Two things happened this week that reminded me how incredibly insular Australians are. The first thing was that I watched the SBS program, Go Back to Where you Came From which was screened this week. Anyone reading this who has not seen it, I recommend you go online immediately and watch it. Six Australians follow the path in reverse taken by many refugees who try and reach our shores by boat.

There is a woman from Western Sydney (the demographic that Labor and the Coalition are pitching themselves to) who despite witnessing first hand the terrible struggle of people fleeing persecution and living in unimaginable conditions, says: ‘I don’t care. This is not my problem. I’m Australian. It’s their country’s fault.’ The second thing was the conversations that I’ve had with Greek Australians about the terrible situation in Greece. Most of them say: It’s their own fault, they’ve only got themselves to blame, they’re lazy, corrupt and they deserve what they get.

This is despite the fact that renowned economists are saying that the conditions of the loan are impossibly strict and that Greece cannot repay it.

An editorial in The Guardian this week said that a drastic drop in living standards has been imposed on the Greek people – ultimately to keep afloat European banks that have lent money recklessly. The same editorial described the situation that Greeks are forced to follow as ‘suicidal austerity’. Where is the outcry against the banks? Why isn’t their corrupt and irresponsible behaviour accountable to anyone? Let us not forget that it was Goldman Sachs no less that advised Greece how to hide its problems and hedge funds. Why is no one challenging the dominant narrative that ordinary people have to suffer for a crisis not of their making? What kind of a democracy is it when banks and international financial institutions have more power and more say over Greece than its democratically elected government? Are not these issues worthy of our consideration not just in the case of Greece, but of other countries as well?

To all those Greek Australians who are sitting smug in their criticism of the incompetent Greeks who have now had their salaries cut by 25 per cent, or ware working for months with no pay and where 42 per cent of young people are unemployed, there are a few things that are worth considering. There is no use in appraising things from an Australian point of view. Like those Australians on Go Back to Where you Came From discovered by walking a mile in the shoes of refugees fleeing war torn countries, not everyone in the world lives like us. So we can’t apply our expectations and reasoning universally.

Australia is a resource rich country, with a relatively strong industrial base and knowledge economy. While we could do a lot better in supporting a manufacturing and technology base, it is still possible for people graduating as engineers, scientists, teachers, economists to get a job in their general area. Those of us with any experience of Greece know that for a long time, even before this debt crisis, Greece has not been able to offer too many opportunities to graduates in those fields. A medical scientist I know received a scholarship to do a PhD at Harvard in the US. She never returned to Greece to live because her choices were severely limited. I have met numerous sociologists, economists, psychologists with Masters’ degrees (most from foreign universities) who have never been able to find work in their profession and settle for whatever they can get. This is not now. This is twenty years ago, ten years ago.

We know all this, yet I hear so many people in Australia basking in a sense of their own superiority that engenders a lack of empathy for others who struggle and suffer in ways that we can’t imagine. Even if we disagree about what is to be done about people who are fleeing wars, persecution and hunger, surely we can feel some empathy for their plight. When the Greek people are on the street protesting against the havoc wreaked on their lives in order to stabilise the financial markets, surely we can imagine how difficult it would be if our pay was cut by a quarter and our adult children had no work and no prospects for a future. Let us acknowledge our good fortune, let us acknowledge that our insularity blinds us and let us try to save ourselves from contempt.