Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 26 Dec 2014 9:37:45pm
It is doubtful that Thomas Wells is writing for or from the Australian experience, and as such I think we do need to recognise that the political debate we're having now in this country is pitched at an entirely different level.

We're not talking about whether we can or cannot solve the world's refugee problems or whether there is a moral case for a right to a decent life. I think we have some far more straightforward realities that we are presently in denial about and under the new government it only seems to be getting worse.

If you observe the rhetoric and the kind of policies it has given rise to then you'd be forgiven for thinking that Australians believe that every single person attempting to make their way here via Indonesia completely fails to meet the definition of a refugee in the strictest possible sense of that term. This is of course simply untrue, but to try and argue it is to expect people to honour commitments to processing asylum seekers that they clearly exhibit a profound wish to deny.

It would under those circumstances be something of a luxury to argue for any relaxation in immigration control while the appeals to even do our small part in assisting some lesser number of asylum seekers we have the resources to help is flatly rebuffed.

Arguing as I would prefer to, that an accident of birth shouldn't be the main determinant of privilege in the world, would be easier if it wasn't argued solely from the perspective of middle class angst in one of the few developed countries that even considers trying to do our part the kind of moral question than deserves a response. So when part of the debate is framed in terms of fairness, arguing whether we're being taken advantage of by "economic migrants", then that at least is something we can balance with pleas for fairness within out resettlement programs so that asylum seekers stuck in Indonesia are not completely excluded.

But when there's a certain consistency to the arguments made against any attempt to advocate for asylum seekers at all then the message has clearly become "we just don't want them", and at that point we should not only question what motivates those sentiments we're also compelled to acknowledge that people have decided to compartmentalise their morality in ways that signal our having categorically dehumanised this group of people who are "unwanted". And if further to that you can't make the case against that prejudice at pain of being accused of using politically incorrect epithets, then bigotry is effectively insulated from being questioned at all.

So it's obviously not an ethical position we're taking as a nation, but having said so in any number of ways and places I've come by now to expect to be told where to stick my morality, and I have to tell you that's disappointing even for an atheist.