Cr Peter Brown with a member of Greater Dandenong’s Sudanese community last year.THE Refugee Council of Australia (RCA) has slammed comments by a Greater Dandenong councillor that Sudanese settlers are bringing their country’s ‘basketcase’ problems to Australian shores.
RCA chief executive Paul Power told Star that Keysborough South Ward councillor Peter Brown was living in the fear of the unknown following comments Cr Brown made in a letter to The Age newspaper last week.
In his letter, Cr Brown used a brawl outside Springers Leisure Centre early this month as the basis for criticising the Sudanese community.
“We have enough problems in Greater Dandenong, and the residents in Keysborough South do not need Springers or any other place similar, to be a congregation point for hundreds of Sudanese from all over Melbourne who bring their tribal differences with them erupting into violence,” Cr Brown wrote. He also pinned violence at Noble Park railway station on the Sudanese community.
“The problems at Noble Park station were not there before the jumbos flew in,” he wrote.
Cr Brown told Star he stood by his comments, describing the whole African continent as “a basketcase of social, economic and political problems”.
“We are not going to solve those problems by bringing these people to our doorstep,” he said.
Cr Brown called on the Federal Government to pump more funds into settlement programs for refugees to alleviate any settlement problems. Mr Power said he was disappointed by Cr Brown’s comments because they showed a lack of understanding of Sudan and its problems.
“People attacking Sudanese refugees in Australia have no understanding of the situation which they have come from,” he said. “If they had more of an understanding of the incredible difficulties people experienced before coming here, they wouldn’t be so quick to rush to judgements.”
Mr Power agreed the Federal Government could inject more funds into the refugee program, but said the current level was nothing to sneeze at.
“I believe (the Government) could do more, but there have also been significant steps forward in funding and resourcing refugee settlement services in the last 20 years in particular,” he said.
