Analyses of contemporary issues tend to be rooted in the immediate, concrete and practical aspects of life. There is also value, though, in more amorphous questions. In that spirit, and conscious of its own generalities and limitations, this essay considers the importance of empathy — the ability to recognise feelings or emotions in another person, or put ourselves in another's shoes.
This focus is timely to anyone concerned about the Australian political scene and, in particular, the lack of moral seriousness in much of our public conversation.
Witness Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's recent statement on asylum seeker policy: 'I don't think it's a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door ... I think the people we accept should be coming the right way and not the wrong way'. This conclusion, which blames people for their own desperation, presents a topsy-turvy world in which Australia is victimised by 'unChristian' asylum seekers.
Abbott's statement has been elegantly deconstructed, on both a factual and a moral basis, by Julian Burnside QC. The eminent barrister appealed to his readers to put themselves in someone else's situation:
Imagine, just for a minute, that you are a Hazara from Afghanistan. You have fled the Taliban; you have arrived in Indonesia, where you will be jailed if you are found; you can't work, and you can't send your kids to school. You will have to wait between 10 and 20 years before some country offers to resettle you. But you have a chance of getting on a boat and heading for safety in Australia. What will you do?
I know I would get on a boat; I know that most Australians would get on a boat. I imagine that Tony Abbott would get on a boat.
This essay does not pretend to any expertise in migration or refugee policy or seek to offer any prescriptions. Instead, moving from the specific to the general, it considers the broader question of empathy and suggests that we need to address a lack of imaginative understanding in both our public language and private thoughts.
The kind of language used by Abbott, with its refusal to acknowledge any complexity beyond an inflexible 'right way' versus 'wrong way', echoes the