Sarah Stephen
Plans are underway for a national convergence on Canberra on November 16, the first sitting day of federal parliament since the October 9 federal election returned the Coalition to government.
The convergence is a joint initiative of a number of different Refugee Action Collectives (RAC) and Rural Australians for Refugees, but other groups are fast coming on board.
Endorsements have so far come in from Greens Senator Bob Brown, the Western Australian Refugee Alliance, Project Safecom, Perth's RRAN, Public Servants for Refugees,m Women's Abortion Action Campaign (NSW) and Community Action Against Homophobia (NSW). The Sydney-based CAAH is also considering organising its own bus to Canberra.
Grace Gorman, one of the RAC activists in Melbourne who has hit the ground running in the wake of the election result, told Green Left Weekly: "Ninety-nine per cent of the people I have spoken to about this convergence are raring to go, and are full of creative ideas about how to make it interesting."
One person is thinking of building a mock detention centre outside Parliament House, and sitting in it for several days leading up to the protest. Another idea is to have 87 people standing in a line, dressed in black and holding children's shoes to symbolise the number of children still in detention.
"The energy level in our campaign has tripled since the lying rodent got back in", said Gorman. "New people are joining us who have never been politically active in their lives, so our campaign can only get bigger now, sweeping all before it. On the Monday after the election, the phone at the RAC Vic office rang all day with new people wanting information about refugees, and wanting to know what they could do to help the campaign."
Gorman explained why she thought the convergence was an important initiative for the refugee-rights campaign: "After a devastating electoral defeat, which could easily be interpreted as rejection of our arguments for a better deal for asylum seekers, our supporters need to be persuaded not to give up. For some of them it will be a case of serious isolation and alienation, and gathering everybody together for a convergence on Canberra will let them all know they are not alone, and inspire them to stay in the struggle for social justice."
"We must show the government we won't give up" she added. "No matter what they're planning next, we are not going to let them get away with it. And most importantly, we need to demonstrate to our friends who are still locked up — now indefinitely because of a recent High Court decision [stating that the government has the right to detain anyone, including children, indefinitely] — that we are still in the fight. We owe it to them. After all, it was their struggle that inspired us to join them by forming action collectives all over the country.
"The day after the election, one of us received a message from Baxter concentration camp which read, 'Don't worry about us. So long as we know you are still fighting, we will not give up, because even in democracy things can come to nothing without the heart.'"
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.