I'm not a great follower of sport but I was pleased to see that Australia has beaten England in a Rugby match over the weekend. There was a time that I would have shown a bit more interest and I could even reel off the names of some of the more famous players: Ken Catchpole, John Eales, David Campsese and so on. Somewhere, I still have my Rugby referee's badge which I studied so hard to attain in about 1970.
In the winning team this weekend there was only one name I recognised: Quaide Cooper who didn't, in fact, play but all the others were strangers to me. I suppose it's because we don't watch sport on TV and there is not much rugby played in Tasmania, anyway. Jamie played Rugby when he was at school and was even picked in the Tasmanian Schoolboys team to play in the national championships in Adelaide, I think, but I haven't made any effort to follow the sport since.
Looking through the list of the players on the Australian team, I found Jordan Petaia, Folau Fainga'a and Pete Same and my immediate thought was that we were poaching our better players from New Zealand or elsewhere. But, not so! All these players I have mentioned were born in Australia and have learnt all their rugby skills here. Good thing, too! It reminds us how much we have benefitted from a migration system which encouraged people from all over the world to come here.
It makes you think, though. How many potentially great sportsmen and women, or doctors or scientists might be among the 1459 refugees who have been in closed detention for an average of 697 days each? What benefits are we missing out on by ignoring this pool of human potential and the children they will produce? It's one thing to beat England but, if we want to beat the All Blacks, we'll need all the help we can get.
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