Here we are right back where we were a year ago on asylum seekers. Boats foundering en route to Australia, mass drownings, and a spike in the number of people trying to reach Australian territory by boat.
Four hundred and thirty four, to be exact. That was the number of people who reached Australia in December 2010. That’s how many have reached Australia so far in December 2011. The latter number will most likely rise before the year ends.
The most awful number, that of the drowned, will never be known.
Nonetheless, things aren’t quite the same as 2010. That year saw the last stages of a surge in refugees in our region that pushed up dramatically the numbers of asylum seekers heading for Australia under the Rudd government. It began tailing off from late 2010 and this year saw a significant drop. This is the comparison:
Maritime asylum seeker arrivals 2010-11
This year, there have been 3330 arrivals, compared to 5930 in 2011, according to the numbers issued by the Minister for Home Affairs every time a boat is intercepted. Establishing whether the failure of the Malaysia processing agreement — struck down by the High Court on August 31 — has had a material effect on arrivals is thus difficult to determine.
The surge in arrivals after September matched, though remained lower than, the increase for the same period in 2010, until December. Now, however, the numbers are in alignment — numbers are returning to 2010 levels, though it’s only once we see regional and global asylum seeker numbers from the UNHCR for the second half of this year that we’ll be able to satisfactorily determine the extent to which numbers heading to Australia have defied regional trends. That is, the extent to which overall “push” factors have influenced any “pull” factors that might be at work.
Nonetheless, pending further evidence, there appears to be a case for the argument that the high-profile failure of the Malaysian solution has indeed prompted a rise back to 2010 levels.
Opinion now seems to be shifting to recognise that, to the extent that if the Australian government can take action to deter people from risking their lives, it should. Plainly the current policy, however humane, doesn’t work. Mandatory detention has lost whatever deterrent value it once had, and is now merely a costly burden on taxpayers. Temporary protection visas, as proposed by the Coalition, are demonstrated not merely to not work at deterring asylum seekers, but attract the families of those already here.
Offshore processing without some form of international or regional framework — as at Christmas Island or Nauru — merely delays the arrival of asylum seekers at a destination such as Australia or New Zealand, and they know it.
The policy cupboard is bare. The only viable option is offshore processing under a regional agreement that means asylum seekers have no guarantee of reaching Australia. Coupled with a significant rise in our refugee intake to more than 20,000 a year — we’re one of the world’s richest countries, when most of the developed world is struggling economically; we can afford it — would be the most humanitarian policy (that also happens to be the one Chris Bowen took to the ALP conference).
Insistence on onshore processing is a non-policy. It substitutes personal morality for public morality, and fails to recognise that when governments act, there are impacts far beyond those immediately advantaged or disadvantaged in a way that is never the case with individual actions.
The onus now is on the coalition. Tony Abbott has been caught out. Rejecting the government’s offer of discussions on offshore processing looks like the most childish form of the negativism for which he is renowned; unexpectedly, a major tragedy has put the focus on the need for a solution to the issue just when Abbott was persisting in playing politics with it. A failure to agree a concrete policy that has a realistic chance of deterring people from risking their lives while fulfilling our humanitarian obligations isn’t merely a policy or a political failure, it will be a moral failure.
I heard that Mark Latham tried (at least partly) to blame the Greens for the failure to have offshore processing. I laughed out loud. There are 150 votes in the lower house – and apparantly labor and the coalition both support off shore processing. That leaves about 6 independents including the 1 Green. probably 5 of them would vote for offshore processing. Maybe 4.
Hmm… 148-149 other voices somehow cant get off-shore processing organised (even though they all supposedly want it!) and the 1 Green is to blame! Do the numbers Mark! They only need 76 to pass it!
The greens have always supported ON-shore processing. It is not a surprise that Adam Bandt would vote against any off-shore processing plan if it ever comes before Parliament. But really… blame the 1 vote in the house of 150 for the inability of Labor and the Coalition to get past their pride and hatred for each other? You have got to be joking.
Is Mark Latham for real? Maybe he is just a computer generated image projected up to the world by some genius scientist hiding in a cave somewhere. (has anyone really ever seen him in real life? see!)
On a more serious note: this is a most difficult issue with no simple answers. Every solution suggested has problems and potential disasters within it. I like the idea of increasing out refugee intake to 20,000 – we could start with the backlog in Indonesia. That might just stop the boats from there, if the refugees that are there, know that they might get placed within a year or so (instead of within 15-20 years as it is for them now – and during that time they can not work for money or send their kids to school – and we wonder why the boats come…) Of course, such a plan could increase the pull factor to Indonesia. Maybe. One thing is for sure though: While there are wars and persecutions, refugees will always be moving from place to place.
Abbott will never agree to any proposal the Labor puts up. That’s obvious. It’s not the House vote that requires the Greens vote, it’s the Senate. Equally obvious.
The same applies to the senate: if all who supposedly want offshore processing voted for it, the 9 Greens senators could not stop it.
Personally, I am glad for this roadblock, this time, (Labor and Liberal pride and selfish party ambitions) because I am apparantly one of the minority who want onshore processing.
A year on we have another Labor mess. They are encouraging boats here with their latets back flip. They should agree to send them to a UN certified country and stop bribing Indonesia with funds as it is not working.
Totally disagree with you Bernard.
I find the endless mantra that we can “stop the boats” completely bizarre.
The consensus seems now to be that we must stop boats from coming as it will stop people from drowning. This is premised on the notion that a) it is entirely pull factors to blame and b) the boats will actually stop.
The only way to stop the boats entirely is to stop people wanting to leave their homes in the first place. That is, of course, impossible. People will leave and will take the risk no matter what. People will die in boats but a lot won’t.
This cruel to be kind thing is the worst kind of high moral groundism- any stupid policy or abuse of human rights can be excused as “stopping people drowning”. Any opposition to these policies can be shouted down as the stuff of clueless lefties who don’t care if people drown trying to get here- as if it was something entirely within our political control.
The hypocrisy of this false concern is that, while beating our breasts about the terror of drowning at sea, we’re quite happy to let many more people’s lives rot in Malaysia, Nauru or wherever else we can fob off our problems.. Shit, we only care about stopping the boats getting TO AUSTRALIA. If people drown elsewhere, or live and die horribly in their own countries or in some hellhole we’ve dumped them in, our sympathies are somewhat lacking.
This is a false, bullshit argument which perpetuates the illusion that Australia is being flooded by boat arrivals, that we bear more than our fair share of asylum seekers, that there is a “queue”, that a strong enough deterrence is all you need and that “stopping the boats” is a fix or a “solution”. It sickens me that everyone’s lapping it up.