Keep writing!!

(Instagram March 2014)

Not just leaving it to one MP this time, I also decided to write to the two closest Opposition MPs, form the Labour Party, in regards to the Australian Human Rights Commission's investigation into children in detention. I wanted them to realise that this was an important issue for my electorate so maybe theirs as well. These other electorates are only 1 - 2 suburbs away from mine.

See below....

To the Honourable XXXX and the XXXX,

I am writing to you as the closest Labour MPs to my suburb in XXX. I write to ask that the Labour Party please response to the Government’s appalling response to the Australian Human Rights Commission into children in detention centres.

Their views do not represent my views nor, I am sure, many in my electorate or in yours.  This issue is not an attack on any particular government but about how sequential Australian governments are institutionally torturing children who have not had the chance to gain justice in their situation. As an Australian citizen,  I feel the guilt and the weight of the system that I have indirectly supported by voting in governments like yours and the current one. The blood of these children’s lives are in our hands.

I believe that the treatment of refugees, especially children, has to change.  These children are the same like mine and yours.  The only difference is that they were born in a different country.  They have human rights, and the right to justice and a real childhood. It can change! And last week, the Coalition government could of responded with more compassion, more empathy, more humility and more openness.

But it appears Prime Minister Tony Abbott, decided to respond with a misinformed, heartless and callous response to the Commission’s findings. His views do not represent mine, nor, I believe, many other Australians on these children in detention.

I have written to my local MP about this.  I am writing to you because I, as well as many other Australians, are wanting to hear an alternative, compassionate voice to this Government’s opinion.

I look forward to your response.  

Regards