REVIEW
June Monthly Luncheon Wednesday, 1st June
Sr Brigid Arthur CSB AO Justice for the people seeking asylum in Australia
Sister Brigid Arthur gave a presentation on the topic “A reflection on Australia’s response to asylum seekers” at the October 2011 Monthly Luncheon. We are pleased welcome her back again to Graduate House. At the June 2022 Monthly Luncheon, Sister Brigid shared her ongoing work in seeking justice for the people seeking asylum in Australia. Let me start by reminding us all of a quote from Malcolm Fraser who said that “As long as there is war and persecution anywhere in the world, there will be people fleeing to safety no matter how or when it happens”. It is the inalienable right to seek safety which was recognised after World War II, though Australia has never enforced that right in our domestic laws, and as a result, we are unable to bring cases to court on the basis of the rights of people being here. How did I came to be doing this work? I have always been a teacher, teaching in primary and secondary schools in Country Victoria (Horsham, Kyabram) and Mebourne (Hawthorn, Albert Park, Geelong, Sunshine West). I loves teaching and would find ways to engage with kids. At the time when I was working in Sunshine West, new waves of different people were coming and immersing into our racially diverse community and I was interested in these new arrivals. Within the ethnic mix, mainly dominated by Greeks, Italians and Maltese, the Vietnamese started arriving in the 70s, many working in textile factories. A few decades later, the Vietnamese were accepted into the community because they have been here long enough. And now, new groups of people are arriving, some from wartorn countries like Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Syria. I was living in nearby Ardeer which was full of older women who had survived the 2nd World War. They were Ukrainians, Russians and Polish women, mainly
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widows who came with their husbands and later died. The women had then been forced across borders or lived under the houses of German farmers with their animals. Because I lived among new migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, I learnt about the difficulties that many faced and I got to know them and was fascinated by their stories. I was part of a justice group who worked on social issues where one of the group people was a refuge, and it was then that we began to realise that there were actually refugees here in Melbourne. We decided to visit the MIDC (Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre), to offer help and find out more. However, we were refused entry unless we had a particular person to visit and by sheer chance, a member of this justice group met the cousin of the cook at the MIDC, and through that cook, we obtained a spreadsheet list containing the names of the detainees, their country of origin and their occupation before they got here. I wrote to some of them, mainly to those from Pakistan in the hope that they understand English, and eventually managed to get hold of one contact who was still in detention. I went to the centre in clutches because of an accident and he met me and was using the exact same clutches as me and we had a good laugh. He told me that I was the first person he spoke to in six months, except for the guards and he made me promise to come back to visit, which I did and I got to know him until today. We also learnt of another young Pakistani detainee who was psychiatrically disturbed and was falling apart and that this young man had the opportunity to be released if he paid money. It was later learnt that those who came by boat had to be detained but those who came by plane — and had been in the community for a while, and then put back into a detention centre — could be let out with a fee! I approached immigration and was told that it would cost AU$3000k to have
