Imogen Bailey is a woman on a mission. Imogen participated in Go Back Where You Came From Series II and aside from being a very busy woman working on her career, she is passionate about the question of children in mandatory detention and dedicates her time to campaigning to try to get the message to our politicians that the majority of Australians DO NOT want so see children in detention.
There is a Facebook page for you to like: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MAKE-the-CALL/304182263021396
There is a web site which provides more information, found at http://www.makethecall.info/, from which I stole Imogen’s video. 😉
John and I love our children. These are the children of an asylum seeker detained for two years in Australia. While these children were NOT detained, because they were not here, they could well have been.
Kids like these should NOT be in detention
There is also a Twitter campaign started by Jessica Rowe with the hash tag #kidslikemine. You can check out that campaign here: http://www.mamamia.com.au/parenting/refugees-children-are-just-like-mine/
Please support Imogen’s campaign. Go to the website, call YOUR local MP. Like the Facebook page.
I recently had a discussion with a person I can only term anti-refugee. They are all still on the dole after 5 years, he whinged. He was wrong, but that is beside the point. I asked him, “Have YOU offered employment to refugees?”
His response? “No, because they all burn their papers. I’m not employing anyone with no history”.
What a hypocrite! Complains refugees are on welfare, but openly admits HE will not give one a chance. I hope that hypocritical young man never needs a helping hand in life.
I am so glad I work for a company that does give refugees a chance. It was one of the corporate values that attracted me to the company in the first place.
If you have any doubts about picking up that phone, I ask you to consider this photo. Is this OK for YOUR kids? They are woken five time a night for bed checks. You know about sleep deprivation, don’t you? Not OK for your kids? Then Make The Call, because it isn’t OK for their kids either.
EDIT: I did have a photo here of the fence behind which Mr O was detained. However, Sandi Logan stated I was being disingenuous by using the photo so I have replaced it with our Twitter conversation.
Random Observations of Life 
[…] communicated with Sandi Logan myself and been called disingenuous by Sandi publically (on Twitter, no less) I have been on the receiving end of his disapproval (unjustified in my opinion) so I can envisage a […]
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[…] be a swinging voter for a while – IF I vote at all! Derek Macpherson recently wrote (in a comment on this site) that if our politicians aren’t careful, there will be yet another hung parliament as that is […]
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[…] have quoted Mr O Jnr 2 above because of Imogen Bailey’s Make The Call campaign and the Kids Like Mine campaign. In fact I have linked these great campaign quite […]
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Good thing to get the word out… I’m looking forward to an overhaul of immigration policy here or another Dream Act.
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Imogen works tirelessly. I have great respect for her compassion!
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Even though the matter of asylum seekers has become such a vexed question, there was one issue on which almost all of us could agree – children must not be held in detention! Public opinion on the matter was so overwhelming that even the Howard government was forced to back down and release the children. Now it is happening again, and…..deafening silence!
What happened to us? Why did we allow ourselves to be turned into such a pack off uncaring arseholes, to suit the political agenda of a small number of sociopaths with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Are we going to put up with this? Listen to these damaged individuals tell us that we were all wrong? WE WERE NOT WRONG!!!!! We were not wrong for a host of good reasons, which I will have more to say about shortly, but mostly we were NOT WRONG by definition, because we are the people. It is no politician’s place to tell us we were wrong. It is ours to tell them.
No doubt people will argue over who forced who into what, but let’s just make a few things clear to both major parties, right here and now: We did not vote for this! We did not vote for a squalid auction over who can be tougher on desperate people, over who can leave the most human wreckage in their wake. We voted to end mandatory detention, for all, but most particularly and especially for children. It’s wrong and it’s seriously harmful (and yes, we DEFINITELY trust Prof. Pat McGorry more than we trust ANY of you). We did not approve any of this, and if you continue down this path we WILL refuse to vote for either of you. If you hate this hung parliament (and you know you do), just wait till you see the next one! Maybe one of you will come third, how would that be? It’ll happen one day.
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Thank you so much Derek! You see, there is another article for your site! I am sure you could get your teeth into it really well and drive support.
I believe Imogen is on the right path, get people calling AND writing. I do think writing is often more powerful than calls, but really it all depends on numbers.
Yes, they hate the hung parliament, but can we convince them it will happen again?
The problem is, in reality, the children are put of sight, out of mind for many people. Not that people do not care, they do care. Life intervenes and the result is intentions don’t get followed through.
Push this cause on a weekend and hopefully we catch more people who would be working during the week. The down side is, the calls can’t be made on the weekend and by Monday people have forgotten. The biggest problem for people like Imogen, you and I is how do we get the message to the forefront without TV or MSM support? People Power is our only option.
By the way – do you still need help today with WP? We have a family Christmas party to attend, but I will be back this evening!
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Hi Robyn, sorry I haven’t really been around much this weekend, I got very sleep-deprived last week, after spending a couple of nights writing, then the heat arrived and made it impossible to sleep. I had to catch up a bit. I do still have some WP questions, but I figured out one or two things, the rest will have to wait. Thanks anyway.
You can rest assured I’ll be having a great deal more to say on this subject. It’s one I feel very strongly about. As far as I’m concerned current policies fail at all levels. I think it was Lloyd George who said that the first question that should be asked of any proposed endeavour was, “Who does this benefit?” That ought to be a good starting point.
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I went and read your “First Post” and shared it on Twitter. Very interesting. You’ll notice my tweet of your article got RT’d a few times!
You information about the proportions being constant for 50 years was very telling. Of course the critics will ask for substantiating stats, but knowing hat little I do of you at this point, I am sure you will have them!
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Yes, thanks for the mention! I’m working on the article, not sure how long it’ll take, I want to tackle every aspect of the issue. A fair bit of it is moral/ethical of course, but where I’m taking issue with matters of fact, for instance the oft-repeated claim that Howard era policies ‘worked,’ or the myth of ‘pull factors,’ I’ll be relying on evidence from sources such as the UNHCR and the parliamentary library to debunk them.
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When you do, make sure you let Imogen know!
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You are helping to make the world a better place Robyn… 🙂
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I’m trying. 🙂 In this case I am helping Imogen try to make the world a better place!
Detention is no place for children to be. We still live with John’s experience. It is not good. Plus they are sending them to Nauru now!
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😦
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Its sad, i see so much abuse of our welfare system by our own people yet we whine and complain about legitimate people who need help, i dont know what this world is coming to. I know for a fact, in Liverpool NSW were i lived for a few years, there were young girls (my daughter was in year 10 at the time) who were getting pregnant just to get the $5000 lump sum government handout for having a baby. Those children are now being raised by the grandparents who cant get government help but are forced to pay expenses for these children, hence the government has now changed the $5000 baby payment. I am glad they have done that, but we Australians seriously need to look at our system because way too many people are taking advantage of it, who seriously need to get off their asses and WORK FOR A LIVING.
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OH – do I have thoughts on THAT!!! Agree! Did you see this article of mine? https://teamoyeniyi.com/2012/04/20/entitlement-mentality-a-personal-perspective/
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