The ongoing backlash against asylum seekers is about votes,
votes and more votes. Meanwhile, where do the rest of us go to seek asylum from
our politicians?
As
the last federal election loomed in 2010, you might have just been able to get
a cigarette paper between a muddled Julia Gillard and “turn-back” Tony Abbott
on the nation’s embarrassing asylum seeker carry-on.
Name
a solution, any solution – Nauru, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Pacific,
poor old Christmas Island, whatever out-of-sight, out-of mind local location
you could think of – and now, of course, the inhumane and unprecedented Manus Island PNG wing-and-a-prayer, buck-passing solution. Whether
or not any of them make sense, they all meet the ultimate cop-out: the
“not-in-my-bloody backyard solution.”
You
don’t have to be a political genius to work out that this current bout of fear
and loathing has precious little to do with individuals from some remote
foreign starting point prepared to risk everything – including death – to get
to our cherished continent.
It’s
about votes, votes and more votes. And for the rest of us out here in
voter-land, it’s an invidious choice between the lesser of evils.
At
least we know Rudd and Abbott agree on one thing. Neither of them has an
honourably workable clue how to get the nation out of the quagmire it’s been in
for decades on this sorry issue. Motivated by domestic politics, they are
battering each other to convince us that once elected, they will stop those nasty
people smugglers and their leaky boats. As a result, fewer would-be refugees,
will die and our borders will be more secure.
In
other words, an over-night miracle achieved, that will be touted as Australia’s
contribution to tackling the worsening humanitarian calamity of 45 million
displaced men, women and children around the globe – as distinct from the
measly half of one percent of them causing us political apoplexy here in
Australia.
Meanwhile,
the dragged out, politically amoral duck-shoving on the issue must surely have
damaged this country’s reputation as a “good global citizen.” Or maybe that
doesn’t bother us?
Don’t
ask foreign minister, Bob Carr. Amazingly, Carr has decided to write off most
asylum seekers as unacceptable economic refugees. As for Scott Morrison,
Abbott’s shadow immigration spruiker, he spends his waking hours befuddling us
with double-speak about pushing, towing or turning the boats back to somewhere
– anywhere, so long as it’s not Australia!
Respected
experts counsel that this country’s bi-partisan failure to implement
widely-accepted international human rights standards on asylum seekers is at
odds with its moral and legal obligations under theUN convention on the status of refugees, the
very raison d’être for having a UN high commissioner for refugees, the law of
the sea, let alone our own migration act.
James
Hathaway, an expert on international refugee law and professorial fellow at
Melbourne University, points out that Rudd’s PNG deal is without international
precedent. “This plan is without question the most bizarre overreaction I have
seen in more than 30 years of working on refugee law,” he recently told Radio
National Breakfast:
It
makes no sense. The only mandatory deportation to PNG is going to be so-called
boat arrivals. Does the prime minister think that every refugee should arrive
with a Qantas first class ticket in order to be real?
Hathaway
says the UN convention decrees that a country cannot penalise refugees “for
arriving without authorisation.” This, and the Rudd plan to dump them on PNG
are both an illegal and discriminatory penalty.
Hathaway
goes even further, asserting that Australia’s refugee crisis “doesn't really
exist compared to other developed countries,” pointing out that our annual
in-take of around 30,000 refugees is “a totally average, absolutely manageable
number.”
What
Hathaway found “striking” was that unlike any developed nation he had
experienced, Australia has been attracting genuine refugees as boat arrivals
almost exclusively. Yet it was these so-called “boat people” who have attracted
Rudd and Abbott’s mutual ire. “It’s the most extraordinarily bizarre singling
out of the very group that ought to be the one we should care about the
most.”
Given
Australia’s politically expedient bi-partisan obsession with so-called
“boat people,” in the run-up to the 2010 Federal Election, the author
interviewed Sydney University professor Mary Crock, an international migration
law expert. Her take amounted to an intriguing “psycho-political” explanation.
“I
think Australians have a deep historical fear of invasion by the sea,” she told
me. “We’re not unique in that respect. Many countries around the world
overreact when people come by boat to seek asylum.” I asked whether she was
suggesting that because until quite recently countries were invaded by boats,
Australians are more worried by refugees trying to get here by boat? “There are
certainly historic precedents for that,” she said.
The
salient fact is that most potential refugees come to Australia by plane, rather
than by boat, claim refugee status, and more often than not, get it. “Yes, we
don’t get concerned by that,” Crock told me. “People who come by plane are at
least processed. They present their passports at the airport to get into the
country, whereas people who come by boat often come without any documentation
of any kind – no health or character checking at all.”
Hence,
the government retains its tendency to view “boat people” as purely illegal
immigrants who’ve jumped the queue. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out ad
nauseum in an inconclusive debate, it is not illegal to seek asylum.
As
I write, Rudd’s latest off-shore solution, Manus Island, has been condemned as
a “hell-hole” and a “gulag” and Abbott’s spanking new Colonel Blimp plan is to
turn the waters off the West Australian coast into a virtual war zone by
sending in the troops.
Meanwhile,
where do the rest of us go to seek asylum from Australian politicians?
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