Took a really enjoyable circular weekende trip - Canberra to Batemans Bay to Sydney. Took us through Braidwood on Saturday morning - market day.
I bit my tongue when two old blokes (that means about my age) were agreeing with each other about how the Gillard government is destroying us, what with climate change and illegal immigrants. One said to the other "I have no problem with taking refugees from the camps - they just have to come in through the front door".
It made me think of a new map of the world published by The Guardian to show the new country of South Sudan.
Bottom right shows source and destination of the world's refugees. 3 million Afghan, 1.7 million Iraqi refugees. Pakistan has received 1.9 M, Iran 1 M and Syria 1 M. Do the rednecks who talk of front and back doors understand that there is no such thing as the "front door" for a refugee? This is not orderly migration - these are people uprooting themselves and fleeing.
Where it becomes most depressing is when the refugee question and climate change are discussed by the same people. See we don't want climate change policies that "export jobs" or require us to reduce emissions if developing countries don't have to.
if you want to stop the global movement of people looking for a better life, you at least need to make their life better where they are.
We've discovered that invasions to plant democracy don't work. We also know that the IMF/World Bank economic prescriptions don't work. But what does?
I'm really keen to hear some conversations on that.
Note. Thanks to Jessica Irvine for tweeting about the spreadsheet porn of The Guardian which is how I found the map.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
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