When I die, I want to die peacefully and in my sleep, just like by dear old grandma. Not yelling and screaming like her passengers in the back seat.

You’ve probably heard that one before, but often people joke about the way they want to bow out.

When asked how they want to die Mr Casanova will tell you he wants to be taken out by a jealous husband, while the gangsta rapper will rap about a hail of bullets.

However no matter who you talk to possibly the most common answer to the question of, ”What is the worst way to die?” is burning to death.

Anybody who has suffered severe burns will tell you of the excruciating pain, it is a death that nobody likes to imagine for themselves.

How strongly must someone feels about something then to take their own life by dousing themselves with petrol and setting themselves alight?

This is not just another way of committing suicide, this is done when you want your death to not only be remembered but to act as a catalyst for change.

Many of you will have seen the photos of some of the Buddhist monks who set themselves ablaze in the streets of South Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War.

The first of the Buddhist monks to do this was Thích Quang Duc who was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.

Photographer Malcolm Brown won a Pulitzer Prize his photograph of the fiery suicide protest, that many of you may recognise from the cover of Rage Against The Machines first self-titled album.

So profound was the way in which this monk performed his protest and so great was the worldwide impact that US President John F Kennedy said this of the photo

“No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”

So why bring this up now?

On Saturday in Geelong Leo Seemanpillai made the decision to end his own life.

He did this not by jumping off a bridge, or taking a bottle of pills, instead he chose to douse himself with petrol and set himself alight.

Now I don’t pretend to have an insight into Leo Seemanpillai’s mind as to why he would choose to end his life this way, but I don’t think is a huge assumption to make that it was to attract attention to his plight.

Why else would someone intentionally choose such a horrific way to go?

Leo’s plight was that he was a refugee who was in Australia under the rule of arguably the most heartless government this country has ever witnessed.

Leo had been on a bridging visa since last May and arrived in Australia by boat in January 2013 after fleeing Sri Lanka and spending a few years in an Indian refugee camp.

He has remained in limbo in Australia not knowing what his future holds and fearing deportation which he is aware could come at any time.

Leo also lived with the knowledge that despite the UN and other countries like England condemning Sri Lanka for allegations of war crimes such as rape, genocide, and the torture that Leo had suffered, Tony Abbott seemingly accepted these crimes by stating…

“We accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen”

…and then applauding their actions by showering the Sri Lankan government with gifts of military hardware.

Leo decided that the most hideous and painful death that most of us could imagine was a better option than what he thought Scott Morrison and this Coalition were going to have on offer as he feared he was to be sent back to the torturers that our government had rewarded.

This was not some lone nutter or some kind of trouble starter, even in his death Leo Seemanpillai sought to help others. Leo did this by not only making sure that his death was noticed as a way of highlighting the plights of others, but even in the most simple of ways also. Leo was also insistent on being an organ donor so his liver, an eye, both kidneys and a lung have been removed for donation, a parting gift for needy citizens of a country that failed him.

As I write this on Christmas Island asylum seekers are sewing their lips together in a hunger strike that is a show of solidarity for Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati, who was bashed to death on Manus Island on February 17. Meanwhile the Salvation Army have described the suspect of Berati’s murder, a coward who bashed an unarmed man to his death, not as a gutless murderer but as a “Hero”.

I guess I measure my heroes differently to the Salvation Army.

What I find a real kick in the guts to those of us with a shred of humanity about us is that our taxes are paying for Scott Morrison’s department to either hide facts, distort facts, or just plain lie about what is going on.

The government that claims a “budget emergency” still needs to find $8 Million of spare change to pay spin doctors to cover the arse of this Minister for Arrogance and Immigration.

I hope the family of Leo Seemanpillai know that not all Australians are like the Coalition.

Some of us are human.