ArticleWhy are we Aussies so fearful? It’s a question I am asking myself more often.
Both parties, no doubt responding to what they perceive to be broad public opinion, are looking to outdo each other in their response to the puzzle of what to do with the mothers who have been aligned with ISIS and their children stranded in Syria.
A gut-driven response might want to keep them out. But that would be too hasty. In the past, both the Morrison Government and Labor under Albanese repatriated ISIS-linked Australian citizens and re-integrated them. Now, European nations and even the USA have repatriated their citizens with ties to ISIS. Australia’s hysterical current response is extraordinary when we consider that the Trump administration is urging us, for reasons of security and to prevent further radicalisation, to bring these families home.
The Opposition, however, is suggesting that we introduce laws to criminalise NGOs or advocates who have offered assistance to people with links to terrorism. In this case, it would mean NGO workers offering help to Australian citizens (and children of Australian citizens) facing prosecution for offering that help. And this comes from Liberal Party that talks loudest about Australian values which, as Andrew Hastie puts it, “are based on Judeo-Christian values”.
Most international NGOs were founded out of those same values. Those organisations were forged in war to help particularly the children of those who were once enemies. Save the Children was founded in 1919 as a response to the starvation of children in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Plan International was founded in 1937 for the children affected by the Spanish Civil War. Oxfam began in 1942, sending food aid to starving civilians in enemy-occupied Greece. World Vision, which I formerly led in Australia, was founded in 1950 responding to children affected in the Korean War.
War is the ultimate form of terror but cannot trump humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality and universality. Why? Because they are the expression of principles found in the Jewish scriptures in Genesis 1:28 that all human beings are made in the image of God and all have dignity and deserve protection. That is the principle of universality. Jesus (a Jew) intensified this principle with his astonishing and challenging call to “love your enemies”. He believed that even our enemies bear the image of God and therefore have dignity. That is the principle of impartiality and neutrality. And Jesus was particularly focused on children, saying that someone couldn’t enter his society (kingdom) unless they became like a little child. He also promised serious judgement on anyone causing a “little one” to stumble.
Well, there are 23 little ones, all Australian citizens, in Al-Roj camp. And yet NGOs are to be criminalised for helping or advocating for them?
Societies have a right to protect themselves. There are good reasons to fear ISIS and radicalization. The Bondi Beach massacre made that frighteningly clear. But that fear must never morph into an irrational response which does nothing to add to community safety and instead leads to further division and hatred.
Fear comes from a loss of control. But we here in Australia control our borders successfully, unlike the USA under Biden and unlike the UK and Europe at the moment.
Is it the PM’s personal fear of a loss of control that is driving his reaction? He was isolated over calls for a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and was unfairly considered by some to be personally responsible for the deaths at Bondi. Perhaps his wounds from that may explain his statement that “they have made their beds and can lie in them”. Have the children made their beds and must lie in them? The knowledge that this is a diverse cohort and certainly includes some young women who were coerced and some who were just young and foolish might give us reason to pause before allowing ourselves to write off Australian citizens by refusing to help in any repatriation.
Is the real fear that ASIO has lost control and we cannot trust them? ASIO has informed the Government that only one woman is a danger and therefore the target of an exclusion order. I gather the Royal Commission into Antisemitism will stress-test ASIO over any culpability for security failures at Bondi – but until those findings I, for one, think we still have excellent security services.
Is the fear that our society is too weak to absorb 23 children and monitor the mothers? Surely not. We have done it before with former repatriated families.
I do think that a real fear in terms of the political response to these women and children being repatriated is the rise and rise of Pauline Hanson. Both parties have repudiated her for saying “there are no good Muslims” but clearly she is significantly shaping the fear agenda. Her rise in the polls is a profound loss of control for the major parties. I, for one, was shocked to hear Hanson being cheered loudly when she visited Bondi shortly after the massacre and thought something has profoundly shifted and fear is driving us.
These women and children stuck in appalling conditions in Syrian camps are our responsibility. And we have the capacity to bring them home for a guided and carefully overseen repatriation. We are bigger than the sum of our real and imagined fears.
Tim Costello AO is Director of Ethical Voice Pty Ltd, Executive Director of Micah Australia and a Senior Fellow of Centre for Public Christianity.
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