Advocates want fairness and decency for refugees

CORANGAMITE residents have melded two projects to create a campaign designed to resonate throughout the electorate and put politicians on notice.

The initiative combines Geelong’s Combined Refugee Action Group (CRAG)’s Choose Fairness and Decency campaign with Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR)’s Banners along the Great Ocean Road campaign to create “Choose Fairness and Decency for Refugees”.

Banners will be placed in towns from Bellarine through to Apollo Bay and into the heart of the electorate of Corangamite.

Residents, churches and businesses in Clifton Springs, Point Lonsdale, Queenscliff, Ocean Grove, Torquay, Anglesea, Airey’s Inlet, Fairhaven and Apollo Bay have already joined the campaign, and organisers expect more to follow.

“We are erecting these banners throughout coastal Corangamite to show that we abhor current government policy for refugees and asylum seekers, and support for the campaign has been extremely positive,” campaign organiser Ali Corke from Apollo Bay RAR said.

Point Lonsdale’s Sue Longmore said many Australians were still unaware of the suffering.

“Asylum seekers came here hoping only for safety, yet they have been subjected to indefinite detention in distant offshore countries.

“Some have been held for six years. They don’t know when or if ever they will see their families again.

“And many who have been accepted as refugees and who live here among us don’t have any permanency or access to family reunion.

“Visas can be cancelled without warning, people can be uprooted and sent back to danger – just because they came by boat.

“This is neither fair nor decent.”

Cathie Bond from Queenscliff said “Choose Fairness and Decency for Refugees” was founded on the principle that “vulnerable people have a right to seek asylum, and to be treated with compassion”.

“We don’t have any political affiliation; we just want to see good policies.”