Moving forward in a time of fear

by Angela Chaney.

Presented at the Perth Day of Ideas, Moving Forward in a Time of Fear, 2 August 2003

Print this page

Thank you Penny for inviting me to speak.

You will understand that the leading speaker in our family is somebody other than me. But I am pleased to be able to talk to you about the work I do with refugees because, after wringing one’s hands about the terrible situation of people in detention centres it is good to actually get down to tintacks and get to work with them. I have found that hugely liberating. So I thought I would start with just musing a little on the actual word ‘refugee’. It is grimly fascinating what a derogatory term it has become.

Refugees really do suffer intensely. They leave appalling circumstances, generally countries in frightful turmoil. They forfeit their careers, their livelihoods, they gather up family or they come alone. They leave behind everything they know and they launch forth on perilous journeys, often not knowing just where they are going. Unfortunately, when they have come to Australia, they don't find the refuge that they are seeking - anything but. When you think of all that you might expect that refugees would be people we would gather up and care for and comfort. But we seem to see them as objects of fear rather than objects of compassion. I find that very curious.

Two years ago, in 2001, after wringing my hands about the detention centres, it was an article in The Australian, by Vicky Laurie, which brought to my attention an organisation called CARAD, doing something that I had never actually thought about. What happens to these people when they are released from detention? Too often it is little or nothing. It seems that Judith Watson came across a group of young men wandering aimlessly in the street outside the Immigration Department - young men who had just been released from detention. John Broadbent, a Dari speaker, who had taught in refugee camps in Pakistan and now back home on leave, recognised what he thought was an Afghan family, in a huddle on the street, looking lost. They told him they had just been released from detention.

Judith and John realised that these people were coming out of detention with $170 in their pocket and one night's accommodation in a migrant hostel. After being pointed in the direction of Centrelink they were being left to their own devices. With little or no English at all, their situation was very grim.

So CARAD was founded to meet the refugees as they came out of the camp. It attracted people like Neville Watson, famously of the Peace Mission to Iraq, his son, who set aside his teaching job to concentrate on these people, and Loris Kidd who was a comfortable housewife. Church groups all around Perth offered houses for temporary accommodation. A number of small groups combined to form the Coalition Assisting Refugees After Detention. With the decline in numbers now coming out of detention we have changed it to ‘Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees’.

When I was drawn in by Vicky Laurie’s article, within an hour of phoning I found myself helping to clean up a house for a family of seven coming out of detention the following day. That family moved in with five kids and virtually no English. One little girl had learnt some English in the three months that they had been in detention. She became the interpreter. There was so much that they needed, and it was a tremendous learning curve for me, finding myself in long Centrelink queues, chasing up intensive language centres for the children and English classes for the parents. It was an enormously busy time. CARAD also found a building in Perth where English classes could be offered to people allowed out of detention on what is known as a Temporary Protection Visa, a status under which they are denied virtually all government support, including migrant English classes and help with job seeking. The special benefit created specifically for this status of people carries a vast amount of bureaucracy.The building in Francis Street, now called The Welcome House, became something of a meeting place for English classes offered by volunteers.

After experiencing the seemingly endless form-filling for people coming out of detention, and the ongoing demands of Centrelink, I still find it difficult to understand. What is it like for someone with no English? At one stage Fred and I went to see Centrelink on this point and I must say they were very sympathetic. They have proved enormously helpful whereever CARAD workers have gone in on behalf of what we loosely call clients. Many people coming out of detention face major health issues, being in a state of high anxiety. That anxiety remains until they know something of their future. Temporary Protection Visa holders face that uncertainty for years ahead. So finding sympathetic doctors and dentists is a big part of CARAD’s job.

Skin problems are common and psychiatric problems are endemic. You may have heard of an organisation called ASSETS, working with people who have suffered trauma. Although they are denied official help, the refugees do have access to help from the volunteers in ASSETS. When they first came out the children were not supposed to attend the government-funded intensive language centres but the teachers ignored the rules and put them in anyway. Unfortunately that didn't last long. The children who stay with their parents blossom in this environment and I find it just terrible to think that we might send them back to those terribly traumatized countries. The people I deal with are mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq but we also have three men from war-torn parts of Africa, such as Burundi and a couple of Sri Lankans.

But the Afghanistan people are extraordinarily humbling to deal with. They have an immobility about them, a sweetness and a gentleness that I find quite devastating in their acceptance of their situation. When my favourite family arrived I was given a day’s notice. Fortunately we gained access to a large house, an old Anglican rectory with five bedrooms, because they said, we are sending down this family quickly because the woman is about to have a baby. But it wasn't just a couple with a baby. A young man who was younger than my youngest child had managed to get his family out of Afghanistan, having witnessed the death of his father, shot by the Taliban, and the disappearance of his older brother, presumably taken away or shot by the Taliban. He had managed to get out his widowed mother, his widowed sister-in-law, her three little children, his pregnant wife and their three little children. So this family of ten arrived and it was just fortunate that they had a week to settle in before the baby was born. Fortunately the mother was a very healthy young woman, because, with no English and her previous babies born in the village, she now found herself being carted into King Edward Hospital. For her, though, the big issue was that her fourth child was yet another boy!

The school at Nedlands wouldn't take the children due to some policy about children on TPVs. I was so flabbergasted that I didn't fight it, although the children were living just around the corner from Nedlands. So I walked up to Loreto and found that they would welcome these three kids with open arms. And when the baby arrived that school community was wonderful and provided us with bassinets and everything the family needed. While the family eventually moved into more permanent accommodation, the father looked in vain for work. As others are finding, it is very difficult to get work in Perth, if your English is poor. Many single men manage to get work in the country, pruning roses, pruning vines at Margaret River, picking fruit. Working in the abattoirs is another great way of working but it is difficult to take families there, so the men in the city languish as they cope by trying hard to learn English. But it is not a happy path to walk; coming from village backgrounds many of these men have no education recognised in their new situation.

I hope I have given you a flavour of the work we do with Refugees. Even if it cannot give them much hope, it does give a feeling of support. In a time when fear colours so much of our country’s reaction to these strangers I have found it liberating and enriching to get to know these people and to do something which is just a bit practical to help them on their way.

Thank you.