The Church of All Nations has launched a cultural program it calls Australia Dreaming. Its first offering is a series of ‘conversations’ with notable public figures exploring “What I believe and why.” They happen one evening a month at the Clare Castle Hotel on the corner of Palmerston and Rathdowne Streets, where some very good pub grub and brain food are on offer for $25 a head.
Dr Michelle Foster, Melbourne Law School
The first of these ‘Carlton Conversations at the Clare’ was host to Michelle Foster, a refugee lawyer from Melbourne Law School. She was in conversation with Melbourne Uni chaplain Wes Campbell, who interviewed her about her background and upbringing and what led her to become a legal academic passionately defending the wretched of the earth who find precious little sympathy in contemporary Australia.
Foster described herself as naturally optimistic, which contributes to her staying power. Her hopes were raised with the advent of the Rudd Government and its efforts to reverse some of the immigration policies of the Howard years – such as the Pacific Solution and Temporary Protection Visas – which had made Australia an “international pariah.”
But her expectations were far from fulfilled. Mandatory detention continues, and the thousands of off-shore islands which the Howard Government ‘excised’ from Australia’s international legal obligations remain rights-free zones for anyone washing up there.
Dr Foster painted a vivid picture of Australia as almost alone in a region of non-signatories to the Refugee Convention, explaining why refugees who make it to Indonesia are afforded no protection there; no status or support, no means of making a new life. And so they venture on to a country purporting to uphold their human rights.
Most Australians do not appreciate that the vast majority of asylum seekers arrive by plane, not boat, and live peaceably in the community awaiting determination of their claim. It is a breach of the Refugee Convention to penalise them on the mode of their arrival. However they arrive, most are eventually accorded refugee status; and all of them dwarf in number compared with other categories of immigration. ‘Boatpeople’ should simply not figure in the population debate.
And so Michelle Foster’s struggle continues: defending the Refugee Convention from its critics, and inspiring a new generation of law students with her vision of a decent and just world in which people fleeing persecution are met with compassion and protection.
Carlton Conversations at the Clare continue on 19 August with disability advocate Rhonda Galbally explaining what she believes and why.
In subsequent months, we’ll hear from peace activist Rev. Simon Moyle (16 Sept), historian and philosopher of science Kristian Camilleri (21 Oct), and Indigenous musician Jessie Lloyd (18 Nov).
Bookings: 0423 407 499 or australiadreaming@carlton-uca.org
Look out for these and other Australia Dreaming events at http://carlton-uca.org/australia-dreaming/
