Unaccompanied minors: the vulnerability of children

The fate of politicians and their parties far outweighs any other concern.

We need no more proof that Australian politicians, echoing the sentiments of many in their electorates, do not see refugee children as human beings.

Many of these elected representatives have managed to so distort our political landscape that it has become entirely about them, leaving the wider human condition irrelevant, unless it has direct bearing on their fortunes. This is an immoral position, and it is held by both major parties. Every decision taken comes from this place of moral turpitude.

The dilemma any Labor politicians with integrity face, is to demand that these children be treated as human as the rest of us, and risk the end of their careers. I don't see any one of them doing that any time soon.

There's no room for respecting refugee children's humanity, human rights, and human vulnerability, in Australia today. Our society is not one that, as Butler puts it, will attend to the refugee child's primary helplessness and need.

Better to be an Australian cow.