Speech on Injustice: New and Improved

I was supposed to post this Thursday night, but I forgot. The original speech was good enough to get me placed as a finalist, so I slightly reworked it. It didn't earn me first or second unfortunately, although I blame that on my poor public speaking skills but I thought I'd still share it anyway!

I recently came across a post about Injustices which prompted me to ask this question. Why are we blind to what’s going on in the world? And even if we pay the slightest attention, why is it to only some of the injustices but not all of them? Doesn’t that make us hypocritical in one way or another? That some of us seem to focus on non-local issues, rather than local issues or maybe even the other way around?

You might have heard recently on the news about the killing of Muslims in Burma, the shootings in America, or even the recent bloodshed in Syria along with other events currently happening in the world. There are also injustices amongst us as people such as poverty, discrimination, equal rights and so on.

Us, as Australians, as well as our government often question what goes on in other countries, and we often criticise it without having a look at what’s going on in our own backyard. Think about it. I have a point, right? We look at how citizens, particularly women are treated badly in third world countries, and we shame it. If we claim to be a democratic first-world country, why is same-sex marriage not legal yet? Why are there still homophobic attitudes towards homosexuals? Even in a prominent society like ours, we still have sexist and racist attitudes… Even if those that do are usually the minority, however those that hold homophobic attitudes remain a fairly big portion of our society.

What about injustices happening overseas such as Poverty? We sympathise with the poor Africans who have no food yet we are quick to turn away the boats that come from these poor countries. Little bit hypocritical, don’t you think? Once the boats enter Australian shores, most of these asylum seekers are detained and thrown into detention centres, where they get treated horribly, possibly more than they did in their country
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Just imagine, what if you were a refugee? Hypothetically speaking. What if war broke out in your country, and you had no option but to leave if your life was in danger. The next thing you would do is hop on a boat, right? Particularly to what you would imagine a place full of luxuries, a place with better resources, a place for a better life. Of course, most of these being third world countries, they have limited resources, as well as limited education, so they are unaware of what actually happens to illegal refugees like themselves.

We should also try to combat the common problem of homelessness in Australia, as that is a very prominent issue. 

In schools, we learn about the Holocaust. We often feel sympathetic towards Jews who were mistreated in those times, yet we totally ignore those injustices going on in Palestine, currently done by Israel. Those that are often resistant militant groups are called ‘terrorists’ when in fact they are freedom fighters, but I guess like the saying goes “Another man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Which brings me to the point of how most Muslims are stereotyped as terrorists, which is an example of the racist attitudes I mentioned earlier. As you know the event of 9/11 led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and as an ally of the U.S., Australian soldiers went over there which obviously led to Iraqi refugees in Australia, yet they still get the racist backlash from Australians. My point here is how can we sympathise with people that we don’t know so easily, yet treat those around us so badly?

 Which also leads me to another point. The rejection of Multiculturalism. Australia practically thrives on Multiculturalism. It was partially built on it too. Look around the room. We’re all different nationalities. The school is built up of people from all over the world. Also, without Multiculturalism we wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn new things about other countries from people around us, or even try new foreign food. We still have racism towards immigrants, who’ll actually come in and do the jobs that us as Australians are too lazy to do, yet we still complain about the amount of people coming in and taking up all the space.

Even speaking nationally, we seem so concerned about what’s going in other states such as Queensland, Victoria and so on, yet we seem to disregard the current issues in New South Wales, which we should give more regard to, as it concerns us the most.

Another thing is people seem to pick through issues that only suit them, not due to their sincere humanitarianism. Of course there are more issues to be looked into, but I’d be here all day if I were to explain them all, so the ones I have explored in this speech are probably the ones you’d be more familiar with.

Why can’t we just focus on all issues? Of course, we’re more likely to focus on issues that concern us or that we’re interested in, but to be clearer, why don’t we take a look at ourselves first, and fix the issues faced by our people in our country, while still turning our direct attention to what is happening overseas. To conclude this speech, I just want to say that I hope it’s left you thinking. Thank you for listening to my speech.