How do you tell a mate they are racist and hateful? The Australia problem

We are mates with Australia. We fight alongside them, we play sport with them, we have huge chunks of our population living there.

But we’ve got a problem.

It’s not just the unacceptable way Australia treats NZers with contempt who have lived there for decades. It’s not the beatings and deaths of NZers in Australian Prisons and it’s not the abuse of NZers in detention centres although they are each in their own right outrageous abuses of power aimed at people they call ‘mates’ – the real problem we have with Australia is their appalling racism aimed at refugees.

The racism that has denigrated aboriginals is one thing, a sceptic wound that can be covered over by history and a ‘we didn’t know any better’ type of attitude, but what Australia is doing to refugees right now has no pretence of history to hide the horror.

It is unacceptable what Australia is doing right now to refugees.

Australia’s rights record problematic for the Pacific

This week’s Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruling has underlined how Australia’s adherence to human rights norms is regressing and causing problems in the Pacific.

Australia Nauru: Asylum seeker fined for attempted suicide

An Iranian asylum seeker has been fined for trying to kill himself during an attempt to move him and his daughter from an Australian-funded detention centre on the island of Nauru.

It is a real shame that our corrupt tax haven building Prime Minister can spend time canoeing with the Australian PM and yet allow their abuse of our citizens, their ongoing racism against Aboriginal people and their terrible abuse of refugees to go unchallenged.

Key’s corruption has made us a nation who can not call out the terrible behaviour of our neighbours.