Les Murray defends heroic 'people smugglers'

About 150 people attended a February 13 forum “Smuggled to Freedom” to hear SBS sports commentator Les Murray tell his family’s story of trying to escape political persecution in Hungary in 1956.

He recently returned to find “Julius”, the so-called people smuggler who helped them cross the border to Austria. He said Julius was an unrecognised hero who helped countless families, despite the risk of the death penalty.

“We demonise people who don’t deserve it,” Murray said. “My smuggler was no demon.”

He said “people smugglers” do what the governments refuse to do and “get at-risk people to safety”.

“We create them — because if we didn’t make it so difficult for them [refugees] to come here, there would be no ‘business model’ to break,” he said.

Murray spoke alongside Border Crimes author Mike Grewcock, criminal lawyer Edwina Lloyd and Hazara refugee Hadi Hosseini.

The forum was organised by the Refugee Action Coalition Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney Cross-Borders Collective to show the “reality behind the anti-people smuggler rhetoric”.

Lloyd, who represents Indonesian men held in Australian prisons on people-smuggling charges, said portraying them as the “scum of the earth” who victimise refugees was “a politically convenient lie”.

She said most of her clients were impoverished fishermen, who suffered from depleted fish reserves, severe poverty and debt. Sometimes they take jobs crewing boats without even knowing who they are carrying or why.

Lloyd has also represented Indonesians under 18 that have been held in adult prisons, including an orphaned boy with an intellectual disability who was locked in Sydney’s Silverwater jail for two years before “people smuggling” charges against him were dropped last November.

Grewcock said prosecution and sentencing trends for people smuggling were escalating, due in part to a rise in the number of boats, but also the huge increase in resources spent by the government on “border control”.

He said instead of continuing to waste money on border security, funds should be spent on more resettlement and creating the “pathways” for refugees to safely seek passage to Australia. He said this would “end the need for people smuggling”.

Murray said part of the problem was that Australia was not a welcoming country. “We demonise them because we are the receiving country, we are the destination,” he said. “But the truth is we don’t want them, so we demonise the people who bring them here.”