21/03/2021
Earlier in the month of March, our Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton secretively deported a 15 year old boy to New Zealand, a country he has little or no connections to. This was one more deportation to add to the more than 1000 that this government is undertaking each financial year. Minister Dutton then likened the deportation of this young boy as akin to “taking out the trash”.
The irony of the timing of the Minister’s comments is not lost on any of us. Occurring as it did on the second anniversary of the Christchurch massacre when an Australian man, armed with his high powered guns and plethora of pages of racist ideology killed 51 innocent people of Islamic faith. Many of us have seen the footage of that massacre and some others of us (like me) have read through his manifesto of hate. We have adopted the practice that NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has chosen of not using the name of the killer in any of our discussions.
There are UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child that have been decimated by the actions of the Australian Minister. There are issues of sheer xenophobia demonstrated in the commentary that he has used in describing this young boy as akin to “trash”.
This is not the behaviour that I, for one, would expect to see being displayed by an Australian Minister of some significant standing. However, it is also behaviour and language that has become the norm in discussing human beings that do not fit the mould of those in power here. We must do all we can to restore our shared humanity. A starting point needs to be the language used by our parliamentarians.
Let us at least maintain a level of civility when discussing these matters.
Sincerely
Suresh Rajan
President, Ethnic Communities Council of WA
20 View Street
NORTH PERTH WA 6006
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