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Overseas Aussies can go it alone
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This year over $80m will be spent on consular assistance for Australians overseas, helping out the likes of beer-mat-mum Annice Smoel. The cost of such services is constantly increasing. The number of Australians demanding help from Foreign Affairs overseas has doubled since 2003-04. It’s fair to say that decades ago, Australians who travelled overseas and got into difficulties — especially if they caused the difficulties through their own criminal behaviour — were not automatically regarded as cases deserving of public outcry and assistance. If some Aussie found themselves in self-inflicted trouble overseas then that was their problem. Somewhere along the way in recent years, the entitlement mentality that pervades Australia’s welfare system has extended to the perception that Australians have a right to be rescued from whatever trouble they get into while travelling overseas. Most particularly if they get into trouble in a developing country. There doesn’t seem to be quite the same outcry when people are arrested in the United States or the UK. But put them in a jail cell in Thailand, Indonesia or Eastern Europe, and suddenly we’re in Midnight Express territory. The media is happy to feed this perception, demanding everything short of sending in the Navy (do we have a serviceable gunboat?) to rescue unlucky — or more typically criminal — travellers in durance vile in Third World conditions. Female travellers, of course, generate that precious damsel-in-distress dimension for the media. This is a none-too-subtle form of xenophobia, an assumption that Australians have special rights when travelling in poorer — duskier — countries. It’s the mentality that assumes a form of extraterritoriality for travelling Australians who break the laws of the countries in which they are guests, which assumes a right for Australians to behave as offensively as possible. It’s the mentality that assumes Australia can lecture Turkey over how to maintain the heritage values of Gallipoli, as if the peninsula belongs to us and not to the people of the country we invaded in WW1. It’s almost a type of latter-day colonialism, as the citizens of the Deputy Sheriff nation swagger around the region, drunk, boorish and behaving as they please. It’d be amusing if taxpayers weren’t footing the bill. |
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7 Comments
As much as I support the consular assistance to troubled Aussies overseas, I do strongly believe that the information about consular assistance ( and its limits) should be handed to every Aussie going overseas.
Brilliant comment about Gallipoli! None of Australians, I have asked so far, could explain what we were doing there and why. The only response is: ‘It’s not us. It was the British army’.
I have some problems with this answer:
1. If there were British, why do we celebrate it?
2. During the WWI Australia was already an indepenednt country. So did we really have to go, or we just enjoyed going there?
3. If we want to teach other countries about anything why did we thrash the place with cans, beer bottles and lots of plastic wastes during celebration; well what do we celebrate there, I wonder.
4.Isn’t it high time we introduced history of the world in general and Australia in particular as a compulsory subject throughout our education system?
Knowledgeable people are less agressive.
It beats me why Chapelle Corby and Annice Smoel have so much popular support?
Aussie values? or just Western values??
Rena Zurawel. You have written what I have been saying for years. My only gripe with you is I believe you’ve said it better.
PS Don’t forget, it is our so called culture(?) which believes sportsmen to be of far greater importance than an education. I’m almost tempted to believe it is-here I mean all governments’-interests to render the majority of people down to having the mentality of fifteen year old’s. I do know that a catholic education turns out a heaving mass of people who pronounce ‘H’ as haitch, rather than it’s correct spelling and pronouncing it as ‘H’ AITCH.
Sorry Rena, but the Irish got here first.
I can understand what youre saying, but for every idiot larrakin in the tabloid press - such as Sharpelle Corby, and this recent beermat woman - there must be a bunch of people who unfairly get caught living together unmarried in the U.A.E. without realising it’s illegal, or get charged for something else unexpected. Or am I just a bit naive?
Face it - Australia’s STILL the lucky country, LOL.
Goodness knows why.
How long can it last?
There’s a big difference between “consular assistance” and being “bailed out”.
I DO believe that, regardless of what you may have done or not, your local embassy/conusulate should at least be on hand to ensure you get access to medical attention, a lawyer etc, and you are being treated in accordance with what we consider to be basic human rights.
However, this of course doesn’t mean that Kevin Rudd should get on the next plane to plead for you to be pardoned.
Scottyea: Lucky for whom?
When I worked in Saudi Arabia in the early 90’s one of my workmates (a Canadian) drove his car through an intersection where he had right of way. He was hit by a colonel in the Saudi army who went through a stop sign. The police came, removed the stop sign and charged my friend. The rationale was that he was a foreigner, if he had not been in the country then it would not have happened. He was fined, paid it, lost his licence for a month or so and that was it.
In some countries you are not innocent until proven guilty - you are guilty until you can prove your innocence. What we call bribery and corruption is a way of life to many who, growing up in the system, understand how to navigate through to a mutual satisfaction. It is often not what you know but who you know and personal relationships can be very important. Treating the locals with respect is very important and many people (not on welfare, blogger?) feel entitled and uninhibited when overseas and away from the internal surveillance that keeps us good little workers/wives/husbands/children etc when at home.
Consular assistance is just that - assistance in dealing with the local laws which we may not fully understand. It is not a ‘get out of gaol’ free card.
Why are we a lucky country? becasue on the whole there is a universal health and educational system, we have a measure of free speech that stops short of allowing vilification and discrimination (and that is civil!), young women in this country are about to achieve pay parity with men for the first time ever (thank you feminists!); people with disabilities are increasingly supported to live full and meaningful lives (thank you all those people who acted in support of human rights); and we are becoming a more just and aware society. I disagree that more knowledgeable people are less aggessive - check history for that one and who starts and maintains wars. Wiser people may be less aggressive but they are less likely to be in politics sadly where wars are funded.
RE the entitlement feeling of people on welfare - they actually are entitled. Welfare was set up hundreds of years ago to prevent civil unrest and war. Hordes of people who had lived on the land under feudalism were forcibly removed from their homes - how else to have the extensive gardens of the rich. These bands of people - sick, unemployed and poor roamed the countryside looking for help and were assisted by the church - probably a civilising influence on the church. From church assistance developed government assistance - times changed - the impetus for that assistance was to maintain a societies cohesiveness and peacefulness. Welfare is a bribe we pay to people whose lives have never been really give a chance - the problems with poverty is not the lack of money (as such) but the perception of what that means and the inability of our society to increase the self esteem of those less economically fortunate. After all why drive the best sports cars and go to the best schools and best hairdressers etc if there are not cars/schools/haridressers etc who are not on par with the best. Even if the distinction is purely superficial! Those bloggers who find it easy to judge and condem the less fortunate (no matter why) give proof to the need for heirarchy - it makes you feel better about yourselves to be able to talk about -xenophobia and ‘damsels in distress” (???!!) and the entitlement of those of welfare. As if it really matters what we think.