Xenophobia

Something is going screwy at the moment… All my postings from the train are not going through when I log on to my network at work yet when I check my blog later in the day and notice the daily posting is not there, I resend the email and it goes through… weird.  That is why yesterday’s “morning” post went through after 5pm yesterday…

Will look into these tech issues, if anyone has a view, let me know.

Now to matters at hand… I want to state right here that the Australian attitude to this crisis is pathetic on all fronts but the worst aspect of this is the small minded bigoted attitude of common Australians and the vile diatribe that is going on on talkback radio at the moment.  All this talk of “what are all these Lebanese doing with dual citizenship” is disgusting.  Some views expressed include leaving them there in a war zone as they are not deserving of rescue.  Have these people watched the news?  These people we are rescuing have Australian accents, they are from places like Wollongong and Albury.  They are legitimate Australians in need of a hand.  And yet the poisonous talkback talks about how we have given these “wogs” a free ride into the country.

Lets just say that this was England.  How many Aussies are in the UK on dual citizenship?  One of the occasional contributors to the comments section here I know is an Aussie working under a foreign passport.  How many English / Irish / Scots are here in Australia under their passports?  Living, working and enjoying the benefits of an Australian lifestyle?

The fact that these people in Lebanon are “of Middle Eastern appearance” (a term I hate) we seem to think they are in the wrong and that they are rorting the system.

The reality is it is mid summer in Europe and the Middle East and corresponds with Australian school holidays, many families go back to their country of descent to visit relatives.  To me, 25000 is not a huge number.  Its half the Sydney Football Stadium, its 25% the capacity of Telstra Stadium.  You get the same amount of people out to a football match.  Is it really that implausible that across Australia that a similar number of people are visiting a foreign country that has a high representation in our general populace?

If the North Island of New Zealand bombed the South Island and we want to rescue every Aussie citizen in New Zealand, you can bet there’d be a lot more than 25,000.