History of the Safety Pin

The modern-day safety pin was invented on the 10th of April 1849, by New York mechanic, Walter Hunt. Hunt, who was a prolific inventor, was born in 1796, the year that a vaccine for smallpox was developed by English physician Edward Jenner.

Despite not preventing as much suffering as Jenner’s medical marvel, there is no doubt that Hunt’s new and improved version of the safety pin has made life easier for billions of people in the generations since. Hunt’s safety pin was the first to have both a protective clasp and a spring hinge. Safety pins didn’t spring from nowhere. The ancient Romans pinned brooches into place with a safety pin like mechanism.

Walter Hunt was not the savviest businessman the world has ever seen. He sold the rights to his safety pin innovation for only $400. Although that is the equivalent of approximately $16000 in 2024 money, it’s mere pennies in comparison to the fortune that various others have amassed from safety pins.

Some of Walter Hunt’s other inventions were a new type of rifle, an ice plough and one of the forerunners of Lewis Waterman’s modern fountain pen. Waterman perfected the fountain pen in 1884.


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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References

When was the fountain pen invented? (2023) Goldspot Pens. Available at: goldspot.com/blogs/magazine/when-was-the-fountain-pen-invented (Accessed: 08 April 2024).

Inflation rate between 1849-2024: Inflation calculator (2024) Value of 1849 dollars today | Inflation Calculator. Available at: officialdata.org/us/inflation/1849 (Accessed: 08 April 2024).

History of smallpox: Outbreaks and vaccine timeline (no date) Mayo Clinic. Available at: mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/history-disease-outbreaks-vaccine-timeline/smallpox (Accessed: 08 April 2024).

National Inventors Hall of Fame (2024) National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee Walter Hunt Invented the Safety Pin. Available at: invent.org/inductees/walter-hunt (Accessed: 08 April 2024).

Looking Back Through the Years, What Do I see? Part 1

I see the most pathetic provocateur in Sydney, posing like Napolean on his parkland stage. He says that James Hardie shouldn’t have to compensate asbestosis victims. He would have me believe, he thinks its like expecting the new owner of a fish and chip shop to compensate food poisoning victims from years ago.

If that human garbage is a comedian, who’s laughing? Who would I rather be, an asbestosis victim, or a panic attack prone scuba diver who has a choice between sudden death and remaining leagues beneath the sea? Possibly that analogy provides some insight into the daily lives of the people this attention whore happily defecates on.

Is he unaware that corporations are given the rights of people, therefore they have the responsibilities of people too? Is he too stupid to realise that when one chooses to invest in a company they are the financial beneficiary of both the joy and the misery that company has wrought, and therefore are financially responsible for both? Is he ignorant enough to imagine that none of the organisations and individuals who invested in James Hardie during the asbestos products era continued to hold a stake in the company well beyond the mid 1980’s?

Could this attention whore, who is so adept at losing people in a maze of logical fallacies masquerading as facts, be earnestly expressing his views when he argues against compensation for asbestosis victims? Of course not. Is he a joker? To call him facetious would be to flatter him. Nobody was laughing. And he never gave any indication they were meant to be. I think it’s just a kind of chess for him. I believe he’s motivated by the perverse thrill of upsetting people and getting as much attention as possible while doing it.

Have any of this sad joke of a man’s most appalling publicity grabs been captured on video? I’m not sure, therefore I won’t mention his real name, his nickname, or his favourite speaking location. I suppose it’s best not to regardless, I wouldn’t want to help build his audience.

If you already know who this oxygen thief is, because you’ve had the displeasure of hearing him speak, it’s surely best to keep walking if you see him. In hindsight, I realise that. He cannot be shamed into shutting up, he has no sense of shame. If you believe in free speech, maybe you’ve got to let him keep talking, but you don’t have to listen to him though.


© Rodney Hunter, 2023

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The Plight of Refugees in Australia During the 21st Century

According to the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion (The United Nations Refugee Agency).”

What are the problems associated with being a refugee? They include being persecuted by the dictatorship in one’s home country, the danger involved in escaping from one’s country of origin, the guilt refugees may feel from failing to bring their whole family with them, the difficulty involved in proving they are truly a refugee, the anxiety they experience while waiting for their claim for refugee status to be assessed, the abuse and neglect they may experience while residing in an immigration detention facility in the meantime and the discrimination they may face from xenophobic citizens of their new country, including prominent politicians (Lees, 2021) (NSW STARTTS, 2004, Chapters 1-3).

There are various other common difficulties faced by refugees attempting to establish themselves in a new country such as Australia. Some examples include a lack of savings, unemployment, poor English language skills and social isolation due to a lack of people living nearby who speak the same language and follow the same religion as they do (NSW STARTTS 2004, Chapters 1-3).

The following case studies give a human face to the list of difficulties endured by refugees. The morsels of political history in-between reveal that the cruelty towards refugees in Australia extends beyond a few isolated cases.

Here is a summary of a case study published by the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Survivors detailing the adversity faced by a refugee referred to as Mr T. Mr T was arrested and tortured in his home country for being involved in a pro democratic party. He was imprisoned for two years. His father was arrested and died in prison.

Mr T arrived in Australia on a visitor’s visa and successfully applied for asylum. Initially, his sole source of income was a small allowance from the Red Cross. He was suffering from nightmares of torture, prison flashbacks and other traumatic memories which made it difficult to concentrate and retain information. He also suffered from guilt, because many of his family members and friends were still in prison or had been killed. In addition to his emotional suffering, he was plagued by physical problems such as back pain, tooth aches and pain from torture inflicted wounds.

Mr T came to Australia alone, so social isolation affected him a great deal too. He eventually found a job and a partner, became a permanent resident, and partially recovered from his physical and psychological wounds with the help of a physiotherapist, GP and a social worker. (NSW STARTTS 2004, p11). One problem that Mr T didn’t have to face was an arduous sea journey to get to Australia.

The Tampa crisis is a great example of the dangers that many asylum seekers face at sea. It occurred in August 2001. An Indonesian fishing boat carrying 433 asylum seekers was headed for Christmas Island when its engine failed. The nearest ship was the Tampa, a Norwegian freighter captained by Arne Rinnan. The Australian Coast Guard requested the Tampa to rescue the asylum seekers. Many of the passengers on the fishing boat were Afghans, who had fled from their home country to escape the Taliban. A few of them were pregnant women and some of them were children. According to Rinnan, by the time the Tampa reached the asylum seeker laden fishing boat several of them had dysentery and at least ten of them were unconscious (Lees 2021, paras 1-4).

Once the asylum seekers were onboard the freighter the Australian Coastguard told Rinnan to take them back to Indonesia. Some of them threatened to suicide if the captain obliged. There weren’t enough rations to feed the asylum seekers, so Rinnan sought permission to dock at Christmas Island. By August 29, Rinnan felt he had no choice but to enter Australian waters.

Prime Minister John Howard responded by sending in special forces troops to prevent the ship from transporting the asylum seekers any closer to Christmas Island (Lees 2021, paras 7, 8, 10-11, 32). It was a bizarre response to a medical/nutritional emergency from a man who claimed that his future policy of turning back the boats was motivated by compassion for asylum seekers.

Adding to the dark absurdity of Howard’s decision to use the military to intimidate the crew and passengers onboard the Tampa is the fact that 131 of the asylum seekers rescued were almost immediately resettled in New Zealand, a further 101 of them were found to be refugees and fourteen who weren’t classified as refugees were permitted to stay in Australia. Although 186 of them were not deemed to be refugees 4 of the asylum seekers who were sent back to Afghanistan were later classified as refugees by Australian authorities. These 4 were the first onboard the Tampa to be told they weren’t owed protection. Eleven other Tampa passengers who were sent back to Afghanistan were killed by the Taliban.

How many other catastrophic errors were made? According to migration agent Marion Le, sometimes multiple cases are mistaken for the same case, and it is not unusual for unsubstantiated allegations against asylum seekers to remain untested (Topsfield 2009).   

Temporary protection visas are another source of anxiety for asylum seekers. Towards the end of refugee week in 2021 the ABC interviewed Hala Al-Slame, whose husband was killed by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

“I’ve been living in Australia for eight years and wherever I go, they only treat me as my visa number,” she told the ABC. Hala didn’t only fear for her life, she was also afraid of being forced into an arranged marriage or destitution if sent back. She fled from Iraq in 2013 while pregnant with her second child. She and her 7-year-old daughter made their way to Australia via Indonesia. She was given a temporary protection visa which was due to expire in August 2022. She said that it is unclear to her what her rights are and that this leaves her feeling confused and depressed (Hussainpoor 2021, paras 1-9).

Refugees with temporary protection visas like Hala don’t have the same rights to social security benefits as those with permanent protection visas and they aren’t permitted to attend the English language classes that are funded by the Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs. They also have no legal right to return to Australia if they leave. And members of their immediate family who didn’t arrive with them don’t have the legal right to be reunited with them here in Australia.

It is usually asylum seekers who came to Australia by boat or plane without a visa who are given temporary protection visas, if deemed to be refugees (NSW STARTTS 2004, p.7). If they weren’t legally able to leave the country where they were being persecuted it was probably impossible for them to obtain a visa to enter Australia, so why should they be treated like second class citizens in comparison to asylum seekers who had the opportunity to obtain the right documents?        

The anxiety of temporary protection while living in the community is bad enough, but what about living in limbo for years in one of Australia’s offshore detention centres? Asylum seekers who arrived with valid visas may not be allowed to work and definitely won’t receive Centrelink benefits while they are waiting for their claims to be processed, but at least they have their freedom (NSW STARTTS 2004, p.7).

Between July 2013 and December 2014, the Australian government took more than 3,000 asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by boat to processing camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Asylum seekers, including families with young children, spent years living in poverty in these centres. They were abused and their health was neglected. Under international law immigration detention as a form of punishment is not permitted. Detention is supposed to be a last resort (Human Rights Watch 2021, paras 4-5).

Merciless cruelty can be expensive too. Offshore processing centres cost Australian tax-payers $8.3 billion dollars between 2014 and 2020. Detaining just one asylum seeker in Papua New Guinea or Nauru costs $3.4 million dollar a year (Human Rights Watch 2021, para 6).

In March 2019, the so-called Medevac legislation gave medical doctors the final say regarding the need for medical evacuations to the mainland from Nauru and Manus Island, but this legislation was repealed eight months later (University of NSW, Law, 2021). How can any government with such callous disregard for the health of the asylum seekers in their custody reasonably claim to be motivated by concerns about the danger they face travelling to Australia by sea?  

Thanush Selvarasa, a 31-year-old Tamil refugee from Sri-lanka, spent eight years in immigration detention, six and a half years offshore and eighteen months in hotel detention in Australia. He told Human Rights Watch that some of his friends lost their lives because of this cruelty and that he attempted suicide twice. Even after all that he was only granted a temporary protection visa (Human Rights Watch 2021).

According to Doctors Without Borders (2021) Australia’s offshore processing system has caused devastating mental health issues. Their staff have witnessed the severe mental health problems caused by being held in Australia’s detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. They’ve seen how the environment in those places’ triggers self-harm and suicide. Irrespective of the mode of transport and lack of documents seeking asylum is not illegal under international law. It’s not even illegal under Australian law, but asylum seekers are often treated like criminals nonetheless.

The Abbott, Turnball and Morrison governments even prevented New Zealand from resettling refugees who had unsuccessfully applied to settle in Australia. The Coalition finally changed its mind in March 2022, after 9 years of depriving refugees of the opportunity to restart their lives. Judging by the timing of this decision it wasn’t motivated by the sudden development of a conscience. The government must have been acutely aware of how close it was to election time (Grattan 2022, paras 1-3).

The plight of the Murragappans, a Tamil family from Sri Lanka, may have ultimately revealed a shift towards a more compassionate approach to dealing with refugees in Australia. Priya and Nadesalingan Murragappan, who are members of a persecuted minority, came to this country to escape the Civil War in Sri Lanka. They arrived separately and married here in 2014. Their two children were both born in Australia. The family was granted bridging visas. They were arrested in 2018 when their visas expired. Over half a million Australians signed a petition to support their right to return to the small Queensland Town of Biloela where they were employed and popular members of the community (Lees 2021). Despite that, it took four years and a change of government for compassionate democracy to prevail (Gillespie 2022, para 9).

Will the decency the Albanese government displayed towards the Murragappans be extended beyond high profile cases like theirs? Like the coalition government before them, the current Labor government is committed to preventing asylum seeker boats from reaching Australia (Grattan, 2022). Hopefully they will live up to their promise of processing refugee claims in a timely manner though (Asylum Seeker Centre, 2022). They have also promised to markedly increase Australia’s overall refugee intake. If the new cap of 27,000 per year is fulfilled, that is significantly more than the coalition managed in their most generous year (Refugee Council of Australia, 2021). And it’s a lot better than the previous government’s most recent caps of 18750 in 2019-2020 and 13750 in 2020-21, especially when you consider the fact that neither of those targets were anywhere near being met.

In 2020-21 the Morrison government granted only 5947 refugee visas (Asylum Seeker Centre 2022). Obviously it wouldn’t have been wise to have a large number of people travel to Australia during the pandemic. But as Refugee Council of Australia CEO Paul Power says, pandemic travel restrictions are not an excuse for processing so few refugee visa applications, at a time when the government managed to meet its migration program quota of 160,000 places.

If it comes to fruition, the current Labor Government’s new refugee intake cap will be something to celebrate, but it’s not the be all and end all. Asylum seekers having to wait years for their visa applications to be processed, while they languish in immigration detention facilities, must become a thing of the past. The Australian Government preventing New Zealand, or any other nation, from resettling the refugees it refuses to accept must never happen again. The tendency of Australian governments to highlight their generosity while attempting to sweep their cruelty under the rug must be relegated to history.

It is difficult to imagine a nation where government and voter cruelty has been eradicated, but surely the situation can improve. Will it though? How optimistic can fair minded Australians afford to be? Back in 2007, the Rudd Labor government got off to a promising start by ending offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island, abolishing Temporary Protection Visas and stating that it would only use mandatory detention as a last resort, but the cruel approach of the Howard Government was gradually reintroduced (Cooper, 2019). One can only hope that the Albanese Labor government won’t submit to the racist influences that the Rudd/Gillard government did. The myth about “boat people” etc being a threat to national security has been used to justify treating them like criminals for too long.

There are too many harmful myths about asylum seekers for it to be possible to touch on all of them in this brief introduction to the plight of refugees in Australia. Perhaps the most important one to highlight is the belief that offshore processing of asylum seekers is necessary to prevent Australia from being inundated with an unmanageable number of “boat people.”

Between 2001 and 2008, 1637 people were detained in the Nauru and Manus Island facilities. In 2008, the Rudd, Labor government closed Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres and the few people who remained in them were resettled in Australia. It wasn’t until 2010 that there was a significant increase in the number of boat arrivals. If resettling refugees in Australia encourages more people to make epic death-defying sea voyages to get here, why was there a two year delay before the numbers picked up (Edmund Rice Centre)? Could it be that the level of religious, political, economic and military conflict overseas determines the number of desperate people trying to travel to Australia by whatever means are available to them, and that our eagerness or reluctance to roll out the red carpet has far less influence? It certainly looks that way. And why the obsession with uninvited boat arrivals when more than three quarters of asylum seekers currently living in Australia travelled here by plane (Rizvi, 2022)?

As for the myths about asylum seekers that were barely discussed, or not discussed at all, in this article, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which is based in Melbourne, can tell you all about them. The ASRC has written a 44-page report called “Asylum Seekers and Refugees: Myths, Facts and Solutions.” If you would like to know more about the topic, I recommend pasting the following link into your search engine https://www.asrc.org.au/pdf/myths-facts-solutions-info_.pdf. I also encourage you to make use of the reference list below.


© Rodney Hunter, 2023

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Reference List

Asylum Seekers Centre (2022) Get the facts: How many Refugees Make Australia their Home Each Year?, ASC. Available at: https://asylumseekerscentre.org.au/australia-refugee-intake/ (Accessed: 03 July 2023).

Cooper, K. (2019) The Rudd/Gillard Government, Asylum Seekers and the Politics of Norm Contestation, UQ eSpace. Available at: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/ (Accessed: 03 July 2023).

Doctors Without Borders, 2021. Australia’s detention of refugees and asylum seekers. [online] Médecins Sans Frontières Australia | Doctors Without Borders. Available at: <https://msf.org.au/issue/australias-detention-refugees-and-asylum-seekers&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Edmund Rice Centre (no date) About Offshore Processing, Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education. Available at: https://www.erc.org.au/offshore_processing (Accessed: 03 July 2023).

Gillespie E, 2022. ‘Love conquered all’: Biloela welcomes home Nadesalingam family after four years. [online] http://www.theguardian.com. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/10/love-conquered-all-biloela-welcomes-home-nadesalingam-family-after-four-years&gt; [Accessed 12 June 2022].

Grattan M, 2022. Morrison government finally accepts deal with New Zealand to resettle refugees. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-finally-accepts-deal-with-new-zealand-to-resettle-refugees-179949&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Grattan, M. (2022) ‘Biloela’ Tamil Family Finally Gets Permanent Residency, The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/biloela-tamil-family-finally-gets-permanent-residency-188306 (Accessed: 02 July 2023).

Human Rights Watch, 2021. Australia: 8 Years of Abusive Offshore Asylum Processing. [online] Human Rights Watch. Available at: <https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/15/australia-8-years-abusive-offshore-asylum-processing&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Hussainpoor S, 2021. Hala’s husband was killed by Islamic State, so she sought a new life in Australia. It wasn’t what she expected. [online] Abc.net.au. Available at: <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-27/refugee-seeking-protection-australia-limbo-visas-uncertainty/100241390&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Lees O, 2021. How an Afghan refugee crisis at sea transformed Australia policy. [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/25/how-an-afghan-refugee-crisis-at-sea-transformed-australia-policy&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Lees O, 2021. How an Afghan refugee crisis at sea transformed Australia policy, a Crack in All of the Tyranny [online] Aljazeera.com. Available at: <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/25/how-an-afghan-refugee-crisis-at-sea-transformed-australia-policy&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

NSW STARTTS, 2004. Working with Refugees: A Guide for Social Workers, Chapters 1-3 [online] startts.org.au. Available at: <https://startts.org.au/media/Resource-Working-with-Refugees-Social-Worker-Guide.pdf&gt; [Accessed 31 May 2022].

NSW STARTTS, 2004. Working with Refugees: A Guide for Social Workers, Chapter 1.3, p.7 [online] startts.org.au. Available at: <https://startts.org.au/media/Resource-Working-with-Refugees-Social-Worker-Guide.pdf&gt; [Accessed 31 May 2022].

NSW STARTTS, 2004. Working with Refugees: A Guide for Social Workers, p11 [online] startts.org.au. Available at: <https://startts.org.au/media/Resource-Working-with-Refugees-Social-Worker-Guide.pdf&gt; [Accessed 31 May 2022].
Topsfield J, 2009. Tampa asylum seekers genuine refugees. [online] Smh.com.au. Available at: <https://www.smh.com.au/national/tampa-asylum-seekers-genuine-refugees-20141112-9ek0.html&gt; [Accessed 12 May 2022].

Refugee Council of Australia (2021) Refugee Program Smallest in 45 Years While Migration Program Quota Filled, Refugee Council of Australia. Available at: https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/refugee-program-smallest-in-45-years-while-migration-program-quota-filled/ (Accessed: 03 July 2023).

Rizvi, A. (2022) Boats are Not the Problem, it’s the 130,000 Asylum Seekers Living Here, paras. 6-7, The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/boats-are-not-the-problem-it-s-the-130-000-asylum-seekers-living-here-20220617-p5aufm.html (Accessed: 03 July 2023).

The United Nations Refugee Agency (no date) What is a Refugee?, UNHCR. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/what-refugee (Accessed: 17 July 2023).

University of NSW, Law (2021), Medical Transfers From Offshore Processing to Australia. Available at: https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/medevac-law-medical-transfers-offshore-detention-australia (Accessed: 10 August 2023).