Home > Ballot '01 > Article Thursday, November 8, 2001 Howard, Beazley lashed over race Pity the poor immigrant ... Refugees aboard the container ship Tampa. By Marian Wilkinson and David Marr Australia's most senior religious leaders have joined leading academics and prominent Liberal and Labor figures to condemn the refugee policies of both parties as xenophobic and inhumane. Church leaders described the stand on refugees taken at this election by both the Prime Minister, John Howard, and Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, as "amoral", "brutalising" and "a failure" . Anglican, Catholic, Uniting, Baptist and Jewish leaders have expressed deep concern that the national psyche and Australia's international reputation are being damaged. "I don't remember a time when there has been an election with such a clear moral issue but treated by the major parties with such clear amoral electioneering," said the Rev Tim Costello, president of the Baptist Union. He warned that both sides were playing to "darker, more populist instincts". "The unwillingness to hose down xenophobia actively plays into it," the head of the Uniting Church, the Rev James Haire, warned, "and that's what's happened in these elections. I don't know any issue, certainly in recent times, where the churches have been so offside with both political positions." Their warnings were supported by John Yu, Chancellor of the University of NSW and former head of the Children's Hospital, who last night spoke on ABC Radio of the "heartless, xenophobic extremes" used to exclude the asylum seekers fleeing Afghanistan and Iraq. He told of his experiences as a two-year-old war refugee fleeing the Japanese rape of Nanking in 1937 and arriving on a boat in Sydney with no papers. He was met by his uncle, who brought his university classmate Sir Earl Page, founder of the Country Party and one-time deputy prime minister, who "carried me ashore in his arms, unchallenged and undocumented by customs and immigration". "I tell this story to ask what will 'queue jumpers' or 'illegal' really mean when today's history is written in the future, distant from the emotion and political distortions of the present." Dr Yu is one of a growing number of prominent Australians to voice their dismay about the direction of the refugee debate. The former senior Liberal leaders Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson and ministers Fred Chaney and Ian Macphee have joined the Labor figures Paul Keating, Neville Wran, Tom Uren and Margaret Reynolds in expressing deep concern about the rising xenophobia in the debate. Speaking at a Labor fundraiser last week, Mr Wran, the former NSW premier, warned: "The race card has been introduced into this election. It's a card and an introduction which we and our children will live to regret." While Mr Wran avoided direct criticism of Mr Beazley, other lifelong Labor supporters have not, such as the playwright David Williamson, who said he could not vote for Mr Beazley because of the refugee issue. Mr Fraser was the first of the Liberals to criticise Mr Howard in the aftermath of the Tampa crisis. "The destitute have been made pawns in a harsh political contest," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald in mid-September. He accused Canberra of carrying out "policy without a conscience" and declared that Australia "will be carrying the burden of being a wealthy and a selfish country for some time to come". Dr Hewson accused Mr Howard, his successor as leader of the opposition, of tapping "latent racial prejudice in significant sections of the Australian community". He claimed Mr Howard had "successfully manipulated prejudice to his personal political advantage". They were joined this week by Mr Macphee, who in a letter to The Age wrote: "Howard learnt nothing from his years in the Fraser cabinet when it handled in a bipartisan manner a massive challenge presented by asylum-seekers." Mr Chaney, another Fraser government minister, has accused both Mr Howard and Mr Beazley of "appealing to the worst in our natures". Speaking on the ABC, he said "in our attempt to show that we are very tough, I think we are failing the test of our own civilization. The civilization we're prepared to send troops overseas to defend." John Menadue, Cavan Hogue and Richard Woolcott, all former Australian ambassadors to Asia, have also voiced their concerns. Mr Menadue, also a former head of the Immigration Department, condemned the "me-tooism" of Labor and the Coalition which he said "leaves me bitterly disappointed that our proud record is being besmirched by the political opportunism on refugees". 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