No wonder we keep voting in the LNP and ALP. They're both as bad as each other when it comes to the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
Sounds like basically half the population doesn't have empathy.
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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The media is intensely, dystopically, centralised and people are bombarded with offensive horror.
Australians also have pretty broken community because of isolating cities and a highly urbanised population, plus lots of working. I think both of these stunt empathy, as you primarily see people in contexts where they are something to be endured.
This nation was a horrible colonial project, but many of the people who were forced to come or decided to had some pretty wonderful dreams about a welcoming egalitarian society. I am saddened by where we ended up.
I should also add that the Guardian seems to be making this more of a positive than it is. Apparently:
Jana Favero, the ASRC’s deputy chief executive, said the results showed voters had “compassion” and “a desire for humanity” when it came to people fleeing danger
But only 42% oppose "deporting asylum seekers to their country of origin, regardless of the risk of persecution or violence" and 32% oppose "the government’s powers to pay other countries to take asylum seekers or non-citizens Australia wants to deport".
I would argue only around ~40% of respondents met Favero's descriptor.
Yeah hence why I changed the title and proposed an alternative one. Unimpressed by the spin, deluding ourselves solves nothing.
Not sure how I should feel that the bubble I live in seems far more accepting and empathy towards asylum seekers.
I don't think the people I live/work/socialise with are particularly extreme... but according to this we're collectively not representative of wider Australian views.
I choose to believe their sampling was flawed and somehow only sampled the worst of us.
Unfortunately, I have the opposite experience. Living in rural Australia I often come across people who treat any non-white person as “other”.
A good example of this is an ex-coworker who refused to eat Indian food because she’s not a “curry muncher”. I pointed out that she likes butter chicken and that’s curry. She admitted that she did indeed like butter chicken but not curry.
That’s the logic we’re dealing with. It’s hostility driven by a lack of exposure to other cultures and people and the demonisation of those cultures and people in media.
90% of Aussies live in cities with plenty of exposure to other people (source https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/historical-population/2021)
Australia was explicitly white supremist in living memory. Unfortunately a lot of us just fucking suck. Constant media beat ups, cheap tactics by pollies, a machismo that rejects education and empathy, a myopic education curriculum, and an economic system that has us proles climbing over each other for a brief gasp of air takes its toll.
