Australian Border Force (ABF) has stood by its Zero Chance anti-refugee campaign after it was revealed refugee schoolchildren in West Java as young as four were given playing cards stamped with the Australian government coat of arms with illustrations of people in a boat on heavy seas.
As Crikey revealed yesterday, staff at Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre in West Java alleged three unidentified Indonesians trespassed on school property a week ago and handed out about 80 packs of playing cards to children aged four to 12 — before taking photos of the children, without parental consent, holding the cards.
The cards were marked with the government’s Zero Chance message, as well as a URL and QR code that leads to the Australian government’s Zero Chance website.
The ABF told Crikey that offshore deterrence messaging was a “critical component of Operation Sovereign Borders’ effective multi-layered approach”.
“This type of engagement helps ensure people smugglers who manipulate vulnerable men, women and children are defeated, and importantly, prevents loss of life at sea,” it said.
It did not respond directly to questions about whether the Home Affairs Department had authorised giving playing cards to children.
“Engagement” activities such as this are outsourced and providers get relevant approvals from local authorities to hand out material. It is understood that campaigns based on bipartisan policies during a caretaker period are accepted under caretaker conventions.
Muzafar Ali, co-founder of the learning centre, said he was concerned the cards were distributed in the lead-up to the federal election. The centre works with adults and parents to ensure that they remain vigilant and are not targeted for political use, but Ali said that the fact children were targeted this time was “exceptional”.
Alison Battison, director principal at Human Rights for All, an Australian law firm dedicated to assisting asylum seekers, said it could be the first direct marketing to children by the Australian government, and would not be “reflective of international law relating to asylum seekers and refugees”.
A statement from the learning centre said it did not publicise the incident before the election, because it did not want to encourage its political use.
The playing cards were distributed a week before the Liberal Party sent out text messages on election day saying that the ABF had intercepted “an illegal boat” trying to reach Australia.
The texts, which will be investigated by the Labor government, told voters to “keep our borders secure by voting Liberal today”.
Ali said he would like the Labor government to “deal the situation with dignity with respect, not making [sic] this a political issue”.
In February, the government held a film competition for Sri Lankan filmmakers “to creatively express ‘illegal migration to Australia’, showcasing that there is zero chance of successfully travelling by boat to Australia”. The competition angered refugee advocates.
The Zero Chance website also features games simulating a boat journey to Australia. The only outcomes are being banned by Australia, being caught by border control or being tricked by people smugglers.
Be nice if Albo could get rid of the Duttonesque “macho” term “Border Force” all we need is the old name of Customs and Immigration.
Agree.
Utterly agree!
Even its own employees refer to it as Border Farce. Many Customs and Immigration employees were not happy with the change and Gung Ho Duttonesque attitude.
The insensate powergrab by Spud, eagerly enabled by the inexplicably risen-without-trace bloodless bureaucrat Pezzullo, of combining Immigration – previously a department with well defined domestic concerns – with Customs, which since its inception in Elizabethan times has had external responsibilities, was never about anything other than empire building by shameless, dare one suggest racist?, dog whistling politicians.
The infantile militarism of the change to black, death squad/SS style, uniforms should have alerted anyone with the IQ of a desiccated cumquat that they were up to no good.
That demonstrably precludes any of the previous government and the shoutjock ranteres & ravers.
Restore the original, separate and mutually exclusive departments under different Ministers.
Personally, I’d like to revert to the original term, Customs & Excise but, in the brave new globalized, zero tariff world excise has become a swear word, to our great damage & harm as an independent entity, aka nation.
Very well put
Hear hear. Get rid of Home Affairs altogether and put ASIO back under AGs, reinstitute the Customs Service and re-establish Immigration and Settlement Services.
It was all a power grab by Dutton – he c overed all our internal and external security stuff, and didn’t do it all that well . . ..
And the black uniforms, so reminiscent of an era 80 years ago.
My last comment had the n-word, so got rejected.
Time to split the Abbott/Morrison/Dutton paramilitary force which treats arriving passengers as criminals. Must reinstate Dept of Immigration from Customs.
‘Border Force’ sounds like the result of an advertising agency all-nighter. No doubt ‘force’ was a big hit in the Liberal cabinet room.
I’m sure the likes of Abbot, Morrison and Dud-Dutton love the sound of it. I wonder who thought up the black uniforms.
I wonder were the uniforms made in Australia?
More a US nativist import…..
Giving these out to kids is just so distasteful. The government policy is well-known, it’s as though these guys revel in being bastards.
By the way, I wonder how the caseload over there is going? You know, those who were being encouraged to apply properly and not “jump the queue”.
Absolutely disgusting. This morning’s radio was filled with accounts of how traumatising it was for American primary school children to do lockdown drill. Here we are running a scare campaign to children of already heightened vulnerability in order to manipulate their parents.
And justified in those bureaucratic formulations of “ends justify the means” logic beloved of dictators, terrorists and colonialists. The weasel words about “protecting” them fool only whose prejudices make them willingly gullible.
How much has this cost us (monetary and reputationally) – and whose bright idea was it?