Sarah Stephen
Ian Skiller is not your average farmer. A horticulturalist from the small Victorian town of Tooleybuc, on the Murray River near Swan Hill, Skiller has become one of Rural Australians for Refugees' (RAR) most well-known public faces.
How did it all start? One night in 2001, Skiller had a visit from a group of Afghan refugees on temporary visas. Skiller enjoys telling the story, partly because it marks the beginning of his new life, but also because he loves a good yarn.
Just before dark, five men in traditional clothing and turbans got out of a car. "I thought I was in trouble!" Skiller told Green Left Weekly. "I believed the crap in the papers about them being terrorists." They asked him about accommodation, and the rest is history. "They're now my greatest friends, my best mates."
"When they first arrived, I didn't know anything about Afghanistan, or their religion. When they wrote their work hours in the time sheet, they took off 15 minutes. I asked them, 'What's that for?'. They said they needed to pray five times a day, and it took them a total of 15 minutes. I hadn't even noticed them praying. They'd taken their prayer mats into the field and prayed as they worked." Skiller was worried about the prickles, so he cut them squares of carpet to put under their mats.
Skiller developed a close friendship with Dr Abdul Nasiri who had been a doctor in Afghanistan, and was the only one of the five who spoke English when they first met. Nasiri recently studied medical English in Sydney, the first of many steps towards becoming registered to practice here. "At the moment he's in Pakistan, because he recently got his permanent visa, and he's looking for his family. He's got some idea where they are", Skiller said.
Skiller is incensed at the barriers preventing refugees, such as Nasiri, from using their skills in Australia, especially when there is such a shortage of doctors in regional areas. Tooleybuc doesn't have a local doctor. Skiller explained that he has four doctors and an anaesthetist working on his farm.
Skiller is now a key spokesperson for RAR, but if you'd told him that five years ago, he would have laughed. He admits that before five Afghans came into his life, he didn't even know where Afghanistan was, or how much of a political flash-point the refugee issue had become.
Skiller and his refugee friends featured on ABC TV's Australian Story in May 2004. It won a human rights award, and Centrelink is planning to use the story as part of its multicultural staff training program.
Skiller recalls speaking at a rally for the first time, in Melbourne on Palm Sunday, 2004. He was alarmed when people started clapping during his speech, and he walked off the stage early. "I thought they'd had a gutful of me", he said, and was later surprised to be mobbed by friendly faces.
Skiller's new-found passion for refugee rights, and his determination to see temporary protection visas abolished, led him to Canberra with Nasiri in 2003 to speak to politicians. He's also spent time speaking at conferences and community groups along the east coast of Australia.
In August, Skiller undertook a week-long speaking tour of the NSW central coast organised by the local RAR groups in Taree and the Great Lakes. He spoke to primary and high school students, at the local TAFE and the retired teachers club in Taree, and at the University of the Third Age in Forster.
The students who most impressed were Years 5 and 6 at the Forster Public School. They asked "the best, most serious questions" including about temporary protection and permanent visas, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the UN convention and how it required Australia to treat refugees. "They blew me out of the water", Skiller said.
David Francis, a refugee advocate involved in the House of Welcome and the Uniting Church, spoke at a meeting with Skiller on September 4. He has known Skiller for 18 months and describes him as a remarkable man. "He's a typically blunt, hardworking Australian farmer who was touched in the heart by the refugees and their plight."
The House of Welcome helps place refugees in rural jobs as part of the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme, an avenue available to refugees who have exhausted options for staying in Australia on humanitarian grounds, and it was through this that Francis met Skiller.
Francis explained that refugees' experience in regional Australia is quite different to those living in the suburbs of Sydney. "Ian has set an amazing example of how to help refugees blend into the community. He's been able to break down extraordinary cultural barriers. He's been an inspiration to the refugees as well — helping make them feel confident, empowering them with skills."
The local school principal has given Skiller the key to the school to use after hours to teach computer skills and English with retired school teacher Ros Tucker. "He said it's there for whatever you need to use it for."
Soon after returning home after the tour, Skiller organised a barbecue to celebrate two refugees getting their permanent visas, and to thank supporters. Seventy-five people came, including a group of Brazilian migrants, and afterwards they played soccer — Afghanistan versus Brazil.
"I've been running picnics to thank people for things they'd donated. They started out at 40 people; now 160 people turn up! I get refugee organisations in Melbourne asking if they can send up busloads of depressed refugees to mix with people at these picnics. I tell people, if you come to a barbeque, you have to talk to a refugee."
It soon became clear to Skiller that depression was big problem for refugees. "If it's a rainy day we're in trouble. They come into the house, watch a bit of TV, but they get bored. There's too much thinking time."
When I spoke to Skiller on September 4, he told me that two refugees on his farm were suicidal. "One of them spent six years in detention, and now he's on a three-year TPV. That's nine years without seeing his family." The local community has no mental health resources to call on, and no people with skills to cope with the challenge of helping the refugees through periodic crises. "It takes about five hours of talking to them to snap them out of a trance. The women seem to have the best luck, so mum and some of the other ladies sit with them in hospital and talk."
Ian came across GROW, a mental health self-help group, and set up a group in the area. "On the first night we met, six refugees came along. On the second, there were seven refugees and 16 Australians. Soon it started getting too big and we had to start thinning and starting up new GROW groups."
Skiller speaks proudly of his association with 130 refugees over the past four-and-a-half years. He's employed a number of them and helped others find work elsewhere, or set up their own businesses. They're now spread from Mildura to Hay and Adelaide.
Skiller has a lot of respect for the refugees working for him, and describes them as hard-working and honest. He doesn't mystify the reason they're prepared to work six or seven days a week; keeping busy helps to stave off depression, he says, adding: "They work to support their families back home. One even bought a taxi for his brother in Pakistan, so he could support the man's family. Others who don't know where their families are save money so that when they locate them, they can sponsor them to come to Australia."
[Visit Rural Australians for Refugees' website at <http://www.ruralaustraliansforrefugees.org>]
From Green Left Weekly, September 21, 2005.
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