Many Australians reacted with outrage this week after the High Court deemed it legal for the Federal Government to turn away asylum seekers and send them to offshore detention on Nauru.
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The result is that more than 250 vulnerable people, including 37 babies, who have risked their lives to flee war, famine or persecution, will be sent away.
The government’s actions may be legal, but they are ethically wrong.
Whispers have been growing louder recently about poor conditions, threats of violence and abuse that asylum seekers face on Nauru, but our government is willing to send men, women and children there with no indication of when they will be allowed to leave.
Some religious leaders in Maitland stood behind their Brisbane counterparts who invoked the centuries-old concept of sanctuary at their churches on Thursday.
It is as a gesture of support and protection for asylum seekers and a clear challenge to the government’s policy of turning away the vulnerable.
Such desperate measures show that the government is clearly out of step with the moral fibre of communities across Australia.
Politicians from both major parties have used the plight of the vulnerable to score points and generate fear in the quest to win the trust of voters more and more in the past 20 years.
But if we continue to be involved in this political game, we will end up at a point in the future where we look back on our treatment of asylum seekers as a great shame of this nation.
Every community that takes a stand against this inhumane policy is another reason for the government to change its mind.