by Pauline Bleach

Created on: June 03, 2008

2001, a mother is given a choice. She can watch her 5 year old son
die or send him to hospital alone in a strange country. He had Post
Traumatic Stress disorder. Not from his strange and harrowing journey
to this safe western country but from the conditions he was held in
when he got there. The system that would not let a mother accompany
her near catatonic child to hospital.

No one believed this could happen but for ten years in Australia,
flushed with economic success the people of Australia believed
everything the government said and let them do anything they wanted,
as long as the money came in. And with a resource rich country, the
money did flow.

Meanwhile, 49 per cent of the population lived in a state of shock
and loathing that their once "fair go" society could perpetrate such
acts.

As the situation deteriorated, Australians the teenagers of the world
were growing up fast. No longer inactive participants in government.
Citizens groups like GetUp! now closely monitor all government
activity and disseminate the information to their members. Citizen
groups denied access to the mainstream media pool resources to put up
billboards and advertising campaigns to get their message across.

This is why Lisbon is so important and why we should not take our
votes lightly.

We have system and a constitution that guarantees certain rights. The
European Court of Human rights is a wonderful if slow institution.

In Australia there is no bill of rights, no constitution, the Queen
is the official head of state. And boy! did she get a lot of letters
those years.

There is no counter weight to the Prime Minister. There is nothing
that stops the government for making any law, such as those that
allows all illegal immigrants to be defined as without rights.

Tested in the Supreme court eventually the picture was clear. A small
child, treated as an adult, could be detained for life alone in a
bare camp with minimum food and facilities for not knowing the words
'I want asylum'.

Australians eventually ended up in this system, a schizophrenic
Cornelia Rau was only found after the asylum seekers in the camp
increasingly concerned at her treatment ask activists for help. A
small article in the Sydney Morning Herald was spotted by a friend of
her family. She had been missing two years.

After a car accident, a Filipino Australians Vivien Alvarez
was deported from hospital in a wheelchair. She had used her maiden
name, Vivien Salon. Her Ex-husband and father to her young son
searched for over 4 years. Immigration eventually

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