Culture

As Thousands Rally To #LetThemStay, Vic Premier Daniel Andrews Takes Refugee Kids To The Zoo

Daniel Andrews, you bloody legend.

by Alex McKinnon  8 February 2016

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The #LetThemStay campaign, started last week to stop the federal government sending 267 asylum seekers currently in Australia back to Nauru, has captured the collective imagination in a way many past refugee and asylum seeker issues haven’t. Buoyed by supportive front-page headlines from some of Australia’s largest newspapers, public offers of sanctuary for refugees from dozens of cathedrals and churches, and lent the surprising support of many State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers over the weekend, #LetThemStay rallies were held in cities and towns across the country this afternoon.

Much of the campaign’s momentum has come thanks to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Friday asking that the 267 asylum seekers be allowed to stay in Australia, and offering Victoria’s services to that end.

Now Andrews has doubled down on that original letter, increasing the pressure on Turnbull and providing a rare example of a senior politician in a major party unafraid to publicly argue the case for welcoming refugees. In a Facebook post this afternoon, Andrews revealed he met with two of the asylum seeker children due to be sent back to Nauru earlier today, and took them for a trip to Melbourne Zoo.

“I can’t show you their faces, but I can tell you a bit about these two beautiful kids who I took to the Melbourne Zoo,” Andrews wrote. “They’re ordinary Victorians in almost every way. They go to their local primary school; they laugh, they learn, they play.

But one thing is very different: any day now, these two boys will be deported to Nauru and will stay there indefinitely. Dozens more children face the same fate. Please, Prime Minister: it doesn’t have to be like this.”

“It was so special meeting these two boys. Perhaps they don’t really know what might be happening to them. Perhaps they don’t yet understand. But they love this place. And they certainly loved their trip to the zoo.”

This morning Andrews outlined the case for his actions on ABC radio, arguing that Australian governments could take care of their obligations to citizens and show compassion to refugees at the same time.

“If you took the view that you’d only ever deal with things, strictly speaking, [that are] a part of your own jurisdiction, that doesn’t serve anyone’s interest,” he said. “We are making investments in hospitals and schools, and I think we are big enough and we are prosperous enough to be able to share those investments with a small number of people.”