Phil Glendenning
PHIL GLENDINNING EDMUND RICE FEAST DAY PUBLIC ADDRESS
Migrant Resource Centre Adelaide
Brief excerts
Edmund Rice was a liberator for his time and place . . . but what does that mean for us today. I was part of a delegation in San Salvador recently for the 30th Anniversary Memorial of Oscar Romero’s death and it was very clear in that experience that amongst the gathered people there was a vision of a Church on the side of the poor. It was in this celebration that I witnessed some 30,000 people, with the majority being young ones (18-24), clamouring their desire for Bishops around the world to be on the side of the poor - and the Latin American Bishops were there joining in the call. For me this was an experience of a Church fully INCARNATE with the hopes and aspirations of its people....
The work of Edmund Rice Centre over the past 10 years has been unashamedly situated in the lives of two main groups – Indigenous Peoples and Refugees and Asylum Seekers - Indigenous People, as the first peoples, and the Refugees and Asylum Seekers as those who have come here as the last peoples. And the question has to be in both cases “What is the social reality of their lives?” .... If we look at our history, there is no doubt that the two most marginalised groups are those who were here at the start, and those that came last....
For things to be turned around we need two things. There must be RECOGNITION and COMPENSATION. Most Australians baulk at any thought of compensation for Indigenous peoples but in their own life experience ‘compensation’ is the currency by which we measure dignity and respect....
We accept far fewer asylum seekers today than we did in 2001. Up until April, in the course of the previous 12 months, Australia has processed 6,170 new applications for asylum. This represents just 1.69% of the 377,000 people who have applied to 44 industrial nations for asylum. Australia ranks 16th out of these 44 but if we include the majority world or developing world nations we fall to 32nd out of 71....
It's shameful for me that as a country built on a so-called fair go mentality, Australia is known for treating its last people’s about as well as it treats its first. Today, amidst the chaos that our Government has helped to create in Afghanistan, people seeking asylum from that land are four times more likely to lodge an application to Norway than Australia.
Martin Luther King said “We begin to die as a human the moment we choose to remain silent on the things that really matter”. I believe the plight of Australia’s first and last do matter . . . and we have an obligation as Edmund Rice people, as justice people, NOT TO BE SILENT.
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