Thursday, August 22, 2013

Lament for boat people

On Saturday, August 10th in Sydney, the Moderator of the NSW.ACT Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia led a lament for what has been done recently to ban all boat people from settling in Australia.

The lament, "Were you there when they turned the boats away?" was movingly sung.

This banning of all these courageous boat people has been initiated and endorsed by both the parties competing for government in this forthcoming Federal election.
In recent days, both these parties have been bullying us into voting for either of them to form a majority government so they can have the numbers to implement this inhumane policy.
They have formed a duopolistic cartel in order to exclude from the Australian Parliament any Member who would vote from conscience and not follow the party line.

It is to our shame that we are allowing whatever Government we elect to continue to treat asylum seekers as human trash to be swept under the rug of neighbouring nations weaker than ourselves.

The election appears to be close enough for these major parties to buy their votes from swinging seats to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

My prayer is that the good people of NSW will vote this time with conscience rather than with expediency. 

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