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Issue No. 140 | 14 June 2002 |
Abbott's Rule of Law
Interview: Party Girl Unions: Touch One, Touch All Industrial: Condition Critical International: Innocence Lost History: Strange Bedfellows Organising: Just Say No Review: Choosing Life Beneath The Clouds Poetry: Did We Make a Big Mistake
Building Workers Gagged By Commission Combet Drives Car Industry Summit Green Ban Protects Aussie Timber Jobs Della Picks Up Manslaughter Baton Billions Of Reasons For Reasonable Hours Swans in Dark as Lights Go Out Workplace Wishes Walked All Over Campaign Steps Up To Stop Child Labor
The Soapbox The Dressing Room The Locker Room Week in Review Bosswatch
Due Credit Tom's Foolery More Latham More Tom
Labor Council of NSW |
Letters to the Editor Tom's Foolery
message: Once again, Tom Collins' weekly column, embedded in the Letters to the Editor section (Workers Online #139), rambles about its way, taking cheap shots at opponents as it goes. On the topic of refugees, when the column is stripped of his flowery language, Tom seems to have only two things to say - that a majority of people agree with John Howard & the right-wing shock jocks and that refugees are "wealthy foreign predators" diverting resources from more deserving causes. Firstly, Tom seems to think that just because a majority of people think something that makes them right. Well, it's a good thing that Tom Collins' co-thinkers didn't prevail 500 years ago, for if they had, we'd still be being taught that the Earth is the centre of the universe and the sun revolves around it. Fortunately for us, however, some people took up Galileo's telescope & proved that, contrary to popular opinion, he was the one who was right. Secondly, refugees are, in almost all cases, destitute by the time they get to Australia if not before. While the people smugglers are, for the most part, the scum of the Earth, their clients are desperate people willing to sell everything they have and often using the savings of their extended family as well. Tom asks the question "The money or the box?" I'm sure in the same place, though, Tom would scrape the money together if his alternative was being six feet under in a box. Tom's most outrageous argument, however, is that refugees should have nothing because of the other deserving causes which are doing without. Hasn't he been paying attention to the growing inequality of wealth & income in Australia? Hasn't he noticed the cuts to company tax, the capital gains tax rort, the big business handouts & the alarming military build-up? How about taking from the RICH for a change, Tom? Workers must defend refugees because to do otherwise is to let the employing class divide us on racial lines. In the course of this, we need "friends" like Malcolm Fraser like a hole in the head (I haven't forgotten 11 November 1975, even if others have), but Tom Collins seems to forget that the foundation principle of unionism, an injury to one is an injury to all, applies to refugees as well. In Solidarity, Greg Platt
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