Woodside residents are not racists

Vanguard December 2010 p. 4

If there was an equivalent of the Tidy Town Awards for boring normality, the little town of Woodside in the Adelaide Hills would be an easy winner.
Sipping a latte al fresco in the main street, I can see nothing that seems out of place.

At a nearby table a man stops a stranger walking past and they chat about her dog. It’s that sort of place.

But last night the cockroaches were scurrying about in the dark.

I don’t know who they were, but these bravehearts had sneaked into the grounds of the local primary school and put anti-refugee leaflets around where the kid would find them in the morning.

Luckily the teachers found them first and binned the lot.

At least two other local primary schools were targeted.

The reason? Woodside was identified on October 18 as the host town for a Detention Centre at nearby Inverbrackie and it is intended that detainees’ children will attend the local schools.

A public meeting was held not long after the announcement and attended by some 400 people where resentment over the lack of consultation with the community over the announcement was hijacked by a small redneck element that put through a motion against asylum seekers coming to Inverbrackie.

The lack of consultation meant that issues that could have been addressed in a sensible way were raised in a hostile environment and used to inflame community anger. One of those related to the local school where enrolments are growing and existing classrooms are full.

Those issues have since been clarified. The principal of the primary school, with the support of parents on the school’s governing council has issued a statement to all parents saying that “We would welcome having detainee children at our school.” He thought the school could accommodate 15-20 students and added “My main concern at the moment is that, for whatever reason we may miss out.”

He may have been alluding to the fact that other nearby public schools are under capacity and just as keen to take in students from the detention centre.

The Woodside community has been unfairly demonized as racist by the bourgeois media.

In fact, as the issues that were raised at the public meeting have been dealt with one by one, passions have subsided and most residents want it to be known that they will welcome the asylum seekers into the community.