BY BELINDA SELKE
WOLLONGONG — It was standing room only in Wollongong Town Hall at a public forum organised by the Refugee Action Collective on November 8, as more than 300 people were addressed by Labor MHR for Cunningham Stephen Martin, Iraqi refugee Husein el Hashami and Wollongong University lecturer and RAC member John Minns.
El Hashami received a standing ovation when he denounced the treatment meted out to refugees at the Woomera detention centre and explained his own reasons for fleeing Iraq to Iran, Iran to Syria, and then leaving his young family to flee, via Indonesia, to Australia.
Minns criticised the Howard government's racist treatment of asylum seekers, and the complicity of the ALP with the government's "border protection" policy. He called on people to continue the fight after the November 10 federal election to overturn the bipartisan anti-refugee policy.
Martin defended the ALP's position, proclaiming that Labor had begun pushing for an Australian coast guard three years ago. He refused to give any guarantee that a Labor federal government would make conditions easier for refugees by abolishing the restrictions on travel imposed under temporary protection visas.
In discussion from the floor, speakers repeatedly condemned the government's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, and pointed out the racist nature of Coalition and ALP policies on refugees and the war against Afghanistan.
Margaret Perrott, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Throsby in the recent federal election, began the discussion by saying: "Australia has been built on the sweat and hard work of generations of migrants. By playing the race card, the ruling class not only pacifies and immobilises the people, it sows dissension between us, so it is harder to work together for better conditions for ourselves and all the people of the world."
Ian Rintoul, a Socialist Alliance NSW Senate candidate, put Martin on the spot by asking him if the ALP would reverse the government's policies and fulfil Australia's quota for refugees by taking all the asylum seekers presently detained on Pacific islands.
An elderly speaker who described himself as a past "fellow traveller of the Communist Party" told Martin that his party was "the left wing of the Liberals". His remark received strong applause from the audience.
A Tunisian woman demanded an end to racism in Australia and an end to the war on Afghanistan. A young student put the blame for the racist policies of the Coalition and the ALP on the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. Socialist Alliance activist Will Williams explained how global corporate tyranny was the real cause of the poverty and suffering which had created 20 million refugees around the world.
Speakers from the Greens — Carol Berry (candidate for Cunningham) and Elsa Story (candidate for Throsby) — questioned the ALP's commitment to human rights, and emphasised the inhumanity of the present policies on refugees.
The sentiment at the meeting was overwhelmingly against the racist policies of both major parties, indicted by the fact that there was only one speaker from the floor who defended the ALP's refugee policy.
A call for solidarity with the refugees made by Perrott was echoed time and again by speakers from the floor.
From Green Left Weekly, November 14, 2001.
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