I did get the following from a reply to:
posted February 1, 2014 at 10:21 am by d0tski
I do not know how to contact d0tski to get his permission to reblog. I did find what he wrote an excellent contribution. I wished I was articulate and knowledgeable enough to write something similar myself. d0tski wrote this:
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately:
Polling shows that 59% of people polled do NOT believe that most asylum seekers who arrive by boat are genuine refugees. Only 30% believed that most boat arrivals are genuine refugees.
Now, those of us who get our news from someone other than Murdoch know this not to be true. We know that greater than 90% of people who arrive by boat will later (much later), be recognised as ‘genuine refugees’.
Of the 1000 people surveyed, 60% felt that boat-arrivals should be treated more harshly.
59% of those surveyed felt that boat-arrivals should not receive financial government assistance.
All these figures tell us that the majority of Australians have no idea who is on these boats. No concept of the types of persecution they are fleeing. No idea that there is no ‘queue’ for asylum seekers to be processed and re-settled. They don’t realise that (for example), in 2011, only 0.7% of the worlds refugees were resettled. These figures also show us that people do not know, or do not believe, that the conditions on Manus and Nauru are tantamount to torture.
Personally, I refuse to believe that people don’t care. I’m convinced that the problem is that people DON’T KNOW.
This needs to change. Television shows such as those shown on the ABC’s “4 Corners”, and SBS’ “Go Back To Where You Came From” are great. I always watch them. But truly, they are preaching to the choir.
Add to that the fact that it is nigh-on impossible to get decent reportage out of these places. Successive governments have made it increasingly difficult for us to know what is going on. For the Abbott government, it’s pretty much their modus operandi.
How do you get the rest of Australia to listen and learn? I don’t know. If we knew that, we wouldn’t have this problem.
I don’t have any answers here, so if you read this far hoping for a revelation, I apologise 🙂 I just think it’s important to know what the problems are before trying to come up with a solution.
Actually, there’s one other thought I’ve had. Have you heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? If you did psych in highschool, you probably covered it. It’s basically the idea that humans have a hierarchy of needs that looks like a pyramid. The greatest needs are at the bottom, and include physiological needs like breathing, food, water etc. We move up the pyramid through Safety, Belonging, Esteem, and eventually (so the theory goes) we reach Self Actualisation at the top.
Now, it’s my personal theory that governments like to try and keep most of their constituents near the bottom of the pyramid. If we’re all worrying about where our next meal may come from, job security, and mundane things like that, we’re never going to get to a point where our greatest needs are ones like morality, truth and creativity. It is in the governments’ (not just in Oz, but all over) best interest that we live in a permanent state of fear. They want us to always worry that someone is going to come and take what is ‘rightfully ours.’ They appeal to our most basic emotions of fear and greed.
Once again, I don’t know how you change that.
AuntyUta 
Of course, I don’t know either how all this can be changed. But I agree with this: Before you come up with a solution you have to know where the problem is. 🙂
Well written and I agree with the concept that governments try and keep us all down at the bottom worrying about our jobs and whether we can buy food; instead of being comfortable in ourselves and thinking of our higher values (like humanity).
Right, Elizabeth. Fear and worrying, I wonder where does it get us? Still, people need to have jobs, they need to have water and food and somewhere to live. Isn’t our earth big enough for all of us? Why is it that so many people have to worry about the most basic things?
I agree
Hallo liebe Ute wünsche dir ein gutes und glückliches Wochenende gehe erst am Dienstag ins Krankenhaus liebe Grüße von mir bis dann Gruß und Freundschaft.Gislinde
Hallo liebe Gislinde, ich hoffe du hast ein gutes Wochenende. Für Dienstag drücke ich dir die Daumen. Wünsche dir alles Gute.
Best wishes and Love, Uta.
Very well written and very sad that so few people realise that refugees aren’t just parasites but desperate people driven to desperate deeds.
Hello, Cat. yes it is remarkable that so many people just don’t realise what a great problem the refugee problem is world wide. I do agree with what Dotski writes. The way I see it this author did get the facts right. I guess most people believe, just what they want to believe. TV programs on our ABC or SBS, that depict the plight of the asylum seekers, are watched only by a tiny minority. This is very sad indeed. I bet our Australian government likes it this way. They think the less informed we are the better. They feed us slogans like “Stop the Boats” and “Boat People are Illegals”. Another slogan is “Sovereign Borders”. They say we have to protect our borders. There are people smugglers from Indonesia in the business of smuggling asylum seekers in leaky boats to Australia. A lot of people drown in these boats. They say this has to be prevented. So our navy has to stop these boats and send them back to Indonesia. They also say the Australian people agree with this because they voted the coalition in with this policy at the last election.