Historically, Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers has been treated as a political issue instead of a humanitarian one.
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Protesters at East Maitland joined the growing chorus of Australians on Monday who urged the federal government not to deport a group of asylum seekers back to Nauru.
The group included a one-year-old girl known as Asha who was being treated in Brisbane for burns.
Public outrage erupted when the Australian Medical Association stood against the government and refused to discharge Asha from medical care.
This defiance sparked protests and united people around the nation – including in the Hunter.
Maitland-Morpeth Amnesty member Jane Purkiss told the Mercury there was no room for “petty politics” in the asylum seeker issue.
The Mercury would take Ms Purkiss’s point further and argue that too much politics, petty or otherwise, has entered a conversation that should ultimately be about the welfare of desperate people.
AMA president Professor Brian Owler, one of Australia’s most respected doctors, condemned the government for having to be dragged “kicking and screaming” to the point of doing what was the right thing – allowing Asha to stay in Australia.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton eventually bent on Sunday and announced that Asha would go into community detention in Australia, but didn’t rule out the possibility that she would eventually be returned to Nauru.
He then immediately returned to the tired rhetoric about the government’s task of destroying the people smuggling trade. It was the wrong time to try and make a political point and epitomised the poor judgement the government has shown on this issue.
The reaction to Asha’s case shows that the public conversation about asylum seekers needs more voices of those who have the best interests of their fellow humans at heart.