Shopping and Refugees

Recently, while out purchasing essential baby items - such as a cot - before the stork arrives, I stumbled across the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Facility. Large and important looking signs alerted me to this fact as I was driving along looking for the baby superstore I intended to visit.

I knew that it was in the area somewhere, but had never seen it. I pulled over to have a better look, and saw - in stark contrast to the signage at the front - several very run down, old, depressing looking buildings, much like the commission flats we see around Melbourne.

I was struck by the detention centres close proximity to one of Melbourne's largest shopping centres: Highpoint. In fact it would be a mere two blocks.

Highpoint displays the opulence and affluence we in the developed world have come to take for granted. Upon entering the shopping centre customers are transported from reality into an alternate universe where every comfort is met. The temperature is always perfect, the light is bright as if it were a lovely summer day, and palm trees line the main thoroughfares.

Highpoint exists as a temple of consumerism and capitalism, feeding our need to define ourselves by what we buy rather than what we do. This point was not lost on me as I wandered around the ludicrously large baby store that contained every possible style and design of the items I was looking for.

Across the road people are detained for trying to access the very lifestyle I am participating in. The governments website for the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Facility claims that most of the detainees held there have overstayed their visa's or have been denied entry to the country. However it made me think about asylum seekers and refugees who have more genuine and urgent reasons for entering our country illegally.

I still have not been able to reconcile the two extreme realities that the detention centre and my shopping experience represent...