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Subject: Banning HIV positive people from entering
Australia
Dear Prime Minister,
I write as the founder/president of The Australian AIDS
Fund Incorporated, a Melbourne-based AIDS-Care charity of
some 20 years standing, working in Australia and abroad.
We were deeply angered and bitterly disappointed by your
ill-judged remarks on the issue of admitting HIV positive
people into Australia..remarks that also clearly indicated
that you hadn't grasped that people in Australia moving
between the States are also regarded as migrants.
More vitally, given that the stigmatising of people with
HIV/AIDS is what fuels this dreadful disease more than anything,
you have spoiled Australia's global image in this regard.
On this day next week, we will be opening a junior secondary
school in rural Malawi...the Australian Secondary School
at Kambona..that'll cater for 200 teenagers, some of them
AIDS orphans. That follows the openingof our Australian
Primary School at nearby Msema that's catering for 464 children,
many of them AIDS orphans. And then you make the comments
that you did!
We invite you to repudiate your earlier comments and we
would be happy to carry a more encouraging note on our www.aids.net.au
website that receives some 50,000 hits each week.
We will also be inviting the aspiring Prime Minister,
Mr Kevin Rudd, to publicly declare his support for the retention
of the status quo.
Yours sincerely,
Brian Haill,
President,
The Australian AIDS Fund Inc.,
Frankston,Vic.3199
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