Welcome to Australia

Yes, that would be me in a dinghy en route to Lampedusa. That would be me clinging to the underbelly of a truck on its way to Dover. That would be me handing over to a people smuggler come saviour my bundle of cash (raked together after selling everything I and my extended family owned). That would be me washed up in detention in another land. And if I were blindfolded and spun round and round with no knowledge of my destination, my fingers would be crossed that I would not end up in Australia.

For, thanks to the policies of consecutive governments of this land I must call home, I would not find myself in Australia. Not properly. I'd be locked in an off-shore detention centre and told I'd either be (after a very long and indefinite time) sent to live on Manus or in Cambodia, destined to eke out a living amongst people who would much rather I was not there, or worse, dispatched whence I came. I have no idea after all these decades if Australians have a special phrase for this, but they call it Hobson's choice back in London where I come from.

A reluctant migrant living here on land stolen from its real owners, I'm becoming more cynical by the day. So it came as no surprise to learn that our impeccable Prime Minister, ever on the hunt for new ways to oppress those fleeing the bombs, the rape, the torture, is now threatening to instantly reject asylum seekers who are without documentation.

You had no time?
Too much of a hurry you say?
Bad luck mate.
On yer bike!

Tony likes to be tough. He thinks it proves he matters. Perhaps he wants Australia to be the world leader in the abhorrent cruelty of incarcerating asylum seekers in conditions worse that Guantanamo Bay. A recipient of the Nobel prize for Inhumanity. For the more the story of our treatment of asylum seekers unfolds, the more convinced I am that our leaders are despots, standing shoulder to shoulder with all the other despots down the dark paths of history. Such policies impact negatively on our nation's identity, rendering us important to the world not as an exemplar of excellence, not in ways of which we can be proud, but instead in ways of which we should be ashamed.

As I age, empathy strengthens in my heart, empathy I experienced for the first time when I was twelve, empathy that causes me to know I do not need to prove I matter.

Meanwhile, also trending on facebook, was the news that a man has ejaculated (allegedly) on a woman at a festival in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia.

Charming.

That, too, is no way to prove you matter.