Politician Jacqui Lambie is about to be immersed in the global refugee crisis as she joins SBS’s Go Back To Where You Came From Live. Lambie will be sent to a warzone, the exact location of which cannot yet be disclosed, as Australia watches on in real time over three nights, 2–4 October.
She will be joined on her journey by Sydney immigration lawyer Marina, 28, who came to Australia as a refugee of the Bosnia War, fleeing Sarajevo with her mother and spending time in a refugee camp as a child. Along with six previously announced participants, they will have their pre-conceived ideas about refugees challenged as they get a first-hand experience of the global refugee crisis, and opinions from all sides of the debate are confronted.
Lambie was a Tasmanian Senator from 2014 – 2017 and during her time in parliament campaigned on , and issues. Lambie and has campaigned to ban the burqa in Australia. Before her political career, Jacqui served in the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police.
Immigration lawyer Marina is a refugee advocate who believes Australia is not making a great enough contribution to the global refugee crisis.
“What we are doing wrong is demonising the act of seeking asylum,” she says.
“We are focusing on vulnerability of forced migrants refugees rather than their strength, their potential and their contribution to Australia,” she adds.
Her personal experience has greatly shaped her opinions: “My family fled war, so I know what it means to be a forced migrant and to be accepted as a refugee.”
Jacqui believes that Australia should direct resources to fixing its own problems, rather than refugees, and is also concerned about new migrants to Australia not integrating.
“We need to worry about our own backyard first,” she says.
“You have the Chinese in one place, the bloody Muslims in one place, the Indians are taking over the suburbs. That’s not integration,” she says.
Other participants previously announced by SBS will also travel to some of the most dangerous places on earth in pairs – comedian Meshel Laurie with ex-AFL player Spida Everitt; writer and performer Gretel Killeen with prison youth worker and anti-refugee provocateur Steve; and fence-sitter student Gareth with young conservative Dannii.
Journalist Ray Martin and SBS World News presenter Janice Petersen will be stationed in the ‘Nerve Centre’ in studio in Sydney, as the stories unfold through a mix of documentary elements and live crosses to participants on-the-ground in conflict hotspots and frontlines across multiple continents, witnessing the complexity of mass human migration and its ripple effects in 2018 in SBS’s most ambitious television event to date.
Go Back To Where You Came From Live airs over three consecutive nights, 2-4 October, 8.30pm, LIVE on SBS and streaming live on SBS On Demand.
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