For a while now the Opposition have been gunning for an inquiry into the administration of asylum seeker detention facilities, presumably to embarrass the government over recent problems. The Government said it was a stunt. Now the Opposition has its inquiry, but The Greens insisted that the inquiry be about the mandatory detention policy itself. As they said, they want to look into causes rather than symptoms.
The committee will be made up of four government members, four opposition members, two Greens and one independent. I can’t find a site for it yet.
With a bit of luck we might now have a mature conversation on the subject, which Julia Gillard said last year she wanted, rather than a point-scoring slanging match.
Meanwhile the whole asylum seeker policy is running into heavy weather.
Malaysia has been playing hardball, deleting all reference to human rights in the agreement, saying they want to exercise discretion over who they take and by the way, they won’t take unaccompanied children.
Bowen is insisting that he won’t exclude unaccompanied children. Sarah Hanson-Young says that Minister Bowen is the children’s legal guardian and to send them away is illegal.
Indeed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay doubts the legality of the whole Malaysian refugee swap deal. Now the UNHCR, which had accepted the deal, has now pulled the plug.
In particular the UNHCR representative says the agency was caught by surprise when it became clear that the Australian Government intended to include unaccompanied children.
I’d assume that without UNHCR support and cooperation the deal can’t happen.
Now the ABC News Online Investigative Unit reckons the Government has been hushing up detention breaches:
Former high-ranking employees from the company that manages Australia’s immigration detention centres say systemic mismanagement of taxpayer funds is being “swept under the table” by the Government.
In a series of explosive allegations, two former employees of the private security firm which has a $756 million contract with the Federal Government claim fines for contract breaches at detention centres are being pushed to the side “for political reasons”.
The employees have also detailed lax security practices at the Christmas Island detention centre.
Refugee advocates of the standing of Marion Le and Julian Burnside are now saying they prefer the Pacific Solution and Nauru to the Malaysian deal, and, finally, in Western Australia 14 state Labor MPs signed a petition condemning the plan to send unaccompanied minors to Malaysia as part of the refugee swap.
Ben Wyatt, for example, has put his head up and said his piece.
Asylum seekers was one of the issues where Gillard said Labor under Rudd had lost its way. I wonder where she thinks Labor is now.
The most recent post on asylum seeker politics is here.
Thanks for the links to the latest news, Brian. The Malaysian Solution seems to be imploding.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the interesting article. I am pleased to see the Greens challenge the whole “need for detention”. After the Howard years, I did not think I could be more ashamed of our stance on refugees, and yet here is an ALP government proving to be every bit as inhumane.
Why have we forgotten the basic fundamentals of human rights in this rush for a pragmatic solution? How can we claim an unaccompanied child is a threat? Why is it so difficult for us to offer refugees refuge? I am a simple gal, and I am baffled.
It frightens me that we victimise the victim and justify this as a preventative strategy. WTF? Why are we not going back to the root causes?Why are we not compelled to intervene in a way that would prevent people having to travel across the seas in leaky boats risking the lives of their beloved children?
We spend so much on war in other countries. But do where is the analysis or action to prevent the human suffering that causes refugees? Are we part of the solution? or just part of the polution?
I can now see why old hands in WA Labor backed Eric Ripper against untried but promising Ben Wyatt in the recent party leadership rumblings here. The children on board those boats are the responsibility of their parents or guardians who paid considerable sums to people smugglers for passages on leaky boats to Australia. Photographs of the very latest arrivals suggest there are more of them than usual. Is this a deliberate attempt to test the resolve of the federal government? Whatever, the narrowing of the issue simply to the question of unaccompanied minors being sent to Malaysia where they could be caned gives Tony Abbott a chance to scuttle the efforts to find a way to prevent their ever being placed at risk of death on the high seas.
At best the inquiry will help publicise the issue but the major parties won’t let anything interfere with their bogeyman. The Gillard coup was about the return of power for power’s sake – if you want a sense of the ALP’s moral compass, look at Bitar jumping ship for Packer and Crown. As for WA, it’s easy to have a conscience when you’re out of power but it must be nice to have a parliamentary representative that isn’t a reptile. One-and-a-half cheers for them, then, for admitting publicly that it isn’t good to send lonely children to prison camps in brutal dictatorships.
At worst this will be a small step towards an Abbott government, but I doubt it.
Pigs might fly too. This circus is just going to go on and on. Whatever good the Greens try to do, and good on them for trying. because at least they’re trying to provide the country with some kind of moral compass smashed by Howard and the current Howard clone who is our PM, it will be drowned out by the usual filth from Gillard and Abbott. This could turn into a long and angry rant, and like some other LP-ers I really don’t have the energy any more.
Nothing evil that comes from this clutch of reptilian time-servers in the Coalition and Labor can surprise me any more.
Once more I am ashamed to be Australian.
Thanks for the post Brian.
Listening to SHY over the last two days I disagree that the Greens are any sort of a moral compass. They have become as sordid as the two main parties. There is no party or individual who could claim that position without being laughed at.
“Stopping the boats” has morphed into “breaking the people smuggler’s business model” as the excuse for the latest bastardry. We are supposed to believe that both sides have the best interests of refugees at heart. So outrageous actions liking transporting children to Malaysia on their own is actually helping the overall situation because someone in Indonesia is going to shut up shop and once again Australia won’t have to worry about the hordes of “illegals” from the north. What utter, callous bullshit.
On transporting children, Bowen is now saying that cases will be considered on their merits. What he appears to mean is that younger children and teenage girls won’t be exported, but males claiming to be under 18, whether they are or not, will be sent off.
There is said to be a pattern where the kids are sent on ahead, with the rest to follow under family reunion.
Tiny Dancer:
Blind belief in the moral superiority of the Greens would of course be foolish, but their stated policies include an end to offshore processing and mandatory detention, making them a moral compass on this issue.
At best it is possible to argue that mandatory offshore detention is a necessary evil that is offset by a greater good. That’s the same argument that is always made for death camps and gulags, but it isn’t necessarily invalid. Perhaps the Soviets really couldn’t afford to have an intelligentsia undermining the revolution. I think Australia can afford to house a few refugees while they’re processed.
If the safety of refugees and the abatement of dangerous boat journeys the government’s real concerns, the government’s best international strategy would be to improve the way Indonesia and Malaysia treat refugees, so people fleeing the Middle East and Central Asia would feel comfortable applying for asylum there instead of having to continue south at great personal risk. Instead the government is using Malaysia’s criminal treatment of asylum seekers as a way to outsource intimidatory torture.
Brian at #8, you say there is “said to be a pattern where the kids are sent on ahead” so that their adult relatives can take advantage of reunion rights once their children are granted refugee status. But you don’t say where you heard this intriguing rumour. Please provide a source for this.
Your theory would suggest that the proportion of children on boats should increase when reuinion rights are made more generous. In reality, the number of children and women on boats seems to increase when reuinion rights are curtailed. Famously, the majority of those killed on the SIEV X were women and children whose husbands/brothers/fathers were already in Australia, having been granted TPV’s that did not include reunion rights. See here:
http://sievx.com/articles/challenging/2006/20060206SueHoffman.html
I still don’t get the need to send people already here back offshore for more processing. Expensive and pointless?
Won’t ANY of them grow up?
Tiny Dancer, I just wonder exactly what Sen Hanson-Young has said that you find so sordid. The few things I’ve heard over the last couple of days have assured me that her moral compass is working fine.
Any possibility of a mature conversation with this opposition is a pipe dream. They view everything purely through the prism of a way to parlay themselves back into power at the next election. Indeed, there is some talk that they already think they’ve won it.
I say again, if the Government really wants this issue off the front page (and I’m convinced that at this stage thats all they do want), abandon mandatory detention and let the assylum seekers live in the community. There may be other problems, but the current problems are unlikely to figure among them.
mandatory detention is really wrongful detention.
if they really want to stop the SMUGGLERS, how about heftier penalties, like 10 yrs in gaol with no parole. it’s the smugglers that put people in danger by taking their money and putting them on dodgy boats, and therefore putting their lives at risk. it’s the smugglers we want to deter. 10yrs in gaol AT LEAST is a punishment worthy of reckless endangerment and manslaughter (in the case of the christmas island deaths).
as for the refugees themselves, let them free while they’re being “processed” (after getting I.D like fingerprints), just like we do with the fly-ins.
The stated policy of the Greens is irrelevant. Their actions are what counts and unfortunately they fail as miserably as the rest.
Ah, but jusme, people who arrive by boat are “different” somehow – exactly how, Ive never been really sure, but they must be, mustn’t they? The logical inconsistency in our treatment of these two groups of people is obvious to everyone, but its not allowed to be mentioned in the political discourse because everyone has backed themselves into a corner.
My main worry with this (apart from how poorly we are treating these people – I thought we were better than that), is that the Government is playing into Abbotts hands and he may well win the next election. I can only echo Jeremy Sears views on that here:
http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/where-alp-inactivity-is-preferable-to-liberal-party-destructiveness/
Is it possible that Malcolm Turnbull will challenge him before then? We can only hope…
It would be interesting to see, if two successive boatload to arrive, were %100 women and children.(as dangerous as it is)
I think the perception would change from one of fear and mistrust, to one of sympathy.
Like it or not, women and kids are seen as needing protection in Australian culture , men are not.
DInr, dont forget sexism is de rigeur with the current Hansonist Abbott oppostion. SHY, along with Milne (never mind Bob Brown on gender preference) remain two of the biggest targets outside of Labor for the Murdochists and Tories.
But the Duty of Care aspect travelling actually is the point of Brian’s comment, to me; it is beyond acceptability that kids are shoved on planes and dumped some where else, without even an accompanying guardian to protect the young ones interests, this is so un-Australian as to defy comment.
Anglican bishop of Tasmania has come out against mandatory detention.
Tiny Dancer, WTF are you talking about?
You’re certainly not contributing to a mature conversation.
@19
Hahahaha!! I don’t know where to start with that one.
Thats gold!!
Can anyone actually spell out what the benefits of mandatory detention are for Australia?
How dare the ALP and the Coalition try and stop people exercising their human right to give their money to whoever they want , get in in unsafe boats to undertake a hazardous journey with the possibiltiy of losing their life.
Well, 24, they are only trying to get here because their own often poor countries have been reduced to uninhabitability by people who are usually our allies.
Altho it does serve them right when they will stand under areas inadvertantly bombed by drones looking for phantoms real or imagined in the way of “terrorism”.
They haven’t collected water skis off that boat that sank off Xmass Island a few months ago, so evidently they weren’t visiting for recreational purposes, altho apparently”surf’s up” quite well off Xmass Island these days.
No, its clear to me now. Those boat people obviously got frustrated at not being bombed into permanent wheelchairs, with only the aid of poorly-fitting prosthetics to help cope with it. So they hopped on a leaky boat heading straight across thousands of miles of ocean, to Xmass Island, so they could get dashed up against the rocks on the windward side of Xmass Island, bunning cuggers that they are.
DI. Answering a comment. Read the thread. WTF are you doing? Pissing in the wind?
How about we fix the problem by merging the Dept of Immigration with the Australian Livestock Export Corporation. They could each learn a few tricks from each other.
They tried elsewhere, akn. Funny organisation of big nasty beggars, run by a bloke called Himmler.
She says one thing and supports the opposite. I am surprised you can’t see it. It is pretty obvious.
I heard it on ABC radio. I have no idea whether it’s true.
I accept what you say about SIEV X, but would question whether as such it is relevant to what’s happening now.
The “moral standing” of a country with respect to refugees depends on things like:
1 The net acceptance of refugees each year?
2 How refugees are treated after acceptance? (Including those given temporary protection visas if they are brought back in.)
3 How asylum seekers are treated during the assessment process?
4 How fair and free from corruption the assessment process is? (Giving preference to people who can afford to pay smugglers is not fair.)
5 How rejected asylum seekers are treated after rejection?
6 How much is done to help both people caught in refugee camps and the countries that are caught with large numbers of refugees in their camps?
It is interesting to run various policies through these tests assuming that 1 and 6 will be the same in all cases. For example, the Malaysian solution may stand up OK if it really does stop the boats – but it will come out a lot worse if there are still boats arriving we really do have to send people to Malaysia. (The Thai solution might be better under these circumstances)
Temporary protection visas may also come out OK provided there is a time limit (after which the visa becomes permanent) and the people on the temporary visas have all the rights that permanent visa holders have apart from permanence. (It may allow more people with long term claims to be accepted.)
Some of the softer options for boat people may actually come out worse if the result is worse for item 4 plus the risks associated with the boat trip.
A mature discussion would be nice.
I’m still at a loss, Tiny Dancer. What exactly has Hanson-Young said / done that has upset you so much? Everything I’ve heard from her is in line with Greens policy and is an attempt at a mature discussion of mandatory detention. You, otoh, seem to be more interested in having the usual grinding, point-scoring stoush about this.
A good caning never hurt anyone
OK, it did, but that’s the whole point.
Serves ‘em right for being reffos. [/irony]
The dilemma: treat asylum seekers decently and hence encourage increasing numbers of dangerous sea voyages or treat them inhumanely, save lives and win the Western Sydney vote.
I wish this issue could be relegated to the minor matter for the Immigration Department that it essentially is, and removed from the political sphere. I haven’t yet figured out how to do that, although shoving the News Limited opinion leaders and radio shock jocks into mandatory detention for a few years might be a useful start.
That’d be a good start, Jenny, although sending them to Malaysia would be even better.
jenny said:
This is a false dilemma. It’s the inhumane treatment both in their home countries and in the internment camps along the way that inclines those who can’t take a plane here to try irregular entry by sea. Also unstated in your description of the problem is that “saving lives” may in practice be no different from ending lives or brutalising lives, albeit that this will occur out of sight and there fore out of the minds of those not trying particularly hard to think beyond their own immediate concerns.
It’s really very simple. We make taking a dangerous and expensive sea journey unappealing by giving those in refugee camps in Malaysia and Indonesia who have been assessed as being refugees by the UNHCR the documents they need to get onto an aircraft, or we put them onto a ferry that we provide, and bring them here.
We settle them in suitable communities, giving them the training and support services they need, with a case manager to ensure they can navigate through the blend of state and non-state provided services. We ensure that whatever skills and knowledge they bring are built upon to allow them to function in a trade or profession and would perhaps qualify as migrants under skilled migration in other jurisdictions.
If they are interested in settling in some place other than Australia, we act on their behalf to facilitate their entry on one basis or another to those countries.
We use the success of these programs to persuade the ignorant bigoted voters in Lindsay that their existential angst was without foundation, and rather shameful and unworthy of the kind of people we actually do value in this country.
Oh … and we avoid paying truckloads of money to companies like SERCO while we’re carrying out our obligations as civilised human beings.
It’s not so hard really Jenny.
You’ve persuaded me, Fran. 22,628,649 to go. Godspeed.
Fran said:
Fran I suspect, that might make the people currently on welfare a tad upset.
She says all the right things but brings no pressure to the government, nor does anyone in her party. Moral compasses would not only say the right thing, but do the right thing. Pretty poor effort for the government, of which the greens hold significant power and the two major parties. A failure all round.
@39
Er … didn’t the Greens insist that the recently constituted inquiry examine the policy of mandatory detention, something that the govt claims is essential for a robust border protection regime? Doesn’t that mean they are bring pressure to bear on the govt?
It is OK, now. There is no need for mandatory detention. Our and the US’s ally, Israel, has shown us the way forward with our Australian border threat problem.
Live bullets and tear gas. And problem border crossers just run away.
Jenny @34: Despite what i said @31 I think what we should be doing right now is to treat the people who are arriving by boat decently while continuing to make things difficult for the smugglers by destroying the boats (after arrival), imprisoning the crew for a while and being harsh to smugglers if we catch them. The numbers arriving by boat are simply not sufficient to justify all the fuss that is going on at the moment.
I would also bring back temporary protection visas in cases where there seems to be a real chance that the home country problem will be fixed in a couple of years. It worked well for the Kosovo refugees came during a crisis and were then returned. The caveat here is that temporary visa holders get permanent visas after say two years if the home problem has not been fixed. They should be treated as though they will probably stay permanently.
@39, Well TD, if your own moral compass dictates that one shouldn’t discuss an issue unless one can solve it, like, yesterday — how very convenient that is for conservatives who like to pretend the status quo is just dandy. Let’s just shut up about the problem unless we’ve solved it already.
You want to pour scorn on the Greens because they offer a critique to the policy consensus of the two majors, but have so far failed to single-handedly solve the myriad problems created by the two majors? Fine. The solution would be to vote in more Greens, so they can carry out their more moral policy platform in this area!
Wot Tiny Dancer said:
Wot Tiny Dancer meant:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can’t have
nice thingsa mature conversation on mandatory detention.Critiques and inquiries. Let me stand back and watch in awe. They have a significant position in this government yet they will not exercise this power for good. They harp on about the problem but they have become a part of the problem. We have had hundreds of inquiries and nothing changes. They need to tell Gillard to change the plan and start treating people like human beings or their support will be withdrawn. Gillard would not have any option but to do the right thing.
Mercurius, perhaps Tiny Dancer wants a pony as well.
let’s assume there IS a “queue”.
if asylum seekers by boat are “queue jumpers”, doesn’t that make those that get here by plane simply rich and organised q jumpers?. i dislike q jumpers too (especially at the bottle-o), but i really don’t think it applies to anyone fleeing violence.
do those that come by plane have a number or similar, which they courteously wait to be called before boarding? somehow i don’t think so, i think they get on the 1st damn plane they can.
so technically, to be fair to all, the offshore processing solution *should* include those that arrive by plane also (except those that have some proof it was ‘their turn’). which would make the system even more fawlty towers silly than it is.
@45 – Excellent TD!
So, as a demonstration of your moral compass, when a party like the Greens announces a policy position you actually agree with; instead of throwing your support behind them, you tear strips off them and call them every name under the sun. And that makes you ‘part of the solution’, how, exactly?
Yep. Still standing back in awe at another inquiry and some critique. I agree with the critique but the lack of action, given the finely balanced government we have is pathetic. Davo. Shove your pony where it fits.
Malaysia has announced an amnesty for all 2 million of its migrants. People-smuggling solution, maybe? And Abbott is charging off to Nauru at the same time. He’s going to look a bit out of place… upstaged, perchance?