Bartlett's Blog

Last Friday was the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV X, a refugee boat bound for Australia, with the loss of 353 lives.  I attended a short ceremony to mark the occasion at the Nepalese Peace Pagoda, which is a lovely ornate wooden structure situated in Brisbane’s Southbank Parklands. There were short speeches from Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Quaker and Humanist perspectives. 

I have written some posts on it in past years. I thought this year I would link to a fascinating post from Webdiary, written by Irfan Yusuf, who at the time of the tragedy was the Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Reid in Sydney during the 2001 election campaign. An excerpt from his post is below – the full post is at this link.

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It was just after September 11 that I was asked to nominate for the seat of Reid, the Sydney seat held by the ALP-Left stalwart Laurie Ferguson.
When I wasn’t engrossed in my legal practice, I was out on the hustings. I simply didn’t have the time to watch the news and discover just how bloody awful both sides were behaving in relation to asylum seekers. Plus, when it came to foreign policy, it was easy to feel comfortable. Reid takes in the suburb of Auburn, with its large anti-Taliban Tajik and Hazara presence. Many were supportive of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan, though some were still rather cold toward me. Still, my job was to work for the people of my electorate, not for particular interest groups.

Then, one afternoon in October, I received a call from a lady named Mahbooba who ran a small charity working among Afghan orphans in Pakistan. She wanted to introduce me to a Middle Eastern chap. We agreed to meet at a small mosque in Auburn.  

I entered the mosque and saw Mahbooba sitting with a visibly distraught man whose reddened eyes betrayed days of mourning. The man continued to weep in my presence while Mahbooba showed me some photos of some young children. The man then spoke:

These are the children of my sister. She was killed by the government of our homeland. I’ve been an Australian citizen for 25 years. I run my own business. I pay my taxes. I have only ever asked one thing from my local member and that was to help me get my sister and her children out of there.

‘Who is your local member?’ I asked. ‘John Howard,’ was his answer. He then told me about how he was informed by other relatives that the children had been placed on an unseaworthy boat. They were among some 350 others who had drowned.

This was the first time I had heard of the SIEV-X incident. I wasn’t sure what I could do. I was just a candidate in a hard-luck seat with little hope of winning. What could I hope to achieve for this man?

‘Some people in your Party are starting to tell lies about my sister’s children. They are saying my sister taught her children to be terrorists. You must speak out against them. Remember what the Prophet Mohammed said — that the best jihad is to speak the truth to rulers. It is easy for you because you are in their Party’

I listened to the man’s story and looked at the photos of these young children who had barely reached their teens. After the meeting, I got onto the phone with campaign HQ. I told them about the conversation I’d had with the man, and how I wanted to make some statement about it.

‘No way, Irfan,’ said the voice from HQ. ‘You mustn’t talk about this topic. I’m warning you that if you say anything about it, you might find yourself disendorsed and expelled from the Party. We are running hard on security and terrorism.’

‘But these are young kids,’ I objected. Then the HQ officer told me something that made me shudder.

‘Listen, I know how much you hate Pauline Hanson. You’ve got to understand that we have a deliberate strategy here. We want to destroy Hanson by sounding like her and attracting her voter base away from her. It’s part of a deliberate strategy, and it’s temporary.’

I believed that HQ officer. I said and wrote nothing — in English. I made sure it was all said in Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic and Vietnamese instead. What HQ didn’t know wouldn’t harm them or me. Ignorance is bliss.

But now I wish I’d said it in English. Five years later, Howard Government ministers continued alienating asylum seekers or persons of Middle-Eastern appearance. Six years on, and the Howard Government are demonising African refugees. All this talk of integration, yet the government happily deals with non-integrated groups like the Exclusive Brethren. All this rhetoric about national security while a bunch of comics can breach security barriers costing millions of dollars.

There is something patently illiberal and unconservative about despising individuals due to factors beyond their control. To despise an individual due to the colour of their skin or their ethno-religious background requires a suspension of one’s reason. I always thought Liberals believed individuals should be given every opportunity to reach their full potential regardless of their background.

All of which raises the question — is John Howard’s Party still a Liberal Party? And if it isn’t, who should real Liberals be voting for in the upcoming election?