Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored. — Aldous Huxley
The Finkelstein media inquiry should have examined the role of the media in the so-called debate on asylum seekers and refugees. With some exceptions, we have not been well served.
We have hysteria over boat people when 76% of asylum seekers in the past decade (71% in the past five years) came by air. The media seems to work on the assumption that if there is no picture, there is no news. Politicians and the media don’t notice or care about asylum seekers who come by air.
Until very recently, our policy was to lock up asylum seekers who come by boat, but allow asylum seekers who come by air to live in the community while their claims are being assessed. Hardly any members of the media seriously examined why this was so. Only now, after the government has had its hand forced due to the High Court decision, has this policy been changed — but again, that outcome was seriously distorted by outlets like The Daily Telegraph whose front page story suggested that our neighbourhoods were to be overrun with asylum seekers.
The media continually refers to asylum seekers as “illegals” when clearly they are not, and it is not just Greg Sheridan that does it.
There are 50,000 real illegals in the country who have overstayed their visas. They are headed by citizens from the US, China and Britain. They are rarely mentioned in the media.
More boat people arrived in Italy in one weekend in August than in six months in Australia. By any measure we do not have a problem but the issue has been exaggerated out of all proportion.
How do we account for the media frenzy over the Four Corners story on exports of live animals? The media then diverted its eyes from the follow-up story on the brutalisation of human beings in our detention centres. We were told about suicides and the mental distress of detainees, but we saw the cruelty to animals. Pictures of live animals obviously made it more newsworthy.
Why is it that the media give us story after story about people smugglers but little information about the brutal regimes from which people flee? Like it or not, with 44 million vulnerable “people of concern” to the UNHCR including 15 million refugees there will always be a demand for the services of people smugglers.
Relying on the media, the public believes, according to Essential Research, that 25% or more of our migrant intake are asylum seekers. The correct figure is nearer 2%.
There is little examination of Liberal Party policy to turn-back the boats, temporary protection visas and Nauru. The Fraser government in July 1979 rejected the policy of turning boats away. It rightly said that Australia “would be courting international pariah status”. In the Senate last month, Admiral Ray Griggs, of the RAN, said that turning boats around at sea was highly risky and that Navy personnel are bound by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and that the convention “would be the prime driver in the decision making of the commanding officer”. It received scant media attention. False claims and failed policies are allowed to stand.
The politics of refugees is easy news. Policy is much harder. One example is the assumption so often by the media that action we take at the Australian end will deter asylum seekers. Any action we take will be only marginal. The numbers are driven by violence and persecution in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Iran, not what we do on Christmas Island.
The criticism of the media in no way excuses the failure of the government to properly inform public discussion. The job must be done by ministers and senior departmental officials and not ministerial minders.
*John Menadue is a board director, Centre for Policy Development, and former secretary, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.
Thanx for this piece.
I agree that Australians’ concern for the welfare of animals is out of proportion with their concern for the welfare of other people. I suggest this is because animals are considered innocent, with no control over their destiny. While people may hear that refugees flee for their lives with no real alternative, this is not generally understood or accepted.
Nicely said.
And yet the Minister recently claimed Australia has the largest intake of refugees “per capita” in the world. If it wasn’t so grim it would be laughable.
The Daily Liberal Party (!) quoted Opposition Minister Morrision about those “illegals” near the front of their cartoon book recently. One hopes a class defamation action can be raised against that newspaper and him.
And as said by the author at a public meeting at Sydney Town Hall recently – where, oh where are the professional classes from within the Vietnamese Oz community, who received the refuge of Australia in the 70ies and 80ies?
Our multicultural minorities need to speak up for the human rights of other minorities. It’s a sacred duty.
Just as a million Irish diaspora fled the great famine in mid 19C. To deny those fleeing terror is a sin. Where indeed is moral tub thumper Bishop George Pell. AWOL on the real gospel business, too busy trashing God’s creation on any number of other policy areas like climate? A joke moral ‘leader’ in my book.
Your writngs Mr Menadue, overlook one very salient point. It is that the refugees who arrive by air, arrive openly with full identity papers, and thus the immediate and ready opprotunity for security and health checks to proceed according to due process. No hiding, underhandedness or skullduggery.
On the other hand the thousnads who arrive by boat through Christmas island etc, arrive surreptitiously, without any paperwork to show their credentials or good faith,and thus create a whole different problem for our border control network. If any refugee has a genuine case for assylum, let them be open and honest in their approach to our authorities – not sneaking in via this “backdoor” thus trying to shame us into accepting their illegitimate invasion of our borders.
Go John. Give it to the media in spadefuls!! They deserve it!! Mind you a
as a journo said to me years ago, with the media, if it is a choice between
conspiracy and stuff up, choose stuff up. Or are media players, editors,
subbies and reporters just lazy? Vilifying refugees and asylum seekers
is easy. Doing some critical analysis of the arguments on both sides of
politics requires thought, research, skepticism, commitment and
humanity. What really irks me is that some of the evening so called
current affairs programs, can run stories about asylum seekers taking
welfare away from Aussies, and moving into houses leaving Aussies
homeless,, with no evidence, just assertion, and no-one other than
Media Watch does anything about this appalling reporting.
Couldn’t agree more. Today for example O’Connor is over in Indonesia giving them gun boats to shoot at refugees and it is reported by the morons as “stopping people smuggling”, when helping refugees is not people smuggling and Indonesia is not our country.
And then we have Kirsty Needham hysterically reporting 545 refugees arriving in one week and ignoring details like 80,500 refugees leave home every week looking for sanctuary.
The Australian has an online gallery of muslim women being pat searched by customs officers without a single regard for their privacy (they do it on the docks in the open with men watching and doing).
Andrew Metcalfe told senate estimates last year that paying for prisons and deportations in Indonesia is nothing to do with targetting the so-called smugglers, it is to do with jailing and deporting refugees.
Two senate enquiries have shown that it is not about smuggling but seeking asylum, we are the only nation on earth who jails anyone who helps refugees even when they are disabled 13 year olds.
Here is part of the transcript that the fucking media will not read.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Senate
L&C 101
Mr Hughes—Accommodation and detention arrangements for people intercepted by the Indonesian police and immigration. It is enhancing Indonesia’s capacity to undertake returns of people found not to require international protection and assisting the Indonesian authorities in improving their immigration system.
So it is very much about supporting the Indonesian and international effort to support irregular migrants in
Indonesia, many of whom are seeking to come to Australia illegally.
Senator HANSON-YOUNG—Will any of that money go towards Indonesia dealing specifically with
people smugglers?
Mr Metcalfe—People smugglers or people being smuggled?
Senator HANSON-YOUNG—People smugglers.
Mr Metcalfe—It would not be my expectation that it would be targeted at people smugglers.”
And the rules on refoulement ignored by the lazy media as they get hysterical about 545 refugees and pretend that the arrival of Syrians and Palestinians is somehow based on our policy and not the civil war in Syria.
http://www.hrw.org/node/85582/section/8
The principle of non-refoulement does not imply any geographical limitation. In UNHCR’s understanding, the resulting obligations extend to all government agents acting in an official capacity, within or outside national territory. Given the practice of States to intercept persons at great distance from their own territory, the international refugee protection regime would be rendered ineffective if States’ agents abroad were free to act at variance with obligations under international refugee law and human rights law.[41]
But Australia’s arrogance has no boundaries or law, just so long as we keep out those pesky reffos.
[Moderator: this comment has been edited to abide by our code of conduct]