Missy Higgins takes aim at Aus Government for treating refugees like “criminals”

Missy Higgins appeared on ABC’s Q&A program last night, taking the opportunity to express her views on the Australian Government’s treatment of asylum seekers.

Higgins talked about her song ‘Oh Canada’ which was inspired by a three-year-old boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015.

“Like most people that saw that photo of this three-year-old boy washed up on a beach in Turkey, I was absolutely devastated,” she said.

“Because it put a human face to the crisis, and I think a lot of the time so many of us are so removed from it and especially with this rhetoric that comes out of the Government, calling these people criminals, calling them…. even the word ‘asylum seekers’ has a stigma now.

“To think we can allow these people, who are only seeking a safe place to live, that’s all they want, that’s all anybody wants… to think we treat them like criminals, it’s just really appalling.”

Should Australia be granting more refugees a safe haven than it currently is? @KenRoth & @missyhiggins respond #QandA pic.twitter.com/ENI56Gjpix

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) April 16, 2018

She also answered questions about the role that celebrities have to influence “social and political issues”.

“If we feel passionately about something, I think that it’s just as much our right, as it is anybody’s right, to speak our mind, and for our opinions to be heard,” she said.

“I think that art should be a form of self expression, and I don’t think that we should ever have to self-censor ourselves.”