A Day of Mourning in Italy yesterday after the disaster of the refugee boat off Lampedusa Island recalls the Australian lack of reaction after a number of similar incidents, Christmas Island in mid December 2010 for example. The Italian reaction presents us Australians with the question what might be the reasons for such an outpouring in the Mediterranean and such marked indifference by comparison in our own country. How to account for it? Remnant Catholicism? The disparity in relative distances between Christmas Island and the East coast population centres on the Australian mainland, against Sicily and the major Italian cities? The run-down to the holiday period in the case of the 15 December 2010 event that resulted in fifty deaths? Coarsening of the political - social sphere after the years of the Howard government? Suppressed guilt at the devastation wreaked in those countries where we have gone to war?
How far short did we fall from a day of mourning in Australia in the week before Christmas in 2010?
NB. Since January 2000 there have been almost 1,500 refugee deaths at sea in the passage between Indonesia and Australia, according to Australian Border Deaths Database.
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