It is unfortunate that Australia continues to see asylum seekers and refugees as crucial to the political and economic life of the country. Since that Tampa incident during the Howard government, the so-called ‘flood’ of people seeking asylum has remained in the national consciousness and has been used as a tool for unscrupulous politicians to generate fear and hatred in order to ensure their continued electoral success. And, in one of these strange and terrible quirks of fate, it seems that the more international condemnation there is, the more certain segments of the political classes dig in their heels and insist upon their sovereign right – their sovereign right to what? Mistreat people?
It almost led to the collapse of the ALP – certainly, a party that claims to be progressive was riven with internal disagreements about policy – and that led to the inevitable lurch to the right as, in an effort to combat the vitriol from the LNP, the ALP invented progressively more cruel punishments for asylum seekers. And who can fault them? Amidst the turmoil of the Gillard-Rudd governments, the Tories were sowing seeds of fear amongst the fertile fields of nascent racism present in Australia’s middle classes. And, surprisingly, perhaps, the Tories did it in a way that was clever: rather than coming out with their desire for stronger border control thinly disguised as racism, they hit upon the idea of saying that their harsh policies were actually ways of saving people from drowning at sea, and therefore they were actually being humanitarian about it all.
As I said, it was fertile ground, and suddenly everyone could get behind the ‘stop the boats’ refrain, and with it, Tony Abbott’s single successful policy. Of course, there remains a great deal of debate about whether we have stopped the boats at all – the purchase of fishing vessels from Vietnam suggests otherwise, and the UN has recently released a report indicating that there are increased numbers of people travelling by boat across all of Asia. What appears to have happened is that boats have been stopped from reaching Australia’s borders, which is all that the AUstralian government wanted, apparently. Essentially, it boils down to this: we don’t care if you die or are tortured or persecuted, as long as you do it somewhere where we can’t see, and it’s not our problem. Meanwhile, plenty of people still arrive in Australia by plane, and then seek asylum – which puts the lie to the whole queue jumping claim made by idiots and ignoramuses. But because that’s not in the news, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist.
You can tell I’m furious about the whole thing. Anger only gets you so far, and what is actually needed is a workable solution that does three things:
1) Prevents people travelling by sea at the mercy of fragile vessels.
2) Provides a means for people to be assessed in a fair manner as to their refugee status.
3) Is morally right without abandoning any chance of electoral success
Personally, I think that we should process all refugees in Australia, on shore. We should close down Manus and Nauru and work with the Indonesian government to curb people smuggling. I’m also conscious that it’s not a particularly popular point of view, whether it’s morally right or not, and so it’s unlikely to win elections.
(More to come on this issue).