Nauru Horror !

The situation in Nauru is fast becoming an embarrassment to many Australians.  We have " boat people "  who had the misfortune to believe people smuggler's lies and commenced their journey to Australia under the threat of never being allowed to set foot on Australian soil.  Their fate then became a political football.

These bewildered  newcomers were packed off to what are really detention camps on Nauru and a similar facility in New Guinea.   They are mostly housed under canvas and they are not well received by the local native population.  In recent times they have been granted a small degree of freedom. They are no longer restricted to live behind barbed wire barriers.

This has gone on unchallenged for years.  We have a Federal opposition salivating at the hope that the government will lose its nerve and break what they consider a " sacred promise " and repatriate them here.   The government knows that any sort of backflip would open the flood gates and have the people smugglers resume their despicable trade.

We tried to settle a few of them in Cambodia, but that was a costly failure.  Then we had a mutual swap arrangement in the bag with the Americans - until Donald Trump won office and that whole deal began to look uncertain.   It seems to be back on the table, but time marches steadily by and those refugees are still awaiting their fate on Nauru.

Everybody with the power to make decisions on Nauru seems afraid of " rocking the boat " !  We have refugees there with deteriorating health who can not - and will not - get the medical treatment they need because it is simply not available on that remote island.

We have men suffering a condition known as " fistula ".   It is a breakdown in which the sufferer is subjected to permanent faecal incontinence.  What an unmanageable condition when one hundred and twenty men are sharing bathrooms and showers and living communally.

The medical operation to cure fistula is tricky, even in the best equipped hospital and the surgeons with those skills are not available in Nauru.   It seems that permission to bring the patients to Australia are being constantly denied and an order of silence is imposed on those who would dare speak out.

If a prisoner with fistula was left untreated in Long Bay prison we would have a riot and the civil rights people would be baying like angry wolves.  It is totally unreasonable that we choose to ignore human beings who have the misfortune to find themselves in the cross hairs of a political gun fight !

They must be flown to Australia urgently - and get the treatment they need. - and when they have recovered they should be returned to Nauru.  That is an entirely different problem of the one where medical care is being withheld on a political issue !