A Rack Of Refugees
The Age
Tuesday January 22, 2002
LAST week in this place I reproduced a classified ad I wrote for The Age Classifieds in 1967. The gist of it was that I had a Vauxhall Victor roof-rack for sale. Such was the market for second-hand Vauxhall Victor roof-racks at the time that I had not one inquiry.
Subsequent classifieds over the following years met with similar indifference. And then an epiphany.
I remember the day. Tuesday, 1992, it was. After having run thousands of dollars worth of ads for my roof-rack, I realised it was here to stay. I ceased the quest for a sale, suspended the roofrack from the kitchen ceiling, hung copper cookware and bunches of dried herbs from it.
The whole effect was the quintessence of French Provincial culinary elan.
PEDDLE. PEDDLE. WHISTLE.
There's the mail. That was quick. (SOUNDS OF LETTER OPENING.) "Dear My Quantock, I and my husband have been fighting over his roof-rack for years.
It wasn't so much that he kept it in the bedroom. There are many things in a marriage, Mr Quantock, far, far worse than a roofrack in your bedroom."
The problem was he wanted to keep it forever and I wanted to sell it and use the money to start doing up the kitchen. I was just about to take out an intervention order when I happened upon your innovative home decorating tip. Now we are both happy. Bless you, you saved our marriage."
It's letters like that what make this job so rewarding. Well, that and the money. But look, we're wandering.
The upshot of the roof-rack story is I got a call from the Vauxhall Victor Roof Rack Owners Club of Victoria.
(V.V.R.R.C.V.) I'd never heard of them either. But I ended up last Thursday in the Box Hill South Scout Hall at the club's monthly meeting.
After the reading of the minutes etc and a welcoming address someone named Bruce and his wife, Marjory, gave a moving account of their very personal roof-rack tragedy. This was followed by light refreshments taken in a very reflective mood, sharing as we still were in Bruce and Marjory's loss.
On my way to the tea urn I fell in with the President of the V.V.R.R.C.V.. Lovely man. You know it's people like him - and other people too who aren't like him at all or if they are they are only a bit like him to varying degrees - that make people like me like people like him. And I did. And this is the point, so sit up straight: He told me that because of Australia's stand on refugees, the club's international governing body, The Royal Society of Honourable Vauxhall Victor Roofrack Owners of Great Britain had withdrawn the club's 'Grant of Existence' and barred it from sending delegates to the V.V.R.R.
World Congress in July, in Cologne, the famous aftershave.
Isn't that amazing. Oh, what a tangled web etc. You wouldn't credit that refugees from a war fought 3/16 of a world away from Box Hill (I measured it in my Jacaranda Atlas) could impact on an organisation 3/16 of a world away from that very same war that is 3/16 of a world away from the organisation impacted on, vis., the V.V.R.R.C.V..
And this is the point of today's sermon: It's all right for the rest of the civilised world to condemn us but what else can a country do when faced with an overwhelming flood of literally quite a few people?
I'll tell you what it can do. It can not sign the Kyoto Agreement on Climate Change.
What's that got to do with refugees, you ask? Well, this is where Howard is so fiendishly brilliant.
Kyoto = greenhouse gas = global warming = ice caps melting = rising sea levels. So far, so good.
Now, what is the lowest landmass on the planet, the first to be subsumed by rising waves?
Nauru! Bingo. The Pacific Solution becomes the final solution.
As for the ones in New Guinea, a tsunami can't be that far away.
And the ones in Australia?
They have been cleverly driven to sewing up their mouths - if you don't mind, we're having our breakfast - and going on hunger strikes. They no doubt think this will soften the government's resolve. Fat chance. It's all part of the government's grand "Let them eat nothing" policy. So that's the end of them.
(Now the refugees have stopped eating, I hope Philip Ruddock reviews the contract with the private caterers. A penny saved is a penny earned.) If we keep "processing" our refugees the Howard/Ruddock way there is no reason why we can't take in tens of thousands.
If they are going to starve themselves to death or drown there is theoretically no limit to how many we can take.
What would the rest of the world say then? I bet they wouldn't be so quick to condemn. And who knows, the V.V.R.R.C.V. may get to Cologne after all and that's what really matters.
Red Symons is on leave.
© 2002 The Age
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