“How can the PM of this country not know that most of the detainees being held in cruel conditions at the park hotel are genuine refugees? Not asylum seekers. We have totally lost our moral compass.”

The genesis of this Twitter comment from Cassidy was after Scott Morrison was challenged on 2GB radio by presenter Ben Fordham about how it was “acceptable” that refugees in the same hotel as Djokovic had been detained for almost nine years with taxpayers spending millions of dollars “to keep them in limbo.” 25 of the 32 refugees have been granted refugee status, including a 24 year old man named Mehdi who has been held in offshore and onshore detention for the past 9 years. Medhi’s refugee status was granted to him by none other than Morrison, when he was the Immigration Minister.

In his usual style of either deflect, lie or confabulate a fact to try to change the narrative, Morrison chose to lie when he suggested to Fordham that they weren’t refugees by replying in this manner:

“Well, the specific cases, Ben, I mean, it’s not clear that to my information that someone in that case is actually a refugee. They may have sought asylum and been found not to be a refugee and have chosen not to return, and … that happens in this country, people aren’t found to be refugees and they won’t return.”

Cassidy’s sage question and opinion captures the very essence of this issue, namely we have lost our moral compass. We are a signatory to the United Nations 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees (Convention). It’s a moral issue which both Sir Robert Menzies and Dr Evatt approached in a bipartisan manner to ensure the horrors of post WWII Statelessness could be appropriately addressed. Indeed, Australia led the way in the United Nations in ensuring the Convention was established (Dr Evatt had also previously during the late 1940’s drafted the Declaration of Human Rights). Subsequently in a further bipartisan effort, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser extended the application of the legislation in this country applying to the Convention so that Australia could provide safe shelter to people from Vietnam and Cambodia.

Even though the issue of refugees has been weaponised as a political tactic since 2001, it’s not a right or left issue. It’s a moral issue which should occupy our collective conscious as a democratic nation to deliver humanity to the poor souls whose lives in their countries have been disrupted by war, famine or persecution.

Morrison has undoubtedly been the worst manipulator of this issue as a measure to secure votes. Dutton’s nose is almost beating him across the line in the race to the bottom of the political hill. It took a spoilt tennis player being detained at the same insanitary hotel to not only draw the World’s attention to our treatment of refugees (a report is now being specifically prepared by the United Nations about Australia’s breach of the Convention), but also hopefully recalibrating our collective conscious as a nation back to the pre-eminent moral high ground we held from the days of Menzies and Evatt, through to Whitlam and Fraser.

I have been advocating for the fair treatment of refugees since 2010. The issue was being weaponised by Tony Abbott, and the incumbent Rudd/ Gillard Governments were all at sea trying to respond to the issue in the face of a hostile press. I have received in response to my advocacy abusive emails, posts, text messages and Tweets, but I will not be dehorted from my mission to reset our moral compass, to end the cruelty, to extricate the politics from the issue and to once again place Australia on the moral high ground of honouring the Convention.

The question I kindly pose to all of you is this, will you join me?