Here’s a piece a wrote for The Saturday Paper on being wracked with white guilt as I put together a comedy show about refugees.

The first time I visited a detention centre, I was hungover. That has to be up there as one of the most pathetic, privileged, white person things you can do. I had used my freedom to dance the night away and drink a lot of gin and try, unsuccessfully, to kiss boys. Now I was here.

I’d met Nick on a Facebook group that facilitated visits to detention. He met me out the front to chat before we went inside.

“So, Tom, why were you keen to come along and visit today?”

I explained the premise of a show I was writing, and peppered it with a bit of “I’ve-been-meaning-to-do-this-for-a-long-time-anyway”. Nick nodded cautiously.

“Okay,” he said. “Just wanted to check. I saw you on the telly the other night and I said to my friend, who used to be here in detention, ‘That guy wants to come visit and find out more about refugees.’ And he sort of said, ‘Why? So he can just make money out of us?’ ”

I was taken aback. I hadn’t considered this. At all. I’d assumed that I was a good guy doing a good thing. I was helping.

I wrote up some of the most surprising facts that I’ve come across in putting together my comedy show Boundless Plains To Share for The Age and you can read them here.

The issue of what to do with desperate people who arrive on our shores on leaky boats has plagued Australian politics for more than four decades. In January 1969, eight West Papuans – later dubbed “raft men” – fled the Indonesian occupation of West Irian and set out for sanctuary. A month later they landed at Moa Island in the Torres Strait. The group’s leader Alexander Toembay declared: “I hope that Australian people give us political protection and allow us to live in peace.”

We didn’t. We whacked them on a plane to New Guinea and their claims for political asylum were quickly processed and denied. All eight were then returned to West Irian, to the very government they were running from.

At the same time we were dumping border-crossing West Papuan refugees in a poorly resourced camp on a delightful little getaway named Manus Island. There the refugees held little hope of gaining employment or education and they become depressed and unmotivated and called their new home “Devil’s Island”. Good thing we learnt our lesson there, then.

 

I’m extremely concerned about a radical program that’s warping the minds of Australian school students at the moment and wrote to the Prime Minister about it. You can read my concerns over at SBS Sexuality. 

This is a hilarious episode (as they always are), but it also features some sweet BRANDED CONTENT from yours truly. Enjoy!

Very proud of the Strayan comedy community today. 100 comics have leant their names to this open letter calling for the government to not deport 267 people seeking asylum (including 37 babies) from Australia.

Dear Rich White Men Who Are In Charge Of Things,

We the undersigned are professional dickheads. Between us, we have decades of experience in getting away with making people laugh and acting like it’s a respectable living. We say swears and we talk about genitals and farts and Facebook and first world problems and we wear silly costumes and shout our opinions at drunken hecklers in pubs and bars and tents across this great nation.

We ain’t no high-falutin’ city lawyers. We don’t know heaps about the constitution or the intricate details of the Migration Act or international conventions on human rights.

Indeed, many of us often fail to use the English words good and stuff.

But we know when something isn’t funny. At one time or another we’ve all delivered a line that we think is SOLID GOLD, only to be met with deafening silence. This is known as “bombing” or “comic death”. It is the worst possible experience for a comedian. Bombing elicits a sudden and powerful sensation of overwhelming dread and shame. It immediately compels you to reconsider all of your life choices and makes you want to go home and curl up into a little ball and nuzzle a bottle of wine and cry.

To us, the idea of deporting vulnerable people seeking asylum to Nauru to face the very things they sought protection from is a really, really bad joke. Like, no good. At all. We understand that the recent decision by the High Court technically makes this sort of thing legal, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth pursuing. Other things that are legal include smoking and wearing Crocs.

Come on, bros: we’re talking about 37 babies here. You politicians are supposed to kiss babies, not deport them.

As people who wear our hearts on our sleeve and who are often cynical about most things, we’re appealing to your decency and your humanity and asking you to let these people remain in Australia. Here in the community they can receive the support they need, begin to rebuild their lives and hey, maybe even come on down to a comedy show to laugh their cares away.

Yes, it is a super sticky area of public policy. But even we professional dickheads can see this isn’t the way to go about it.

Trust us, Prime Minister Turnbull and Minister Dutton – there’s nothing funny about this shemozzle.

Please get to work on some new material ASAP.

We say: #LetThemStay.

Was proud to be part of this group at Flinders Street station today to say #LetThemStay in response to this High Court decision.

I ain’t no fancy city lawyer, but I’d suggest that sending 37 babies off to a prison camp renowned for poor facilities, sexual assault and abuse is a BAD BAD THING.

Monday is a national day of action around the #LetThemStay campaign; find out more on the GetUp! Facebook page.