The Hobsons Bay Refugee Network (HBRN) hopes to collaborate with a new Maribyrnong group to help asylum seekers in Melbourne’s west.
The move follows a Weekly report about a Facebook group called West Welcome Wagon (WWW), started by Yarraville’s Mia McGregor, which has helped more than 100 families settle in to the area.
Ann Morrow, who started the HBRN with fellow Williamstown resident Dorothy Page, said local community groups could combine their information and resources to help asylum seekers who were on a bridging visa.
“We are identifying low-cost, reasonable-quality rental accommodation for the new arrivals, who are not allowed to work and who have to exist on 89 per cent of Newstart, and helping them with the initial legalities that precede getting a roof over their heads,” Ms Morrow said.
“We then equip their houses – to a basic level – with donated household furniture and equipment.”
She said the network’s older volunteers found it difficult to transport goods to distant locations, and sometimes found that someone else had beaten them to it. “Occasionally, we arrive at someone’s flat with a truckload of furniture, only to discover that a church or some other organisation has been there first,” Ms Morrow said.
“We don’t want to bureaucratise the system – our flexibility means we can often get aid to people more quickly than the really big agencies – but [we need] a person with logistics understanding who … might act as a central information post, thus enabling groups [that are] about to transport the goods to check whether the goods are still needed.”
Ms Morrow said the network believed grassroots action was needed to combat what she sees as unfair government policies leaving people living in limbo.
“When did Australia lose its notion of ‘the fair go’?
“When did we lose our national compassion?
“When did we stop empathising with people fleeing terror and persecution?”
» facebook.com/groups/westwelcomewagonrefugeesupport
» Email morrowann8@gmail.com » or call 9397 6000
