Just how does this man’s brain work? One answer would be: it doesn’t work at all.

Comparing how we feel about our own people – victims of a natural disaster – with interlopers who were not invited here, but still came, is bizarre, even for Greg Barns.

Speaking of ‘compassion’, that done-to-death word that the loony Left think they have the rights on; how much does Greg Barns think about the majority of citizens in the countries these ‘refugees’ paid good money to get away from. They have to stay behind and put up with whatever the illegal entrants to Australia fooled immigration authorities into believing they suffered.

The bleeding hearts and advocates for illegal entry to Australia seem to exhibit the same selective ‘compassion’ Barns accuses his fellow Australians of having.

Barns admits that compassion is selective, so what’s his beef? Perhaps he thinks that he can encourage people to alter their genetic wiring; perhaps he wants us all to be posers like he is and pretend that we are not the way we were made.

People who claim that they feel the same way about groups different from their group as they do about themselves are, at best, deluded, at worst liars and posers. And, the genetic blueprint which dictates that we favour and defend our own group is not confined to white, Anglo-Saxons as the self-haters like to think. For example, Vietnamese would-be illegal entrants to Malaysia were machine gunned. We, more enlightened Australians – the ones who are supposed to be the bad guys according to Barns, allowed illegals to enter and – most – to stay.

Yet, Barns still talks about “The ugliness of Australia…” when even Australians who were and still are totally opposed to allowing ‘boat people’ into our country would always look for a humane solution to prevent them from trying their tricks. But, Barns even overlooks the fact that most of the illegals remained in Australia anyway.

Predictably inane comment from Leigh. Must be his genetic wiring.

Take this: 'interlopers who were not invited here, but still came'; it gives the game away. Use of words like 'illegals', 'boat people', 'their tricks' confirm this. He's really talking about prejudice, not compassion, and appears not to know the meaning of the word. According to him, since we didn't actually machine gun the 'illegals', Australians are indeed compassionate people. Now, isn't this an example of the relativity of compassion? His comment merely bears out what you have said, Greg.

I found it interesting to see the way the media, mainly TV but not excluding even the so called quality newspapers, just about sucked the life and most meaning out of the tragedy. Ross Gittins wrote a very bold piece, in the SMH I think, about how he can't stand being expected to think and feel like everyone else at the same time; the mass coverage and exposure of human emotions seems to leave little room for private grief or any other kind of reflection or response. Yet, the apparent tidal wave of grief seemed to turn at some point into curiosity/voyeurism, followed by finger-pointing ie. blame, and finally vengeance directed first at some alleged looting and rorting, and later at one alleged arsonist. He was tortured and burnt alive a thousand times - metaphorically, or should that be 'virtually'? - on Facebook and elsewhere. The logic of people like Leigh would suggest that in their eyes he doesn't deserve a fair trial; just as the 'illegals' don't deserve compassion.

Finally, there is one thing we are possibly the best in the world at, and this is where the mass media coverage ended up, after the mythologising had begun: self-congratulation.

I completely agree with the sentiments expressed by Greg in this article. In particular, the self congratulatory nature of the press around the quantity of donations to bushfire victims is particularly irritating. Australians must be the only people in the world who help out their fellow countrymen when in trouble, judging by the way the press goes on about it!

And we are obviously the only country in the world where 'mateship' is valued and practiced! The fact that many Indigenous communities don't have access to basic services and live in terribly disadvantaged communities doesnt inspire much compassion or 'mateship' from the majority of white Australia.

And as for Leigh's comments that "People who claim that they feel the same way about groups different from their group as they do about themselves are, at best, deluded, at worst liars and posers', well Leigh, I'd rather not receive any compassion from you!

As a white Australian woman married to a man from South East Asia and having lived in his country for a period of time I am then, at best, deluded into believing that I can feel compassion for all people of the world, no matter what their background. I can even feel compassion for you Leigh, as I'm sure you need it sometimes!

One might have thought that a supposedly educated person like Greg Barns would know better than to write this. But it appears not.

His passion to bring attention towards those who sought asylum in Australia has got out of hand.

And if such passion is to remain focused there – would it not be appropriate to apportion some of it towards the women forcibly enslaved to a high rate of fertility with all its horrific downsides, including health, education, nutrition, and societal aspects; all of which give rise to the asylum-seeker syndrome? That, rather than pour it all out on some blame-game sprayed entirely onto his home turf.

Governments, by necessity look at the bigger picture. The Howard government’s policies were aimed not at refugees per se, but to counter people smuggling and secondary movement asylum seekers.

Secondary movement asylum seekers are asylum seekers who move from a first country of de facto asylum, moving long distances around the world through countries with little interest in persecuting them, in order to settle in an affluent Western country.

Almost all secondary movement asylum seekers arrived in Australia without identity papers or travel documents, destroying them to make the determination of their identities and verification of their stories of persecution and return to their countries of residence a very time consuming, difficult and costly task.

Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya is one of the largest refugee camps in the world with more than 80,000 refugees from nine different countries and dozens of different ethnic groups. The refugees there are forced to deal with hostile locals, an almost total lack of economic opportunities, frequent gender based violence, high rates of crime and food shortages. Life is particularly harsh for single vulnerable women who have nobody to protect them. Australian’s refugee resettlement program enables women and other refugees in such refugee camps to be resettled in Australia, virtually their only chance of escaping their horrific situations.

For a time until people smuggling was effectively halted Australia’s refugee resettlement program had to be suspended as all resettlement places were being taken by secondary movement asylum seekers. The obvious question is why refugees in camps such as Kakuma did not themselves become secondary movement asylum seekers and travel around the world to seek refuge in affluent western countries. The unfortunate reality is that most of the world’s refugees live in abject poverty, obviously not having the many thousands of dollars per person required to pay people smugglers.

So, perhaps the general public’s “collective compassion” was for the refugees in horrific camps like Kakuma, contrasting with Greg Barn's "selective compassion" for secondary movement asylum seekers having many thousands of dollars to travel around the world with the aim of settling in an affluent western country.

Yes, pmac, I'm another of those 'deluded' 'liars and posers' who can actually feel compassion for any person suffering pain, hardship or loss, no matter how different they might be from my own group, whatever that might be. I even feel compassion for the suffering of animals, so who knows where that puts me, according to Leigh's perverted logic. Hang on, no of course, I'm a 'bleeding heart loony leftie'. End of story. Silly me.

Great article, Greg. Spot on about the selective compassion, the ugly vigilantism and the overblown patting of our own backs. Very perceptive and heart-warming comments too from Rapscallion and pmac.

Yes, we all feel empathy and compassion for the victims of these horrific fires. We've all been shaken to the core as it dawns on many of us for the first time that this is the way of the future, and that the dream of living in the bush that sustains so many of us will never again be quite the same. But, fortunately, the human spirit doesn't have to be limited to feeling compassion for only those who walk our own path and live a dream the same as our own. Most of us have the capacity to reach much higher.

Continued.

Leigh

"Yet, Barns still talks about “The ugliness of Australia…” when even Australians who were and still are totally opposed to allowing ‘boat people’ into our country would always look for a humane solution to prevent them from trying their tricks."

'Humane' solution? No wonder you have such trouble with compassion, if your idea of 'humanely' treating refugees is to lock them up indefinitely in detention, or to deport individuals and turn back boatloads, condemning them at best to prolonged suffering and in many cases certain death.

No, Leigh, there’s not much ‘humaneness’ in Australia’s ‘solution’ to refugee issues. It’s been driven purely by a calculating and parochial sense of self-preservation.

colinsett

"And if such passion is to remain focused there – would it not be appropriate to apportion some of it towards the women forcibly enslaved to a high rate of fertility with all its horrific downsides, including health, education, nutrition, and societal aspects; all of which give rise to the asylum-seeker syndrome? That, rather than pour it all out on some blame-game sprayed entirely onto his home turf."

So the refugees fleeing Iraq, for example, have their own prolific breeding to blame for the desperate situation they find themselves in? The fact that their country has been invaded illegally by an oil-hungry superpower is irrelevant of course!

Here again, we see selective compassion at its most base.

franklin

Bang on cue! Mention refugees, and out comes franklin’s much-used cut-and-paste on so-called ‘secondary movement asylum seekers’, with his same old erroneous assumptions and the same old clunky attempt at segue into the discussion at hand. No matter how many times it’s been pointed out to him that he’s completely wrong, he still persists with this predictable and pointless little charade.

While franklin has made some worthwhile and interesting comments - although not without casting aspersions on asylum seekers - I find his effort to argue that Australians have a 'collective compassion' for the supposedly 'genuine' refugees in camps in Kenya and most other poor countries to be rather thin. The word 'perhaps' possibly is a recognition of the optimism of this belief. My experience has been, after listening to many people - including some of my own friends and a former Prime Minister - utter words to this effect or these words literally: 'we don't want these people', that it doesn't matter what their status as refugees or asylum seekers is, only their race, culture or religion. Our compassion, general or selective or whatever, seems limited mainly to those who are somewhere else rather than here.

Franklin seems to be denying those with 'many thousands of dollars' a genuine right to asylum; the 'compassion' we are showing towards the bushfire victims takes wealth into account not at all. The compassion franklin expresses for those millions (and yes, I believe it is millions) in abject poverty in camps should not obviate any compassion for those genuine asylum seekers who can afford to travel here.

Bronwyn says:
[colinsett
"And if such passion is to remain focused there – would it not be appropriate to apportion some of it towards the women forcibly enslaved to a high rate of fertility with all its horrific downsides, including health, education, nutrition, and societal aspects; all of which give rise to the asylum-seeker syndrome? That, rather than pour it all out on some blame-game sprayed entirely onto his home turf."

So the refugees fleeing Iraq, for example, have their own prolific breeding to blame for the desperate situation they find themselves in? The fact that their country has been invaded illegally by an oil-hungry superpower is irrelevant of course!

Here again, we see selective compassion at its most base.]

An interesting interpretation of yours, Bronwyn - and one far removed from that which came out of The United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, which resolved to facilitate rights for women. Perhaps its declarations were offensive to you also (as they were to the Pope).

Well, I may as well stick my neck out good and proper and bring up that little selective-compassion issue of Gaza.

The commercial channels couldn't even be bothered devoting even a minute or so to the callous, hopelessly asymmetrical bombing campaign that left 1350 dead, 4000 injured, tens of thousands homeless and much of what was an already a broken, demoralised nation's infrastructure in ruins. What's more, that minute or so was often placed somewhere down towards the middle order of the nightly news bulletins, just before '... and now to Finance'.

Even then, much of that precious time was taken up by those nice young Israeli IDF spokespersons in their pin-striped suits (spokespersons in uniform are now a no-no, by orders of the IDF propaganda wing) stating that, yes, little Jewish kids are terrified to go to the toilet in case a Hamas rocket hits them with their pa..., um, guard down ... and no, Israel is not illegally using missiles containing flesh-peeling phosphorus when they bomb the Gazans.

The ABC was not much better, so it was left only to SBS to meet Australia's tiny little compassion quota set aside for ungrateful Arab populations who have the stupidity to use the democratic process to elect a militant nationalist organisation that we don't like.

Several friends of mine wrote letters to various newspapers suggesting that maybe we could partly use the horrific civilian toll from the Victorian bushfire tragedy to empathise more with civilian populations devastated by aerial bombings and groundforce invasions, supposedly in the name of combatting terror.

Needless to say they weren't published.

Another musician friend has been trying for weeks to organise a fundraising benefit to help the people of Gaza. His quest for sponsorship is meeting a wall of indifference the size of a West Bank checkpoint tower.

Greg, where is your compassion for us nasty, vengeful, ugly, ignorant and racist Anglo-European Australians who are clearly less evolved than you?
We’re victims too.

colinsett

"An interesting interpretation of yours, Bronwyn - and one far removed from that which came out of The United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, which resolved to facilitate rights for women. Perhaps its declarations were offensive to you also (as they were to the Pope)."

Of course its recommendations wouldn't have been offensive to me. I totally support all efforts to facilitate fertility control in developing countries, both from the point of view of the individual women involved and more broadly for the future of the planet.

I would never suggest, as crassly as you did in your first post here, the existence of a causal relationship between high fertility rates and the tragic plight of asylum seekers as crassly as you did in your first post. Yes, high fertility rates and high numbers of refugees can often overlap, but it's war and persecution which causes people to flee their homelands, not over population.

Apologies! Pressed the wrong button. Grrhh!

That last paragraph should have read:

I would never argue as crassly as you did though that a causal relationship exists between high fertility rates and the tragic plight of asylum seekers. Yes, high population rates and high numbers of refugees can often overlap, but it's war and persecution which causes people to flee their homelands, not over population.

Bronwyn- You state that it is war and persecution which causes people to flee their homeland not overpopulation
If you examine these wars and persecutions closely you will see that they are tribal(they are about driving other blood lines from land and resources and taking control of territory. The war in Gaza is a tribal territorial war too. Keep in mind that religions in countries who don’t intermarry become tribes by keeping their bloodline strictly within the religious group.
Knowing that all the refugees we see in camps around the world are there because of tribal territorial aggression should we not be proceeding with extreme caution in allowing refugees in and moving the problem here in generations to come.
I don’t want my childrens’ children growing up in a country plagued by constant attacks by other tribes’ freedom fighters wanting a separate state.

What sort of person pack's his family into a leaky boat and departs his country for Oz . One can only speculate that his attitude was crafted from a "Do or Die" situation in his home country .
A European person is different he has only a border to cross , his escape is devoid of powerful currents , hurricane force winds , Tropical rain , sharks . He can check out his destination first then go back for his family too easy !

I think our Asians are fantastic people .

The way they mix with Aussies is amazing if you compare them to our earlier sponsored migrants .
What John Howard did was a response to Islamic Terrorism .
We have no right to Deny any of these people compassion .

What do these people have in common with Bushfire Victims ?
Are there different types of compassion ?
Were the people in the fire area ignorant of the danger ?
Did they do anything to mitigate the danger risk ?
Did the fire authorities warn them of the danger of living in the area .
Would you attempt to live in a cellar in a flood plain ?
I would expect the people in the area to be fairly well educated having seen the realestate values .
I feel incredibly sorry for the victims , compassion for the people who tried to save them , Firefighters and Police . I will develop some compassion for the people left providing they show some compassion for the Fire Fighters and positively act responsibly and set in place regular hazard reduction practices as recommended by 5 Royal Commissions since 1925.

ShazBaz001, - : We have no right to deny any of these people compassion

WE do when they bypass lots of Asian countries along the way , and deliberately target Australia. If they can afford to be so choosy about where they go how genuinely desperate are they?
Personally I thought as soon as I heard about those fires in Victoria that there may be some racist element in it. I thought it could have been a terrorist attack because I have never in my whole life, before all these mixed races came here seen this kind of attack against an actual town full of people.

I know we don’t know the story behind this yet but when I saw the perpetrator’s name Solkurk (not sure of the spelling) I still wonder if there was some king of racial hatred behind it. Another reason not to encourage different races to come here and it’s a big one, self preservation.