Hi guys!
I complete VCE English last yr and know how much of a struggle it may be at times. For all those that have left their English Oral Presentation to the last minute, I have decided to post mine up. Asylum Seekers is a topic that has been done to death. However, I feel that as long as you attack the topic in a creative way, you will be able to do well with it.
Here you go:
That Asylum Seekers Should Be Allowed Entry into Australia!
“Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased,
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you,
This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.”
What I have just read you was a short excerpt from one of William Shakespeare’s monologues, embedded within the play Sir Thomas More. These words summarize Shakespeare’s perception on what was not only one of the greatest scourges to infect Elizabethan England but what has now become one of the greatest controversy in Modern Australian Politics: Asylum Seekers, or rather, more specifically, whether they should be allowed to seek asylum. Since the 16th Century, man has been able to abolished slavery, embraced democracy and largely eradicate gender inequality, and yet still, we are unable to cleanse ourselves of our prejudices and do what we are both morally and legally obliged to do for our fellow man. The asylum seekers or “strangers” that Shakespeare mentions were the French and Dutch Calvinists; members of Protestant minorities persecuted by contemporary Catholic governments. The treatment of these refugees when they arrived in England was not dissimilar to how Australia treats the Hazara Asylum Seekers today. Not only is it inhumane, it is profoundly unjust, this was clearly evident to William Shakespeare in his time, and so should be plainly evident to us now.
Initially, I would like to quash the underlying dogma that the words Asylum Seeker and Illegal Immigrant are synonymous. Australia is a voluntary signatory of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, and so, as per Article 31, refugees are permitted to enter Australia without any prior authorization because they are forced to flee for fear of persecution, for the fear of the safety of their lives. An apt anecdote would be how in the recent bushfires, firefighting trucks were exempt from traffic laws in order to save valuable lives. Well, in this case it is not simply one life or even hundreds of lives that are at risk, but thousands and tens of thousands. Just to punch out some numbers, according to Department of Immigration and Citizenship if no asylum seekers were granted entry into Australia in the 7 years since 2006, that would mean 100,885 lives would have still been at risk, and potentially there could have been 100, 885 casualties due to Australia’s battle with its own selfishness. This is exclusive of all the asylum seekers that could have made it to Australia if Australia had been more hospitable to Asylum Seekers in the first place. Furthermore Asylum Seekers are not immigrants at all. Immigrants are free to leave Australia and return to their home country at any time. This is not the case with Asylum Seekers, as they must remain expatriated for an indefinite period of time.
Some would also argue that Asylum Seekers are already “rich” and they simply want to come to Australia via a “back door”. It may be true that some Asylum seekers are “rich”, however high economic status does not disqualify you from seeking asylum just as how being wealthy does not preclude you from being tortured. Nonetheless, most Asylum Seekers are not rich. Do not allow the fact that it costs each asylum seeker approximately $14,000 just to get on the boat, delude you. Families contemplating seeking asylum are extraordinarily desperate. After all what would you not do to save the life of someone we love? Someone’s life that is more valuable to you than even you own. Would you not raise that $14,000 by any means necessary, even if it took you years? And even when you do raise the sum, in many cases you would only be able to send a single member of the family on the extremely dangerous journey from Papua New Guinea across the Torres Strait to Australia, while the rest of the family will need to live out the rest of their lives in crippling poverty. Ultimately, what they are doing a deal with the devil. They are taking a shot at a better life. I am sure that many of the people in this room are only first generation Australian and so, such an experience can be comparable to what your own parents have experienced when they decided to come to Australia. The grim decisions that they had to make, and the irreplaceable love ones that they had to leave behind. And for what? In hope of establishing a better life for themselves and yourselves.
Now, if you cannot find it in your hearts to allow the asylum seekers into Australia for their wellbeing, then why not do it to satisfy your opportunistic urges? Over the past few decades, numerous studies have consistently demonstrated that when new waves of refugees arrive at a nation, they make an invaluable contribution to both the economic stability and cultural diversity of that nation. In the 1580’s and 1590’s when the influx of French and Dutch Calvinist refugees entered England, they brought with them an assortment of business and cultural knowledge that allowed England to establish vital trade links with other countries in Europe. This not only boosted the non-material living standards of the general populace but also added to their wealth and strengthened their international relations. A more relevant study was conducted in 2003 on Afghan refugees, and it illustrated that the refugees worked extremely hard in labour intensive jobs and so generated greater profits for the businesses that they worked for. In the greater sense, this also helped to expand Australia’s production possibility frontier and increase total GDP, making the lives of everyone just that bit better than it would have been without them.
Ok, so now if you still want to “stop the boats”, allow me to save you some trouble. In the end, there is only one means by which stopping the boats can actually be achieved, and that is: to make Australia just as inhospitable for these Asylum seekers as their place of origin. I would like to repeat that, there is only one means by which stopping the boats can actually be achieved, and that is: to make Australia just as inhospitable for these Asylum seekers as their place of origin. So unless the Abbott government plan on embracing mass genocide as a deterrent, we need to stop focusing on how to stop the boats, and start focusing on how to accommodate the scared and vulnerable human beings that they bring with them. Australia was once known as “The Lucky Country” and “The Land of Opportunity”; perhaps we can aspire to those labels once more.
Thank you.
Home
Help
Search
Login
