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 