Kiwis asked to ‘meddle in’ Australian issues

by ROWENA OREJANA
AUCKLAND — Kiwis are needed to “meddle” in Australian issues, according to the president of Refugee Centre of Australia, Phil Glendenning.

Phil Glendenning


Mr Glendenning said that to be effective advocates for people in need, we need to put people back in the equation.
Mr Glendenning spoke to participants in Advocacy in Aotearoa, a networking and training event organised in Auckland on July 15. It was organised by the Edmund Rice Centre NZ.
“I have a plea to my New Zealand comrades — we need you meddling in Australian affairs,” he said.
Mr Glendenning said many people, particularly refugees and asylumseekers, are being treated as numbers, which makes it easier for governments to set them aside.
“Sadly at the moment in Australia, we are treating refugees and asylum seekers as if we were at war with them,” he said. “What is forgotten is why people come. What do these people need?”
He said in the rush to maintain the status quo, people are being turned back and treated inhumanely. “The Australian government says we’re being cruel to be kind. No, we’re not. It’s
just being cruel,” he said.
Mr Glendenning said he spent a few weeks in Afghanistan a while back to find out what happened to some of the people the Australian government had rejected. “When we came back we found
that 31 people who’d come to Australia to seek protection [and who] we sent back were killed, including women and very small children.”
There has been a paradigm shift in the 1980s, he said, that is important for advocates to understand.
He said this was the time when countries stopped being “societies” and became “economies”. People became “customers”, “consumers” or “clients”, not “citizens”, while services changed into “products”.
“The language reveals the assumptions. When you strip down the assumptions, they reveal the values. And the values that we see at work in the Western world at the moment is some
people are more people than others,” he said.
“Once we reduce every relationship primarily to an economic relationship, we lose the humanity. And it enables us to do what we’re doing to refugees and asylum seekers. So for advocates,
if we’re serious, we have to start reclaiming the language.”
He pointed out that equality is not the goal, but fairness. “What happens if you treat everybody equally [and] you start from different positions, all you do is entrench the inequality,” he said.
Mr Glendenning also explained that it is important to work with the people you advocate for and to get to know them. “If we are going to mean seriously our advocacy, we have to do it together and we have to do it in partnership. Not speak for people, but speak with people. Not to work
for people, but to work with and for people,” he said.
He said creativity is also important to send the message out in a positive way. “We have to have a clear sense of what we are advocating for, not just what we’re advocating against. Because
people respond to the positive,” he said.
He said young people need to be engaged now. “When people tell you you can’t make a difference, they are telling you a lie. When people tell you you can’t make a difference, history will
tell us something else,” he said.

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Rowena Orejana

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