Gough Whitlam said that “only the impotent are pure”. He was referring to the state branch of the ALP in Victoria in the 1960s. It could just as well be said of the Greens today. Their posturing on asylum seekers and formerly on climate change has played into the hands of cynical opponents.
The Greens oppose overseas processing of asylum claims, yet it is the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement that has given oxygen to people smugglers persuading desperate people to take dangerous sea voyages.
It was regional processing in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand during the Fraser government that resulted in one of the most co-operative and successful managements of refugee flows in history. Regional processing is essential, but the Greens oppose it.
It is true that the number of boat arrivals who seek asylum in Australia are minuscule in world terms. More asylum seekers arrived by boat in Italy in one weekend during the Libyan crisis last August than come to Australia in a year. But we have a political problem with boats that is exploited by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. The Greens are abetting them in the name of policy purity.
It is true as the Greens say that Malaysia has not signed the Refugee Convention. But no country in the arc from Yemen to Australia has signed the convention. Asylum seekers coming to Australia come through that arc of countries. An important feature of the Malaysian arrangement was that it was a first between a signatory country to the convention (Australia) and a non-signatory country (Malaysia). UNHCR supported the substance of the arrangement and saw it as an important precedent in relations between a signatory and a non-signatory country.
We would all like countries of the region to be signatories, but the political facts are different. In any regional arrangement we have to deal with non-signatory countries. Nauru has signed the convention, but mainly for financial benefit. Even though Australia has signed the convention, mandatory detention of boat people is clearly in breach of the convention. The UNHCR has consistently pointed to Australia’s breach of the convention.
It is also true as the Greens say that we should increase substantially our refugee intake, particularly from transit countries. Adjusted for population increase since the Indochina intake of the late 1970s and early 1980s, our present offshore intake is only about one quarter of what it was then. But the posturing of the Greens about increasing the intake does not address the immediate problem that the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement has encouraged people-smuggling.
These diversionary tactics by the Greens are designed to avoid the current pressing issue — people risking their lives in dangerous boats.
The Greens must also accept major responsibility for the decline in public support for effective action on carbon pollution. They opposed in the Senate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of the Rudd government. Belatedly the Greens then supported the Gillard government’s legislation, which is much inferior to the CPRS. In the intervening years we have seen acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science on climate change. As a result, public support for a carbon tax or Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40% today. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.
Whether on climate change or on asylum seekers, Australia is paying a very heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. Asylum seekers are paying an even heavier price. The Greens have helped put the people smugglers back into business through opposition to the Malaysian arrangement. That arrangement offers the best prospects for building effective regional processing. It is far from perfect but it is an important first step.
*John Menadue is a fellow at the Centre for Policy Development and was secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs from 1980-83
Thank you Mr Menadue.
You are only stating the obvious.
It is bad enough that the Conservatives are the party of the bullies, now we have the Greens joining them.
What a stupid, short-sighted article. The Greens can’t be blamed for the failure of the major party’s migration and climate change policies. They need to wear it themselves.
If the major parties had always had the same policies as the Greens on asylum seekers and climate change, then the entire argument of this article would be moot. The Australian public should take the blame for not voting the Greens into power.
Well, that argument makes as much sense as anything else written here.
Heh – each article opens with why the Greens are correct and ends with why the Greens are wrong.
Symptoms of cognitive dissonance – conflicted between his rationality against his historical political allegiences…
Why publish this $#|! Seriously, if you want to publish an article that is nothing but a (weak) excuse to attack the Greens then you could cut and paste from The Australian. On refugee policy there is nothing stopping the government from instituting a Malaysia solution apart from the opposition now and in it’s previous legislation the High Court – NOTHING to do with the Greens at all. If Australia had been applying Greens policy on refugees we would already have in place mechanisms in neighbouring countries to safely resettle people AND have developed a positive attitude in our own society.
As for the pissweak carbon pricing legislation we have
1) it is in fact significantly better with its associated renewables support and investment packages than the last version of the CPRS
2) the CPRS was in fact killed of by a gutless Labor party under pressure from vested polluters and an obstructionist Coalition…
3) which continues to oppose ANY carbon pricing and even threatens to dismantle the current one
4) the acrimonious “debate” is almost entirely coming from the coalition, a biased media and of course polluters
5) We only have ANY kind of carbon pricing mechanism in place becasue the Greens forced Labor to support one!!
This article is in fact typical of the pathetic and misleading type of journalism that we get from most media and commentators around “controversial” issues such as climate change and refugee policy (etc etc). It twists facts around until they either fit the authors or outlets ideology or serve to distract from any real debate about policy by setting up a straw-man such as the Greens supposed “responsibility” for the major party’s, media’s and indeed think-tanks failings.
A poor job, poorly done sir!
Also a FAIL stamp for Crikey as a publisher.
Disclaimers, yes I am a Greenie, yes the current carbon pricing mechanism is a bad joke, yes I support the Malaysia policy
John Menadue attacks the Greens for opposing the Malaysia Solution but what the Greens are opposing is the return of people who have arrived in Australia to Malaysia not the forward processing of people in Malaysia or Indonesia. Such return of refugees to a non signatory country is in breach of our international obligations. I am no expert on Green policy but my understanding of the Greens position is that if refugees and asylum seekers were registered with the UN as refugees in Malaysia or Indonesia on their way to Australia and once recognised as a refugee given assisted and safe passage to Australia, the boats would be stopped and the Greens would have no problem with this.