Call me soft, but I don’t believe that there’s anyone as big-hearted as the average Australian when it comes to lending a hand in times of trouble.
In a long career in journalism, I’ve seen Australians turn up with armfuls of blankets for volunteer firefighters at the bushfires; I’ve seen them filling sandbags in the rain at the Queensland floods; I’ve seen them searching shoulder-to-shoulder in the scrub for missing children; I’ve seen them dangling cheerfully from helicopters to rescue people stranded in high seas.
Australians give to hospital appeals, and to cancer charities, and to just about any kind of disaster relief, here and overseas. They sponsor children; they rattle tins for the Salvos; they turn up with food and toys to put under Christmas wishing trees.
No matter what anyone tries to tell you, Australia also has an extremely proud record of helping refugees.
Millions of people – literally millions – have poured into this nation over the past 60 years.
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They came first from Europe, and later from Vietnam, and later still from Kosovo.
Australia took 10,000 terrified people from China after the massacre in Tiananmen Square; more recently, Australia has taken hungry refugees from Africa (in particular from Sudan); from Afghanistan; and from Iraq.
A handful of people grumble loudly every time Australia does this – who are these people and will they fit in? – but before long, everyone’s getting on, and why wouldn’t they be?
This nation is great because of immigration.
Which brings us to Tony Abbott’s announcement of today: he’s going to allow 12,000 Syrian refugees to come to Australia, over and above the 13,000 refugees Australia was already going to take this year.
Tony Abbott making his refugee announcement on Wednesday, September 9.
Twelve thousand is a good number, and it’s also quite deliberately 2000 more than Labor’s Bill Shorten asked for, which probably tells you all you need to know about how political this issue has become.
It is, finally, the right thing to do, but will it help Tony Abbott and his team?
Probably not.
Truth be told, the Coalition has come out of this mess looking absolutely dreadful.
Why?
Because to the outsider, it seems like Australia had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table on this issue. The Abbott government moved with glacial speed.
Toddlers were turning up face down, drowned, on Turkish beaches, yet Prime Minister Abbott couldn’t seem to find a way to say: Okay, enough. We must let these people in.
Why? Because he had become trapped in, of all things, a slogan.
Syrian children, who were displaced with their families from their houses due to the ongoing conflict in Syria, queue up to receive aid food in the rebel side of the northern city of Aleppo, on September 7
For years now, the Coalition has been chanting about how the Australian government must Stop The Boats (which they must, because getting on boats is how toddlers end up drowned on beaches.)
So busy were they chanting this slogan, they failed to see a real and desperate humanitarian crisis unfolding in Europe.
So loudly were they chanting, they couldn’t hear the Australian public calling out – crying out, literally begging – for their government to please do something to help these frightened human beings.
The result is a government that looks hard and cold, which is at odds with how Australians like to see themselves.
Protesters in Sydney light candles to remember Syrian child Aylan Kurdi, who drowned in Turkey last week creating an international outcry.
We’re the kind of nation that jumps up in times of trouble. Why wouldn’t we? We’ve got plenty of space and plenty of money and hearts bigger than Uluru.
A cold and hungry stranger turns up on our doorstep, we fling the door open. We set the table. We make up the spare room.
That’s us. It always has been us, but for a moment there, our government made us look like we didn’t care.
We do care. We’ve always cared. We won’t let that be forgotten.
VIDEO: Angelina Jolie addresses UN regarding Syrian Refugees.
