Australia's integration failures may be putting people's lives at risk
Australians are proud of their healthcare system, and – unlike the situation here – that pride generally isn't misplaced. Australian health outcomes are usually mentioned in the same breath as those of Singapore, Switzerland, and Japan.
This means the national response to a pair of Sydney nurses stating with some glee to what they must have known was a global audience that they preferred the Harold Shipman approach to Israeli patients has been about what you'd expect.
Asked what she'd do when confronted with an Israeli patient, the female nurse responded, 'I wouldn't treat them. I'd kill them.' The male nurse, meanwhile, boasted that 'you have no idea how many Israelis came to this hospital, and I just sent them to Jahannam ' (Arabic, roughly, for 'Hell' or 'their Maker'.)
After the video went viral and the two were identified as Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh (the pair have since apologised), the country exploded. 'Don't bother turning up for work tomorrow,' said New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park as he sacked them live on air. 'I won't allow a sliver of light for any of them to be allowed to work in NSW Health again.'
This response was representative: politicians and civil society expectorated as one, in part because to attack something at which Australians excel is an attack on the country's sense of itself. Australian tourists used to make sly jokes about the 'diversity bollards' they saw while travelling in European countries. I remember Australian solicitors working on cross-border deals sniggering about metal detectors posted at the entrances to US high schools all the while informing you of where it wasn't safe to drink the water. The video shattered this distinctively Australian self-confidence.
The story then proceeded apace. It emerged Nadir was born in Afghanistan but permitted to enter Australia aged 12 as a refugee. It didn't take long for intrepid internet sleuths to turn up mawkish commentary about how well he'd integrated and what a wonderful migrant success story he was, complete with pictures of him in the same scrubs he was wearing while making cut-throat hand gestures.
It is difficult to overstate the seriousness of this. There are no asylum seekers in the pejorative sense in Australia. If someone born in Afghanistan lives in Australia, it means he's a genuine refugee. He will also have been assessed as such using Australia's in-house rules, not those developed by the United Nations. Australia is especially good at selecting refugee families, using its strongly conformist education system to promote integration.
Abu Lebdeh, meanwhile, comes from Western Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community, the country's only integration failure: to this day, an arc of suburbs across the region are plagued with organised crime (mainly outlaw motorcycle gangs and drugs).
NSW Police and senior medical staff at Bankstown Hospital are now combing through patient records to establish whether the country really is dealing with two hospital-based alleged mass murderers.
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