‘Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.’
(extract from The Lotos-Eaters by Alfred Tennyson)

How often have you heard the claim ‘”Australia, maate, best country in the world?”

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There’s no doubt that Australia has become one of the most desirable nations in which to live. Ours is indeed a relatively peaceful country and our standard of living has been growing steadily over the last couple of generations. In fact last year a UN report, based on economic, education and life-expectancy data, assessed Australia as second-best country in the world, second only to Norway

Of course there’s a shadow side to this prosperity. Not all of us have benefited from an expanding economy. Despite signs of obvious affluence around us, poverty, homelessness, violent crime, high suicide rates and mental health issues quite rightly receive more and more media attention. Many people have not shared in the general prosperity.
It’s a natural reaction that we might want to turn away from these realities of disadvantage, and of course it’s not healthy to focus relentlessly on bad news, but are we just becoming too deaf and dumb to the real situation in which we live, ‘like Gods together, careless of mankind’ as Tennyson wrote in 1832?
Are we currently suffering from empathy fatigue and retreating into a fortress mentality, eager to protect what we have just for ourselves and our own families?

This week we are celebrating Reconciliation week, a time when we reflect on the enormous disadvantages suffered by indigenous Australians as a result of European invasion, frontier wars, displacement from land and destruction of families. These traumas are still apparent in 2016 in our high rates of indigenous incarceration and of lower life expectancy. The boast that we live in the second-best country in the world, rings hollow for people who suffer such disadvantage.
Living on an island nation, separated from the trouble spots of the world, may sometimes appear to be an advantage. It does allow us to hold ourselves at arms length from the worst wars and violence and retreat into our safer lives, but there’s a danger too of becoming too desensitised to the world as a very violent place.
According to the UN by the end of 2014, a record-breaking 38 million people had become displaced within their own country as a result of violence. There are 20 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. Five million people have been displaced in Syria alone over the last five years. People don’t leave the security of their homes for frivolous reasons.
A recent visitor to Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival was human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.Ayaan

As if we needed reminding, in her most recent book, ‘Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now’, which I have just finished reading, she warns of the dangers of Sharia Law-based ‘Medina Muslims’ violently murdering, hanging, beheading, raping and destroying everything non-Muslim in their path. No wonder people are fleeing for their lives.
Such violence makes us want to turn away, read a book, watch a movie, have a drink and that’s understandable but as global citizens in a rich nation we could educate ourselves better and demand that our leaders take a more proactive, empathetic, non-political response to these fleeing millions and not merely ‘’In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined.

 

Fortunately most of us don’t have firsthand experience of having to flee for our lives and I hope we never need to. In the 1970s in the Philippines I did witness first hand thousands of people escaping internal civil war and the effects had a huge impact on me-families displaced from their homes, living in squalid camps, cut off from education and employment.
We have never experienced war on our own soil, with one exception, even though we do send our soldiers to wars around the globe.These soldiers in turn bring home the debilitating consequences of exposure to violence that pursues them and their families through the generations.

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Wars did of course rage on Australian soil during the European invasion and occupation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the bloodshed of frontier massacres and the eventual capitulation of indigenous people in the face of superior firepower.

I don’t recommend traveling to war zones merely to upgrade our personal empathy but I do believe many of our leaders and decision-makers appear to lack that personal empathy for the lives of people fleeing terror. As global citizens we need to educate ourselves to the current situation. We live on the extremities of a very dangerous world.
This need to protect valuable and personal interests over the common good may go some of the way to explain why the majority of Australians still support the cruel treatment of asylum seekers or ‘’illegal arrivals’ as they are labelled.
reclaimA recent qualitative research report by the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne, entitled ‘Islamisation’ and other anxieties: voter attitudes to asylum seekers‘,found that ‘the single most important driver of negative attitudes towards asylum-seekers is religious prejudice, sometimes expressed as concern about the “Islamisation” of Australia.’ As Australians we want to protect what we have. Groups such as Australia First and Reclaim Australia are just recent incarnations of the White Australia and Yellow Peril sentiments of earlier eras.Oz 1st

 

Privileged and comfortable, many of us just don’t have an experience of disadvantage. Society, I believe, exists to work towards equity and justice for the greatest number, for the most disadvantaged, not to protect the interests and privilege of small minorities. As citizens of the ‘second-best’ country on the planet, we can do our share, we can establish frameworks to accept and support more refugees, abolish cruel Temporary Protection Visas and make re-settlement a national emergency and restore overseas aid levels.
Perhaps we could put our $50 billion submarine project on hold (why do we need subs anyway?) and invest in people. Perhaps even invest in a fast train project employing thousands of refugees, but now I’m getting carried away. Did the Snowy Mountains project ever really happen or were we dreaming? Empathy has to be more than just an intellectual process.