‘Asylum is the greatest moral challenge of our time‘, The Conversation, 29 July 2013
The fact that non-European migration has been so significant since the end of White Australia ought to make us sympathetic to refugees, but I see little evidence that it has. I observe a phenomenon which perhaps we should call “arrivalism”, where groups which have entered the Australian community show little or no sympathy for the next generation of refugees.
The author considers the historical, legal, moral, personal and political context of the asylum seeker issue. He is particularly critical of ‘populist reporting’ of boat arrivals. The article attracted 110 comments.