From the Director

The sound of magpies and gum trees in the distance locates the experience. Yes, we are in Australia, the lucky country, our home. But the images of razor wire surrounding small children, families huddled with their grief, the atrocities being recounted by the young man in front of me, seem surreally out of joint. Could we really be just a few kilometres from the families enjoying the summer surf on Bondi Beach? Could we really have left the five year old playing at my feet alone such in such a place, torn from her parents and left wandering from bed to bed at night seeking a mother to comfort her?

I think for many of us our first experiences of visiting a detention centre will for ever change our perception of our country. How could we allow this to happen here? How could we squander our self respect, our human dignity and sense of justice so easily and cause such suffering from people who have already borne so much? How could we be so self satisfied to let such a thing happen?

In Our Name is an attempt to give one family, the Al Abaddies, a voice through which to tell their own story of their time in our country. Unable to come back to Australia to tell the story themselves, I have tried as hard as possible to maintain a sense of the authenticity of their voices. I thank Humam and family for the amazing generosity, warmth and dignity with which they have approached the project, and indeed have shown since the first day we met in Villawood. At a time when our politicians are talking so much about family values, they are an extraordinary testament to power of love and commitment. I hope the production can play a small role in their process of healing and building a new future for themselves.

I also hope our production can play some tiny part in long the process of our coming to terms with what we have done and continue to do.

We cannot change what happened. But we can change what is happening. Hundreds of children and families remain in detention, many offshore and in even worse situations than the Al Abaddies. We are capable of using our considerable power to change things, to get the children freed from detention centres, to replace the inhumane system that is currently in place for processing asylum seekers and to start to come to terms with the terrible damage we have done. We live in a democracy where we are free to lobby our MP’s and government, to write to our newspapers, to ring our talk back radio stations, to pester government agencies responsible for the welfare of children, education and health and to put in place safeguards that such things will never ever happen again.

Nigel Jamieson
April 2004