Edited by Sasha Francis
“You can be strong on borders without being weak on humanity. And on every issue, that’s what’s missing from this government — humanity.”
This is a tweet written by Anthony Albanese in December 2019. Albanese was the opposition leader at the time, and this was his public reaction when the medevac law was repealed by the previous Coalition government.
Today, in 2023, Albanese is prime minister. Despite previous strongly worded public statements against offshore detention and the associated abuse of human rights, the now-governing Labor Party recently voted against the Migration Amendment (Evacuation to Safety) Bill.
This bill was introduced by Greens Senator Nick McKim, and would have seen the remaining 160 refugees from Port Moresby and Nauru transferred to Australia for medical treatment. With both the Liberal and Labor parties opposed to it, the bill did not pass.
After fleeing ethnic persecution in Iran and seeking asylum in Australia, I was detained as a refugee at the Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea. I was held there from 2013 until it closed in 2017, before then being moved to Port Moresby with the other detainees in 2019. Once released, I was not welcome to live in Australia, and instead was granted permission to stay in New Zealand, where I now live with refugee status.
I was never supposed to set foot in Australia again, but recently I briefly visited for the opportunity to meet with people across the country, many of whom said that they voted for Labor in hope of policy changes, especially regarding refugees. It is now clear Labor has forgotten its promises — it aims to continue the same policy approach to refugees as the previous Liberal government.
Many of those I spoke to sadly believed that Labor had indeed already brought change, but this shared belief is more indicative of successful government propaganda and narrative manipulation than of any real difference.
The Labor government has adopted a media strategy whereby positive examples, such as the Bioela family and their happy photos, offer a deceptive symbol and celebration of change, distracting from the fact there has been no actual substantial shift in policy.
This positive spin masks the government’s recommitment to populism and hypocrisy. Where the Coalition government deployed explicit propaganda against refugees and was not afraid of sadism and cruelty, Labor deploys hypocrisy. Both parties politicise human rights, though the tactics and the language are different.
Labor uses strong human rights language when discussing its position on refugee issues, but its actual policy continues the same cruelty seen throughout the previous Coalition government. Though the recent decision to allow 19,000 refugees the opportunity to apply for permanent visas is welcome news, more than 12,000 refugees who have lived in Australia for more than a decade remain in legal limbo.
Contrary to the Labor government’s declaration that all people in Port Moresby and Nauru would be free by the end of 2023, a recently approved contract worth $420 million with the Australian wing of the controversial American company Management and Training Corporation (MTC) suggests the government anticipates the continuation of offshore detention for at least the three-year duration of the contract into 2026. Further damning are accusations of gross negligence and abuse of human rights regarding MTC’s management of private US prisons on a number of occasions.
Labor has continued the inhumanity of the previous Liberal government. Indeed, Albanese and his government remain accountable for the tragedy that continues to unfold in Port Moresby, Nauru and Australia. After years of fighting on these issues, refugees and migrants remain marginalised and forgotten in Australian politics.
Labor has tried to hide its failure to change the detention industry behind the language of rights and the isolated celebration of particular cases, while at the same time hypocritically voting against the very same bill it spoke in favour of before being elected.
Labor’s hypocritical approach and its manipulative tactics have significant consequences that extend beyond damaging the lives of those remaining in detention and of refugees. Importantly, the strategies deployed by the Albanese government in relation to these issues directly influence and shape emerging Australian political culture.
As politicians learn how to hide atrocity behind discursive morality and such practices become more commonplace across party lines, it is only a matter of time before this hypocritical approach can, and will, be applied to other issues within Australian politics.
Contrasting its election rhetoric and the hope of change it represented, Labor continues to torture people who have been in limbo for a decade. This is the reality. It’s not what the government wants to show — it would rather take happy photos with a few refugees.
In Australia, the mentality that condones detaining innocent people remains entrenched, and the detention industry flourishes.
Do you agree the Albanese government’s refugee policies are cruel and hypocritical? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I find it extraordinary that a Labor Government would pursue this cruel LNP policy from Morrison’s days. That Morrison and cronies would do this is not surprising given their record of people hating but continuing it makes no sense. They are also pursuing prosecution of whistleblowers despite claiming to give them more protection.
So I ask, what is going on. Is Albanese trying to surrender Government or has he got some wild cards in his cabinet that he has failed to control? He is rapidly becoming the Prime Minister we don’t need to have. And in the process we might be sending the best and brightest of our refugees off to other countries.
Labor has supported pretty much every aspect of offshore processing since day dot.
I have no idea how anyone could be surprised or think it extraordinary that Labor is continuing these policies unless they were born yesterday. Labor was in it up to its neck in setting up this system, it bears much of the responsibility, and the way it acts now is fully consistent with its actions ever since it got it fingers badly burned with the Tampa incident.
They didn’t get their fingers burnt over tampa, Beazley stood should to shoulder with Howard.
Today’s no way policy was Gillard and then Rudd thanks to the hard core racists in the ALP
You need to pay more attention to the deeds and less to the pretty noises.
What is going on? It’s less Labor changing and more people suffering from some delusion that Labor is social-democratic, benevolent, cares about human rights, inequality, refugees, the poor, sick and old. Or the environment and global heating. It’s all pretty talk but no walk, just some vague promises and mostly inconsequential tinkering at the edges, more keeping up appearances than real action. Fairness, honesty, transparency, principles, no-one left behind? If only it wasn’t so depressing I’d laugh.
It’s also mind bogglingly expensive. We throw hundreds of billions of dollars a year away at this cruelty project.
Why?
So the ALP can not feel vulnerable to losing elections?
Our government pays more to house a small number of displaced refugees in a hellhole environment than it does to accommodate the many thousands who are homeless within Australia. Bizarre priorities which reek of Morrison/Dutton but which also sit comfortably with Albanese.
That is a great reply. I hope someone in Labor notices it.
No, so the people involved in running these places continue to make bank.
Surely you didn’t mean to say billions. Hundreds of millions a year.
Which is still totally insane of course
Before the election I was pretty cynical about the Sh*t Lite Party, but even I’m getting a bit surprised at how loathsome Labor has become.
Like I keep telling everyone, and was hoping for before the election, we need a Labor minority government if we want any decency.
I volunteer at a the Romero Centre in Brisbane which provides a welcome and support to asylum seekers. Since the change of government, there has been a noticeable drop off in donations. Many people think that the problem is solved. As Behrouz has written, a couple of good decisions in individual cases but the problem of inhumane treatment of refugees continues.
I do think that Minister Giles is less mindlessly cruel in relation to on-shore detention than were the LNP Ministers. He releases people detained by the LNP for completely unfathomable and unjust but legally available reasons. But his apparent instinct for fairness got reined in when it was important to the Labor government to send a signal that (as Behrouz says) ‘nothing has changed’ to the seas border policy since the change of government, even though PVs would be offered to 19,000 people here for 10 years+. It was important to Labor to land the Nauru Instrument and to re-detain released onshore detainees just before the announcement of the 19,000 on the Pathway to Permanency – presumably because the gnomes in DHA advised that such a Pathway 9which of course they would oppose) will ‘get the boats started’. They are so brainwashed in Labor they honestly cannot think of any way of stopping boats heading for Australia other than being nasty to those already here or on Nauru or in PNG. Or maybe it is just that it is cheap to set up a panic, as compared with actually patrolling the sea border and actually turning back boats (Labor policy). And the free border-protective propaganada unintentionally provided by Behrouz and others who oppose Australia’s sea border and other refugee policies is presumably appreciated by DHA or they would put a stop to it somehow.
It shouldn’t be so surprising that Labor have these policies now.
Keating started Mandatory detention.
Gillard re-opened Manus and Nauru.
Rudd announced that nobody arriving by boat would be given asylum.
They are Labor policies.
Indeed. In early February, when introducing the late instrument to re-declare Nauru as a country of indefinite offhsore detention and general in-community entrapment for boat arrivign asylum seekers and refygees, Minister O’Neil referred to a speech in 2012 by Chris Bowen. For some in Labor ((burke, Marles…) it is almost as if they wish they had been government since 2013 so they could have the 10-year record of being the ones who actually invented and carried out being tough on boat arrivals (couched as’ stopping the people smuggling trade’, a bad joke if ever there was one). They are pretty nasty, frankly. And their best mates run DHA which, of course, runs the lives of every non-citizen in Australia.
Bowen wrote the illegal human trade with Malaysia and it would have happened if the High court hadn’t shot it down, Marles wrote the illegal MOU with PNG for the illegal prison Behrouz was stuck in, O’Connor rammed through illegal retrospective laws to make it illegal for anyone to help refugees on the baseless lie that it was people smuggling, Burke was just ignorant and nothing will convince any of these criminals that seeking asylum is legal ergo there is nothing to do with people smuggling and there are at least 5 protocols and treaties we are party to that explicitly state that.