The Power of Connection

Discussion based on the exhibition:  Who Are We Anyway? Speakers include: Dr David Corlett, host of SBS's award-winning Go Back To Where You Came From. Thursday 14 April 2016

The forum will be located within the exhibition Who Are We Anyway? and will be in the form of a discussion about the power of personal interaction in dispelling myths surrounding refugees and their situation.  It will be facilitated by artist Jolyon Hoff. 

Speakers will include:

Dr David Corlett
Dr David Corlett has worked with refugees and asylum seekers for around two decades as a case worker, researcher and advisor.  He hosts SBS's award-winning Go Back To Where You Came From and has worked with Dateline on special investigations into conditions at the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres and allegations of abuse of failed asylum seekers by Sri Lankan security forces after they were sent back to Sri Lanka by Australia.

Muzafar Ali
Muzafar Ali is a recently arrived refugee and one of the artists from Who Are We Anyway?  Born in Afghanistan, he grew up in Pakistan, before returning to Afghanistan to work for various United Nations programs. Travelling around Afghanistan he bought a camera and documented the situation of his people, the Hazara. He has continued his Human Rights work and, while living in Indonesia, was one of the founders of the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre in Indonesia.

Khadim Dai
Khadim is a 20 year old refugee living in Indonesia. When he was 17 a bomb blew up his school and killed 126 people, so he smuggled himself to Indonesia. Four times he tried to catch a boat to Australia. The last time his sister rang him and told him Australia had changed the laws and he would be stranded on a remote island.  Since then he has been making films and raising his voice in Cisarua, Indonesia. He was also a co-founder of the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre.

Kobra Moradi
Kobra is a third year Law and International Relations student. She is co-directing a peacebuilding organisation called Dialogue Empathic Engagement and Peacebuilding Kabul. She is involved in the refugee sector with different organisations such as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. She came to Australia in 2005.  Kobra also undertook a 2 month internship at the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre.

Lucy Fiske

Lucy has worked with refugees and asylum seekers for 20 years, first as a social worker and, for the last 10 years, as a researcher. She has visited detention centres in Perth, Villawood, Port Hedland, Christmas Island and Kalideres in Indonesia. Her early work was focused on Australian immigration detention, but more recently she has become interested in how refugees stuck in Indonesia build their own forms of protection through community and relationships. 

Recent Press: BBC: Indonesia learning centre offers hope to refugee children

While the views presented by speakers within the Hawke Centre public program are their own and are not necessarily those of either the University of South Australia or The Hawke Centre, they are presented in the interest of open debate and discussion in the community and reflect our themes of: strengthening our democracy - valuing our diversity - and building our future.

The copying and reproduction of any transcripts within the Hawke Centre public program is strictly forbidden without prior arrangement.