Speeches
Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Winter Solstice Ball
Thank you Michael for that very kind introduction.
And I also acknowledge here your work in being one of -- I think -- the best broadcast journalists in Australia.
Through your long history of news reports which we've grown up watching, so often you've helped shine the light on truth and justice.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is indeed a great honour to be here tonight.
Although I come from Melbourne, I certainly feel as though I'm among friends here in Sydney tonight.
Because all of us in this room are here tonight because we want to be - united in a common spirit - to have a good time while sparing a thought for those whose lives are a daily struggle, in particular - refugees and asylum seekers.
And I pay tribute to the splendid work of the Jesuit Refugee Service.
Your long commitment to accompanying, serving and defending the rights and needs of those forcibly displaced in our world is very inspiring.
In my own life, my journey towards a deeper understanding of issues of poverty and injustice began when I was about 12 years old.
It was then, that a lady by the name of Bridget Hogan from World Vision came to my school and spoke with us about the 40 Hour Famine. I was quite an ‘eager beaver’ as they say, and I started working to see if our school could become the highest fundraising school in Australia.
At the age of 14, through the generosity of World Vision I travelled to the Philippines to see their work first hand.
There was one night in the Philippines that impacted my life to such a huge extent that I have never been the same since.
One night at the end of our time in the Philippines, I was taken to a slum, in the Centre of Manila - called Smokey Mountain – this slump is literally an entire community built around a rubbish dump - the very infrastructure of the community was based around scavenging. Often the children ran after the garbage trucks to get fresh rubbish, food, pieces of scrap metal they could recycle.
That evening I was placed me in the care of a family living on the slum, with a boy my own age named Sonney Boy.
Although we were both 14 we had a very different upbringing.
I'd come from Melbourne and been comparatively sheltered; his body was covered in tattoos because he was becoming the leader of his gang and this was a form of initiation.
That night he took me to where he lived and after cooking a meal on the ground together, I naturally thought we would be going to some kind of bedroom to go to sleep.
But when it came time for bed, we simply cleared the pots and pans away and lay down on a concrete slab about the size of half of my bedroom with 7 of us in a line.
With the stench of the garbage and cockroaches crawling around us I didn't sleep a wink that night.
That night my life was changed forever.
To those of you who've been exposed to abject poverty - you know once you have seen it, experienced it - endured it - you can not pretend it doesn't exist.
You're forced to confront and uncomfortable truth - they are people like us who deserve a fundamental freedom and universal right - the freedom of choice.
Returning to Australia, when I heard that 16 thousand children die every day from preventable starvation - no longer was it a statistic.
I'd seen the human face of it.
I felt this all the more forcibly the following year when I travelled to India to study.
Here was a country with over a billion people.
Approximately seven hundred million of them homeless or slum dwellers, (this is about 41 times Australia's Population).
I couldn't help feeling helpless and disillusioned.
Upon completing high school I took a year off - raising enough money to become a Youth Ambassador for World Vision, and ended up in South Africa.
It was the most amazing experience of my life.
Not only was it a great source of cultural education but it gave me the opportunity to work with the community to implement projects far beyond my regular capabilities.
During my time local students and community members both told and showed me how important education and vocational options as an alternative to resorting to substance abuse and violence.
When I saw the unsourced broken classrooms in the Valleys and the lack of vocational options I felt as though I have to respond in some way to this injustice.
It was here the idea for a youth aid organisation sprang - the Oaktree Foundation.
The mission - "To empower developing communities through education in a way that is sustainable."
Education- has the amazing ability to unlock potential.
Education is also the only thing that can be permanently passed on from generation to generation.
But even so, if our projects are not sustainable projects then they will not be effective.
If the projects we invest our money into are not owned by the community, developed by the community and working to empower the community… they will not continue to be effective.
Earlier this year I celebrated my 25 birthday as the community resource centre was opened. Seeing the fruit of the work we started 5 years ago was very edifying and uplifting.
I think our challenge is that in everything we say and do we make it our priority not simply to be happy with the current state of our world… but to be young people of great integrity, compassion and vision; people who lead fellow young Australians into a genuine commitment to fighting for justice in this world.
I believe that the present state of our community and this world, with issues of homelessness, HIV/AIDS, refugees, war and economic inequality staring us in the face, really calls us to respond to this global injustice.
I think in life we have two choices- we can work for the service of ourselves, developing our individual wealth and accumulation of things for the time we have on this earth…or alternatively, we can work for the service of others.
I say this because I believe that everyone who is here today is here because they have a heart and mind that says I want to make a difference in the world, a difference that will last.
Address by James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank Group, addressing a conference in Paris
By the year 2015, there will be 3 billion people under the age of 25. They are the future. But, as the young people in Paris said most forcibly, they are also the now.
Friends, Peace starts and ends with our choices.
In Australia we have to appreciate that our actions here in Australia have a huge effect on those in the developing world…yet this can be a good thing.
The increase in global communication, global travel and globalisation does not have to be a burden if we each shift our mindset away from a form of cultural imperialism towards the recognition that each of us is an integral part of our World and each of us has incredible gifts, work-class skills and a fantastic education, which we can use to help those who are truly in need.
One of my deep concerns is that there is a movement within Australia away from any public hope.
Reflected in our foreign policy, this approach seems driven, not by an attempt to be good neighbours with countries in our region, but more often by a fear of what could happen if we don't protect ourselves.
So, Do we protect the Australian way of life, or invite more people to experience the richness of our country…I hope these are not mutually exclusive.
Earlier this year I celebrated my 25 birthday as the community resource centre was opened. Seeing the fruit of the work we started 5 years ago was so good.
Our Sports field has really taken off and has been so well used by the community that the grass is already wearing away.
On the day the wave came -Boxing Day 2004 - around a quarter of a million lives were wiped out.
It wasn't long before I found myself in Banda Aech.
It was a scene from an apocalypse -- matched by utter human misery and desperation.
Each refugee situation is different, but the the scale of this was truly inconceivable - scores of refugees left homeless in their homeland ... lost in their grief ... broken by the burden of their loss.
I joined the Jesuit Refugee Service and a number of the NGOs on the ground in helping set up basic amenities so people could go to the toilet, shower.
The camp which I helped set up was in some ways like a an oasis amongst a dry desert of pain and suffering.
Being with people of Aech at a time when their human suffering was so raw, it was almost suffocating.
The tsunami had left people under the rubble, thousands of people killed, with their bodies lacerated by the debris.
It left a state of utter confession, of shock of fear.
I'll never forget the huge stench of death in the air as body bags were being pulled up along the streets, and corpses pulled from the rubble and the river.
It's been said "A life other than your own can be your teacher."
Despite the horror of what of saw - I was sustained by the human spirit of refugees. They had nothing - but were drenched in human value.
And In the midst of so much devastation - there was some how hope.
A man who had been buried for days under the rubble, who lost his three children was re-united with his wife after his parents dug him out.
He returned immediately to search for survivors.
I'll never forget driving out of Banda Aceh I was amazed to see a huge stretch of nothing were houses once stood.
Yet in the midst was one man sitting on the ground rebuilding his house one pole at a time.
This man had a hope for his future even in the midst of such tremendous suffering.
You certainly don't have to be a refugee to experience heartache and pain in your life.
There's someone I know well who knows a lot about the fragility of human life.
When he was 16 - at the end of year 11 in High School his stepbrother and best friend Dave committed suicide.
Two weeks later the father of a very close friend of his also took his own life.
We get through tough times in life by living in the shelter of each other.
I know that -- because that person I just told you about -- that I know well -- is in fact me.
But all of us have gone through tough times in our life -- but we will never experience more than refugees - many in the face of grinding poverty and abuse of human rights.
It's true, the ultimate test of our worth as people - and I think as a nation - is how we treat the most disadvantaged and vulnerable of our fellow human beings.
Friends ---
Tonight can hardly be claimed as a "big victory" in helping alleviate the poverty and misery endured by the 30 million refugees in the world tonight.
But a night like this does show just to be part of the struggle is itself worth doing.
In closing, I think all of us in this room can take heart and resonate with the words of Saint Augustine who once said:
"If the times are bad, then let us be better... then the times will be better...for we are the times".
May the rest of this night be one of good times.
But let us not forget that --- in our lifetime --- if together we all continue to fight for justice and be part of the struggle - it is possible for us to live in a world without extreme poverty, without refugees.
And when that happens - what a party that will be!
Thank you.
