The sheer number of lies and instances of fear mongering over the medical evacuation bill is stunning compared to how relatively little the legislation actually does, but it does point to where our immigration system stands to go from here.
We had Peter Dutton claiming Richard Di Natale and Bob Brown could bring people over (false); Tony Abbott claiming there’s already ample medical care available (wrong, tragically); Christopher Pyne claiming the bill would see all detainees transferred on medical grounds (an almost-confession to what years of detention does to people); and Mathias Cormann claiming that “rapists, murderers and paedophiles will still get a free pass into this country” (horrific and wrong).
For anyone looking for some good news, up to 300 sick people have reportedly obtained medical recommendations for the first round of transfers. This is the first win of any kind for Manus detainees in six years and that’s not nothing — or at least, it isn’t nothing to detainees.
But while independent MP Kerryn Phelps, the Greens, crossbench and, yes, Labor have likely saved a number of people in Australia’s care during a genuine mental health crisis, the bill does much, much less than what activists, lawyers and international human rights bodies are currently calling for (i.e. closing the camps).
Change in motion
Now, even with Labor’s amendments, increased medical transfers may in fact turn out to be a “pull factor” for people smugglers. But according to ABC Indonesia reporter David Lipson the reopening of Christmas Island has caused more noise than the health bill. Labor, after years of acquiescence to the Coalition on the issue, was still willing to risk the fear campaign.
In Indonesia, few noticed or cared that the Government lost the medevac bill. However, the Prime Minister's announcement that he's reopening Christmas Island for business is making a splash.
— David Lipson (@davidlipson) February 13, 2019
While offshore detention remains indefinite over six years because neither the Rudd nor Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments worked out where to put people after “not Australia”, the stop-gap has hit its used-by date. People are attempting self-harm almost daily on Manus. We created a rare and devastating psychiatric epidemic amongst children before #KidsOffNauru, and dozens of lawsuits have forced the Coalition into evacuations. Even Dutton, when it’s politically useful, will admit he wants people resettled.
The Coalition has had 810 people medically transferred, moved all children to Australian detention, and even resettled some adults in the US. How did they do this without launching a new armada? Turnbacks.
Now, towing away people who are asking for our help does not intrinsically save lives, but it’s become obvious that turnbacks — not the threat of offshore torture — have slowed new arrivals. There is now a strong argument that Manus and Nauru should be evacuated, not just because they’re facilitating torture, but because this can be done — at least according to former immigration bureaucrat Shaun Hanns — without any real spike in people smuggling.
While seeking asylum by boat is and always has been a human right, post-Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years there’s next to no chance Labor will abandon turnbacks.
What all of this means for a fairly divided Labor Party and anyone in the Coalition left with a moral conscience (g’day Broadbent and Laundy), is that Australia needs to begin a new phase of asylum seeker policy.
What are the alternatives?
Andrew Wilkie’s Refugee Protection Bill, largely ignored since last year, offers a revolutionary glimpse at what’s possible, but even shorter-stage solutions exist. For example, rather than just pushing people away or paying people smugglers to take them wherever, we could monitor the asylum seekers we turn back, and then put them on a flight to Australia.
Dutton likes to throw around the fact that 14,000 people seeking asylum are currently in Indonesia just itching to get on a boat. The obvious solution here is to end Australia’s ban on UNHCR applicants and, once again, start flying them here. Lift the total regional intake, abolish carrier sanctions and reinstate family reunion visas so others can at least get on a plane and apply for asylum in the Australian community.
At the party’s 2018 national conference, Labor refused to pledge an outright end to offshore detention but it did show genuine interest in long-term solutions with an increased intake, UN funding, and a number of federal officers aimed at smuggler hotspots.
It’s clear the medivac bill will not create snap reform. Activists will need to keep fighting to end offshore processing, including Christmas Island, and after the 20-year fight to the bottom, I doubt anyone could underestimate Australia’s current capacity for systemic cruelty.
But at least acknowledging the unsustainability of offshore detention, as well as the “Canberra bubble” that once turned Kevin Rudd from closing Manus to establishing its harshest incarnation, offers a potential turning point.
The cruelty has to stop. The hate brigade always talk about “queue jumpers” but there is no queue.
So let’s create a “queue” and for every refugee who gets turned back in a boat take one from the camps. No-one would then attempt such a perilous journey and the smugglers would be out of business.
This was the idea behind the Malaysia solution which could have worked.
“Compassionate country” – and this is the best we can do?
14,000 isn’t many. There are about 150 federal electorates. Divided equally, that’s around 90 per electorate. My electorate has 14 suburbs. So that’s 7 per suburb, which I wouldn’t notice. Heck, they could live next door, and I wouldn’t notice (but then again, I hardly notice my neighbours either, and some of them are my tenants.)
Great photo of Kearney and Phelps. Good to know the nurse and the doctor uphold their professional standards.
The refugee problem is a wicked problem, with no obvious solution.
There are tens of millions of legitimate refugees in the world.
Millions of them would like a chance to settle in Australia.
We can’t take them all.
Somehow or other, some must be chosen and others denied.
How we do this is the real problem – dealing with Manus and Nauru is only a very small start.
Yes there are millions more refugees than we can help directly. As Australians we need to bear in mind that we had a direct part in causing this problem: by participating in the invasion of Iraq which was illegal, literally a war crime, and which led directly to the formation and spread of the self-declared IS state; by our participation with the US, again illegally, in the proxy war in Syria; by our supply of materials of war to Saudi Arabia which enable its prosecution of its war in Yemen; by our indifference to, and now complicity in, the illegal colonisation of the West Bank territories. All of these action are causing people to leave their homes unwillingly to seek safety in other countries. The number of people displaced, whose displacement we have contributed to, is in the millions. And now we are watching silently while our “great ally” builds up steam to launch further wars against Venezuela and Iran, coincidentally two of the world’s biggest oil producers. Soon to be refugee producers.
Well said Rais.
Well, Australia has a role in some, but not all. Not Iran, Sri Lanka, Myanma, Sudan, Somalia….all big sources of refugees. Not to mention sub- Saharan Africa.
Not all of course. We are a small but unhelpful player. Out of your list unfortunately we have contributed to one major source of refugees. We provide training to the vicious Myanmar military Tatmadaw which can only assist in its atrocities against several non-Burman minorities.
Well said. Included on the list should be Central America as well. The US has supported death squads and military dictatorships there and is now seeing the end result with millions trying to leave the violence and disfunction a century of US interference has caused.
I was in Guatemala in 1980 and saw first hand the devastation caused by US backed death squads.
Over the next ten years over 250,000 people, mainly Indigenous Guatemalans and critics of the government were murdered.
Plenty of cheap coffee for the US. Blood coffee.