This is a speech I gave at a recent Rally For Refugees.

‘To be human is for our hearts to beat with the desire to love and be loved.

If there is a single universal rule of ethical human conduct recognized by the whole of humanity, it is that ‘we ought to love our neighbours as ourselves’.

The greatest threat to our love of our neighbor is our fear of our neighbour.

It is because many Aussies fear asylum seekers, we are unable to treat them the way we would like to be treated if we were seeking asylum ourselves.

Aussies have a primal historical/hysterical fear of ‘boat people’ coming to our country and dispossessing us, because our forebears came to this country as ‘boat people’ and dispossessed the people who lived in this country before us, and we fear that the next wave of boat people may do the same to us.

Aussie anthropologist, Ghassan Hage, says Aussies are afraid that if we took the land we live in, others may want to take it too. He says that Aussies have an underlying fear of revenge for the genocide our ancestors committed, de-colonisation by aborigines, and re-colonisation by migrants and refugees.[1]

This primal historical/hysterical fear of ‘boat people’ has been deliberately manipulated and exploited by a series of governments for their own political purposes. They have intentionally and systematically (mis)represented asylum seekers as ‘illegals’, ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘security threats’ so we vote them into power to ensure ‘border security’ and ‘stop the boats’ at any cost.

As the psychotherapist, Wayne Muller, says, fearful people ‘may appear deeply loving, but fear always interferes with the impulse to love. Fear blocks responsiveness to others. Energy invested in maintaining safety and comfort always depletes energy available for others.’[2] Muller says, ‘When fear arises, we harden our bodies and our hearts, closing inward to protect ourselves. We build walls, call up armies, and pay governments to protect us from danger.’[3]

And to protect us from this carefully-constructed and manifestly-exaggerated ‘danger’, on our behalf, the present government is stopping the boats of people fleeing war, oppression and persecution and deporting refugees seeking asylum on our shores to Manus Island where they will be kept in detention in dehumanising conditions until they are deported or repatriated or settled somewhere, anywhere, even Cambodia, as long it is not in Australia.

This should – and this does – make many of us angry. Our country is treating vulnerable men, women and children with unconscionable cruelty in our name. However while anger is understandable, aggro protests are not helpful.

To bring about a change in policy we need to change public opinion. And we to change public opinion we need to create a culture of love over a culture of fear. Anger does not encourage love. Anger engenders fear. And I have no doubt the government will exploit any fear we engender, to justify the need for greater security and rationalize the expansion of the very policies we oppose.

To win this fight we need to win people over. If we express our anger through aggro protests we will inevitably drive them away from us and from our cause. We will be more likely to draw people to us and to our cause if we express our concern with laughter, tears, sweet reason and strong but gentle pleas.

We need to acknowledge people’s fears. Their fear of difference. Their fear of conflict. Their fear of change. We need to accept them – both the people and their fears – and help them explore them and examine them without fear of us.

We need to allay people’s fears. Their fear of ‘illegals’. Their fear of ‘queue jumpers’. Their fear of ‘security threats’. We need to patiently explain to them, that in spite of the government’s rhetoric, according to the governments own records, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers are not illegals’, ‘queue jumpers’ or ‘security threats’, not people for us to fear.

Then we need to introduce people to refugees face to face. When we arrange for people to meet refugees, most Aussies can’t help but see ‘boat people’ as ‘people’ – not as illegals’, ‘queue jumpers’ or ‘security threats’ – but ‘people’ much like themselves, and find themselves moving from fear to love – or at towards least something ocker (a little less touchy and feely) akin to love.

There are no quick fixes. There are no short cuts. Venting our rage is going to be counterproductive. If we are going to create a culture of love over above our politics of fear and over against our policies of fear, we all need to take on the exceedingly-important, excruciatingly-painstaking work of encouraging one another – our selves, our families, our friends – to let our better nature get the better of us and learn to love our asylum seeker neighbours as ourselves.’