Nobody in Australia likes refugees.

Or so it seems. Ask many regular punters and these damn filthy refugees are always in the news floating here in their thousands on their leaky boats in a never ending tsunami, bringing with them their stupid cultures and threatening our way of life. We spend millions of dollars housing them in quality air conditioned centres in relative luxury, and the stupid buggers get mad and usually burn them down. We don’t want ‘em, they should go back where they came from. Fuck off, we’re full.

Fact is our Refugee and Humanitarian intake has been about 13 thousand a year, at least for the last couple years. Compared to Europe which is closer to conflict areas of the Middle East and Africa this is a relatively low number and nowhere near a tsunami.

True, there is a system. And the people on boats are making their way here outside the system. But it’s also true that these people are desperate to get out of the situation they’re in and should be treated with more compassion than the majority of Australians seem willing to give.

SBS had a three part show last week addressing how Australians perceive and react to refugees, and showing the real plight of many refugees. They took 6 Australians on a “reverse” journey a refugee might take. These six had a range of attitudes from one woman who said “When I saw that boat smashing on the rocks at Christmas Island, I thought “Serve you bastards right”" through to another woman with more compassionate stance. One girl wasn’t racist, she just didn’t like black people. They were put on what appeared to be a rickety old boat headed north, which is usually the last leg one might take. They moved in with some Burmese refugees in Malaysia, experiencing how it felt to live as an illegal under threat of arrest. Later the participants participated in a 3am raid with Malaysian authorities, arresting illegal workers. In the last show they split into two groups with one group going to live in a UN refugee camp in Africa, and another in Jordan. The group in Jordan then spent some time in Baghdad, but I felt this was of little value as they didn’t see any people outside the Green Zone.

By the end of the third show, and after seeing the desperation of people wanting to be safe from torture, rape and the threat of death in their homelands and that the camps in between their origin and their goal weren’t exactly safe, the group had mostly formed a more compassionate view of these people.

I’m more familiar with the plight of refugees that most Australians I know, and therefore have more compassion for them than most Australians I know. Mum worked with a refugee organisation for many years, and often had people over to our house for dinner. Some of the stories they’d tell were just horrifying, and something I hope I never have to go through.

The world is a scary, horrible place and if nothing else, watching the show has reinforced to me how lucky I am to live in a free, affluent country like Australia.

Same goes for Australia

I still need convincing that this is a controversy worth talking about. I mean really, the birthers have been on this psychotic witch hunt for too long now. And Obama himself hasn’t done much to stop this getting out of hand so it must be working for him somehow.

The claims originated from Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2008 primaries. Look, I get it that Americans don’t want anything other than an American leader. But it’s really not that bad. The first handful of your Presidents weren’t American-born if you want to be technical about it, and our own Prime Minister is Welsh.

Actually, forget I said that. Bad example.

Since the Obama birth questions were asked we’ve seen the “short form” certificate, but this has been rejected by conspiracists as a hoax. The “long form” certificate was released a couple days ago but it’s still not good enough for some.

It seems a little more legitimate than this one: