scratching their heads, yesterday:

A half-naked British man was found dead at a Spanish airport with a slice of ham on each buttock and his genitals in a can of tuna — a death authorities mused may have involved “foul play”.