It is unlikely that the bill that could revive the Malaysian agreement, which has been introduced into the Lower House, will ever get to the Senate. While there are many things about the Malaysian agreement that are good policy that should still be supported, including resettling 4000 additional refugees, there are significant questions that arises from the failure of this bill that few people are addressing in detail.
These questions relate to the call for onshore processing and reach behind the simplicity of of this “catchphrase” to the complexity of how a robust system can be designed in the Australian context. For all those who vote against the bill introducing changes to the Migration Act, there is a far greater challenge that will arise immediately afterwards.
How will we build an onshore system that does not permanently damage asylum seekers who will become future citizens? How will this system maximise voluntary return for failed asylum claimants and not send them home in worse shape than they arrived? How will we sustain community care that does not overwhelm an already-stretched housing stock that remains too limited even for Australian low-income families and the homeless? All of these questions are pertinent to the building of an onshore processing system and yet few seem to grasp the challenges that lie ahead.
There is no doubt that a broad-based onshore processing system based on community care is possible. Many other countries do it as has been documented by the International Detention Coalition and the Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project, both of whom have completed comprehensive reports on community care models in a range of countries.
However, Australia has a unique challenge with the bipartisan support of mandatory detention and a significant housing shortage for vulnerable people. Contrary to many views on mandatory detention, it is not the “mandatory” part of mandatory detention that is the largest problem. It is the long-term nature of detention that creates the damage.
In a unique piece of research released this week by the Yarra Institute, the author Tony Ward has costed the long-term health impacts of extended mandatory detention on the Australian health system. The report demonstrates that, on plausible assumptions modelled on a Netherlands costing framework, adverse experiences in extended detention could add some $25,000 to the average lifetime health costs for each successful asylum seeker who will become a future citizen of Australia. If the aim of an asylum processing system is to achieve good outcomes, either effective settlement or voluntary return, the long-term nature of detention is not achieving it.
In contrast, there are few people who would argue that asylum seekers arriving in Australia either by boat or plane should have a process of capturing biometric data, establishing identity and assessing risk to the community. For those who arrive without a visa, this may take longer and so the mandatory part of this process may include a short period of time detained to undergo these checks. In other parts of the world this is called mandatory processing, which ideally is swift, may take place in a detention centre or may take place at a reception office depending on the mode of arrival.
The real challenge for Australia is that we have had such low numbers arriving in an unauthorised way by boat compared to other countries we have been able to afford fiscally to maintain mandatory detention in an extended form. If numbers increase, not unlike many other countries, we will be in a position where we will have to seriously review the way we receive people and process their asylum claims outside an extended mandatory context. The cost from a human perspective as well as a financial one, will become too great.
This is not a unique challenge globally and if we do not wish to embark on a system that harms people permanently through harsh onshore measures, we are going to have to seriously think about how community care options can be expanded without leaving people in destitution, in inappropriate housing or in competition for housing with vulnerable Australians. This may include the need for investment in community-based infrastructure or strategic partnerships with state governments to create additional housing stock that may be shared with transitional housing or other forms of care.
Whatever the creative solutions that arise, there is scant detail or imagination about this from those who have called for onshore processing. If this bill does fail, it is going to take a lot of support and encouragement from all those who voted against it, and all those who called for its demise, to input into what should be a far better reception model for asylum seekers onshore than we have had for a very long time.
*Caz Coleman is a member of the Council for Immigration Services and Status Resolution, advising the federal minister for Immigration and the Detention Health Advisory Group. Opinions expressed are her own.
Community processing of asylum seekers is a no-brainer.
It is humane, cheaper and proven to work.
Quietly without tabloid noise- 1500 people have moved from detention centres into the community in the past 7 months. They have lived in suburban houses and ex church communities AND THE SKY DID NOT FALL IN. No one ran away.
What those of us close to these folk- families and teenagers mostly – know is that they regained their mental health, started to sleep again, their children started to laugh and play again and the teenagers went to school, learnt to catch trams and trains, ride bikes, shop and cook and clean their houses.
“I feel like Human- before I was just animal” man from detention centre as he counted the stars outside his Brisbane flat.
The challenge is to now move the 5000 unaccompanied men from the isolated hellholes where they are going mad. These men are also human. They need to breathe “the freedom air” also in order to survive.
In June 2011 there were 1500 people in community detention.
In July 2011 there were 998 people in community detention.
500 people moved from CD to full visa status.
NO ONE HAS TAKEN THEIR PLACES IN COMMUNITY DETENTION and THERE ARE 5000 people STILL LOCKED UP.
This is our challenge.
Remember costs- human and economic.
Cost per person per year in Detention $137.000
Cost per person per year in Community detention $10,400
Figures from Joint Parliamentary inquiry evidence on website.
IT IS A NO BRAINER.
The 1 billion $ per year saved by abandoning off shore processing could go some way to alleviating the public housing shortage.
Thanks for this article. It spells out some of the issues we are now facing regarding the processing of asylum seekers. The author rightly points out that its not enough to agree that onshore processing should occur. There are many questions to be answered and many practical decisions need to be made. It occurs to me that the government has to resolve the asylum seeker issue openly with information and reasons for decisions and actions fully explained to the public. Any solutions need to be collaboratively determined in order to get any essential bills through the parliament. The collaboration needs to be multi party, pretty much in the way the multi party climate change committee worked. If the coalition doesn’t want to take part, but continues to attempt to wreck, so be it. If a fair, humane solution can be found and explained I trust the Australian population sufficiently to believe they would support it and the coalition will begin to render themselves increasingly irrelevant.
In a country that needs immigrants the fact that this debate is occurring at all seems very strange.
Agree with everyone – so far! (Hopefully the Abbott supporters/nutters will refrain??)
I read a recent article that asserted, that the Immigration Dept is telling asylum seekers who wish to appeal their negative decision/s, that they’ll have to pay $25,000 – even though Legal Aid is more than willing to represent them. Could it be that the Dept is doing this because the overwhelming majority of negative decisions are being overturned on appeal? No, surely not!