Julia Gillard achieved her “year of decision and delivery” in relation to carbon pricing, health reform and the mining tax, but her self-appointed task of resolving the issue of asylum seekers remains unfinished at year’s end.
While the government has taken commendable steps to move away from mandatory detention, it has no policy to address the need to reduce the risk of asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Australia.
Nor does the Opposition, or the Greens. The Opposition insists that three demonstrably ineffective policies — towing boats back to Indonesia, processing on Nauru, and temporary protection visas — will deter boat arrivals. The insistence on temporary protection visas, in particular, given they encourage people to risk their lives to join family members in Australia, borders on immoral.
The Greens insist onshore processing is the humanitarian response, without specifying how it deters people from risking their lives to reach here and take advantage of it.
Meantime, too many people wait in refugee camps, declared by the UNHCR to be genuine refugees, but unable to secure permanent resettlement.
Refugees are a global problem, and Australia can only play a limited role in resolving it in our region. But it can do more. And in particular, as a civilized society we need to find ways to prevent people from risking their lives while extending protection to as many people as we can. Our politicians, collectively, are failing us and failing their moral obligations.
We do not get to decide that getting here one way or the other is the problem.
Are you a moron? It is not the transport you cretin, we just don’t want the refugees so just shut up.
We don’t care about the live ones, why do you think we care about the dead ones beyond using them as pawns.
It is a lie to suggest that getting here by sea is so dangerous it must not be allowed when the reality is Australia could accept thousands of refugees via Indonesia each year but simply refuse to.
We do though pay for the corruption of the system in Indonesia by paying for the cops, the immigration officials and every one else.
To claim we have to pretend that breaking the law is humane over the deaths of a couple of hundred people when last year alone 9 million children under 5 died in famine and wars is spurious beyond belief.
In the words of refugee law expert James Hathaway
“A smuggler, in contrast, is simply someone who assists another to cross a border without official permission. The transaction is consensual, reflecting a decision on the part of the refugee that the short-term hell of life onboard a container ship is better than the risk of being persecuted at home. While human smuggling is perhaps normally to be opposed — borders do matter, and laws are laws — it should also be recognized that human smugglers play a critical role in assisting refugees to reach safety.
This is the nub of the issue. Governments around the world have vilified plain old human smuggling — that is, assisted border crossing with no exploitation or coercion involved — in a completely dishonest way. We know that many of those on the boats that periodically arrive at our shores are genuine refugees. We know that no state — including Canada — will grant a visa to a person who wishes to travel here in a law-abiding way in order to claim refugee status.” and
“Indeed, the UN Refugee Convention, which Canada helped to draft and signed, expressly allows refugees to travel to our shores without prior permission, and requires that they be exempted from penalties for breach of immigration laws. Why? Because the treaty’s drafters knew that countries would not — understandably — abolish border controls in order to ensure ready access for refugees. Yet the drafters also knew that if refugees faced the same barriers as all other would-be migrants, access to the protection guaranteed by the Refugee Convention would be summarily defeated. The middle-ground position agreed to was to refrain from challenging the right of states to control most immigration, but to require governments to ensure that refugees are not caught by exclusionary rules. When Canada single-mindedly demonizes all smuggling, it runs roughshod over this carefully crafted compromise”
So Bernard and Crikey and prattlers galore, we break the law and then punish the victims again.
And
Whatever the risks, every person has the legal right to make the decision about departure for him or herself. The relevant rule in such cases is not rooted in refugee law but in the requirement in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rightsi that all persons be allowed to leave any country, including their own. Allegedly humanitarian steps taken to shut down escape routes – such as the formal agreement between the US and Cuba in 1994 requiring Cuba to “… take effective measures in every way it possibly can to prevent unsafe departures using mainly persuasive methods” – are unlawful and paternalistic.
And the crap about not letting people risk their lives is just that. We endanger our own lives every time we cross a road, shall we ban crossing frigging roads as well.
Well said, Marilyn. Again you have hit the nail on the head.
Crikey, we are having the wrong debate here, our refugee policy is illegal, inhumane and possibly racist. That is the debate we need to have. To start the debate from the wrong end as we have done serves merely to cloud the issue. Let us treat refugees in accordance with our legal commitments, just do it.
Marilyn is right, the “boat people” are being flogged to death for political purposes. Nauru is Christmas Island but further away, is more costly, where justice and human rights can be ignored and the media can be locked out. It will not stop the leaky boats or the suicides. The Temporary Protection Visas for genuine refugees ensures that leaky boats are the only available means by which wives and children and genuine refugees can be reunited. There is no way that “turning back the boats” will do other than kill people – some of whom may be Australians trying to rescue people at sea.
A regional centre for processing asylum seekers would be wonderful but nobody is lining up to accept genuine refugees.
We are going to have to recognise that there are millions of people who have been and will continue to be displaced by war, tyrannical governments, destructive industrial practices and extreme weather events. We can begin to improve the situation by reducing our expenditure on defence (?) spending for aggression such as submarines and other toys for boys and spent the money speeding up the asylum seeker processes.
The reality is that the assessment of a claim is 18 hours work with 2 years of pushing away papers to avoid a positive decision.
I am impressed though with the ability of well heeled white people to white out the rights of others.