Aboriginal academic and activist Sharon Firebrace is the Victorian Socialist Alliance Senate candidate in the federal election. Firebrace founded the Aboriginal Genocide Centre. Repealing the NT intervention and standing up for refugee rights are key parts of her election policy.
Below, she responds to Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard鈥檚 announcement on refugees.
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Prime Minister Julia Gillard is typecasting refugees as inherent wrongdoers when she says that Australians expect them to 鈥渓earn the rules under which we live鈥 and that she will 鈥渆nsure refugees shoulder the same obligations as Australians generally鈥.
It鈥檚 the same racist paternalism that underlies the Northern Territory intervention. The previous Coalition PM, John Howard, suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to allow the intervention. Gillard suspended 鈥減olitical correctness鈥 to gear up for a 鈥淏oat People Bashing鈥 election campaign.
Gillard admits Australia has taken only 0.6% of the world鈥檚 refugees. Yet both major parties are trying to outdo each other in proposing ever more expensive, bureaucratic and dehumanising offshore 鈥渟olutions鈥 to our refugee 鈥減roblem鈥.
The prime minister said: 鈥淧eople like my own [migrant] parents who have worked hard all their lives can't abide the idea that others might get an inside track to special privileges.鈥
Well, people like my Indigenous parents, and like the immigrant parents of many second-generation Australians, who fought against discrimination and assimilation, who held out hope that Labor would change their lot, can鈥檛 abide this resurgence of racism and class divisions.