Seeking Asylum Down Under: Did they queue?

 

   Jewish refugees looking for a safe haven in the late 1930s

Back to the future on Nauru -- 2005 and what's changed?

 

 

"My interest in asylum seeker issues gathered pace as Director of the aid program put in place to leverage Nauru’s part in the policy to keep boat people outside Australia’s immigration zone, otherwise known as the ‘pacific solution’ (a term attracting growing infamy).

From a paltry few scholarships per annum, post Tampa the Australian taxpayers have been footing a huge bill to keep Nauru on side. Nauru is a failed state. It was a failed state prior to the AusAID and DIMIA funding that forms the ongoing ‘bribe’ to keep the detention camps open on Nauru. The plight of asylum seekers detained on this benighted speck of guano continues in our name, paid for by our taxes.

 

Prominent refugee advocate, Julian Burnside QC, reminded Australians of the grave implications of these actions on Nauru The Age (27 March 2005):

"Julian Burnside QC said it was not an offence to arrive in Australia without a visa and ask for asylum. Yet the government was locking up asylum seekers and their children without charge for years, ostensibly to send a message to people smugglers, he said.

"None of these people have committed an offence, so by definition we've got innocent people held in jail for three years plus," Mr Burnside told the Ten Network's Meet The Press program."We're jailing innocent human beings and we're jailing them in order to send a message to other people. Now the mistreatment of innocent human beings to mould the behaviour of others is seriously bad conduct and it's conduct which most people would not approve of.”

"It's the sort of thing that hostage takers do. It's the sort of thing that terrorists do."

Mr Burnside said the message seemed to have got through to the people smugglers, with no new arrivals recently. “From now on, the cruelty seems to be quite pointless," he said. "We know that the people who are held in immigration detention have not committed any offence. Quite frankly, if they had committed an offence, do you think that any court would sentence children to three years imprisonment for coming along with their parents without a visa? Of course they wouldn't. It is not an offence to arrive in Australia without a visa and ask for asylum."

Mr Burnside said the only place the laws could be tested would be in the International Criminal Court."But more importantly I think this has got to be exposed in the court of public opinion," he said. "What we're doing to innocent asylum seekers fails every test of democratic principle."

 

 

Back to the future on offshore detention - Australia's political culture fails the test of leadership Part 2

Back to the future on offshore detention - Australia's political culture fails the test of leadership  Part 2

The meanness of spirit behind the base politics of punishing asylum seekers is finally starting to percolate through to the broader electorate. For a long time I could barely bring myself to look at and listen to the horror of our treatment of asylum seekers.

I once worked for a government that sold its soul to a devil. Our enthusiastic complicity in an illegal war, our rank hypocrisy in hectoring other countries about human rights, and our systematic violation of the rights of refugees was more than I could stomach; I withdrew gradually my services and then myself from the professional world I had inhabited for nigh twenty years.

I found myself in a fog of depression that threatened to destroy my life. Everywhere I looked I saw Islamophobia, sanguine apathy in the face of abject cruelty to our fellow human beings, bureaucratic solutions to human suffering. People I knew well were sprouting the poisonous stuff of ethnic demonization and the mindless slogans of hate and intolerance.

I set myself on a path of healing but I am constantly set back by the reality of hate politics; the mindless characterization of people on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity.

I kept thinking of two people I admired, and who had seen me through earlier difficult times, when a good friend was all that stood between me and dangerous depression. One of these great friends was a colleague who died in the Jog Jakarta air disaster; the other was a citizen of Iran who I met at University in India and who was unwilling to return home to a repressive regime. Both of these wonderful human beings were/are great humanists with a zest for life. Oh yes, and they were/are Muslims...

Morrison’s pseudo religiosity and hail fellow well met shtick clearly appeals to many of the 'me me journalists' and the crypto-Hansonite set but it makes my skin crawl. What does it say about the psychological health of a country that elects a political party that had as the centrepiece of its electoral pitch the punishment of a few miserable refugees? It beggars belief that in the 21st century our body politic can be so trivialised.

The dog whistling politics of the Coalition has come back to bite it on the bum. It is about time the sunshine was let in on this grubby corner of the extreme right's campaign to hold office on the back of fear and division. It's a Coalition speciality of course and those out there peddling this racial vilification stuff are doing its bidding.

The anti-Islam campaign has been festering within the bowels of the Coalition for a long time now…Morrison is seeking to hold office on a platform of unbridled entitlement politics, encouraging division, selfishness and 'get out of my way' pitches to people who think Government is about nothing more than serving their narrow interests. Labor has had to tip toe through an electoral mine field of electors easily in thrall to hate-mongering, which has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government.

                                          

                                               

Back to the future on offshore detention - Australia's political culture fails the test of leadership

Back to the future on offshore detention - Australia's political culture fails the test of leadership

 

Those with any compassion for the plight of asylum seekers will be choking on their breakfast cereals, hearing reports of colleagues of Morrison banging on about bringing asylum seekers to Australia from Nauru.  The treatment of asylum seekers has been made worse by a constant beating of a fear drum by the Coalition and a conga line of media supporters that have been busy maintaining the political wedge on this issue. 

Where was the media support for an inquiry into the abuses at the heart of the Pacific Solution? Where was the media (apart from some brave souls in the Fairfax media) when the appalling violations under subsequent reprisals of offshore detention in Manus and Nauru were taking the human rights record of this country into the gutter?
 

Over the years I have posted many messages on the miscasting of aid to Nauru and elsewhere under the offshore detention regime and the alarming 'somnambulism' of the Australian people as these events unfolded. Determined advocates have keep the fires of protest burning.

I have been critical of Australia's fourth estate for largely failing to expose and condemn successive government’s approach to human rights. I had hoped the profound negative implications of the Howard experiment for the health of Australia's body politic would be the subject of much reflection in the coming years.
 

Back in the day this blog called repeatedly for a Royal Commission into the immigration policies and programs of the Howard Govt and subsequent iterations of offshore detention.

                                                  

                                              

The Rudd government should have investigated this dark chapter. My oft repeated call for such an inquiry to shine a light into the dark recesses of the Pacific Solution pork barrel never eventuated. The chickens meanwhile have come home to roost for Labor. 

Labor should have exposed the whole grubby affair to bright light to put to rest any credibility the Coalition would have on this subject for at least a decade, and to provide an opportunity for a sensible public debate on this sensitive area of public policy. Instead they fell into the wedge and made matters worse for vulnerable souls caught up in the political grind.  The Coalition never cared about the welfare of these people. It was always about political opportunity.
 

I propose a Royal Commission with Terms of Reference to include, but not be limited to, an investigation of:
1. Implementation of offshore processing (including the role and use of official aid)
2. Wrongful detention of refugees and permanent residents of Australia
3. Operation and financing of detention facilities on the mainland and offshore
4. Wrongful refoulement of asylum seekers and refugees
5. Influence of Ministers in the determination of immigration decisions
6. Influence of 'understandings' and 'deals' with neighbouring countries on the management of Australia's refugee policies and programs

 

The Morrison way...a well worn Coalition template

 

1. Punish asylum seekers by sending them to fly speck, Nauru, and putting genuine refugees on TPVs to punish them some more

2. Do not put a price on carbon

3. Send welfare recipients to latter day salt mines for character building

4. Do a lot of prayer meetings to convince people you're a holy roller

5. Punish some more asylum seekers

6. Give miners, polluters and media moguls tax free status

7. Divert huge amounts of govt revenue to people on $200,000 or more per annum as gesture of solidarity

8. Divert huge amounts of annual aid budget to Nauru to keep Nauruans sweet

9. Trash regional approaches to asylum seekers as we will decide who comes here and the manner in which they come (preferably by Qantas)

10. Punish some more asylum seekers, just to keep the dog whistle in tune

 

Asylum seekers in Australia: Memories of Tampa, a leaky boat and a dodgy government

Asylum seekers in Australia: Memories of Tampa, a leaky boat and a dodgy government

 

In 2011 the ABC reported "former Defence Force personnel have spoken out about the Tampa and children overboard affair, accusing the Howard government of manipulating events for political purposes".

I was in harness in PNG when the Tampa situation arose. My heart sank and my stomach churned as I knew Howard was the type of politician to twist these circumstances to his political benefit. Little did I know to what extent I would be dragged into the disgusting quagmire that became known as the Pacific Solution.

I have mused on the experience as follows:

"In August 2001 news reports began filtering through that the Australian Government led by John Howard as Prime Minister had detained a boatload of mainly Afghani refugees on the high seas. The cargo vessel was the Tampa, a word that has become etched indelibly into my consciousness. The ‘boat people’ saga had begun. Ten weeks later the Australian people returned the Howard Government to office in a general election and the ignominious strategy to label offshore asylum seekers ‘illegals’ and detain them in third countries had been labelled the Pacific Solution. 

I am haunted by this epithet as it is resonates with sinister ‘solutions’ found elsewhere in the twentieth century in the name of national security and identity. The cover notes to David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s chilling account of events that “shattered many of the myths Australia has about itself and changed profoundly the way it is seen in the eyes of the world” summarize events concisely: They put lives at risk. They twisted the law. They drew the military into the heart of an election campaign. They muzzled the press. They misused intelligence services, defied the United Nations, antagonized Indonesia and bribed poverty stricken Pacific states. They closed Australia to refugees – and won a mighty election victory. 

At the time I was well into the second year of a diplomatic posting to Papua New Guinea (PNG). I worked for Australia’s overseas aid agency, AusAID. My career had involved me in human rights and refugee activities in several countries, including Southern African states on the front line against apartheid, Nepal, India and PNG. During my working life Australia had held out a helping hand to refugees from various conflicts, including Tibet, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Now we were turning our back on Afghans fleeing the most repressive and murderous regime to emerge out of the ruins of the Soviet invasion, the Taliban.

 

I traveled to Afghanistan in the early 1970s as part of a wave of adventurous backpackers criss-crossing the Middle East and South Asia during those halcyon years. A Russian military presence was evident in Kabul but the hell of military invasion was yet to unfold. Young Afghan students in western dress gathered in coffee shops, tourists mixed with locals in cheap eating houses and live music could be heard in the evenings, emanating from a myriad small guest houses and hotels.

Kabul was a welcoming, relaxed haven for travelers en route to exotic destinations in this ancient tribal fiefdom, and Iran or Pakistan. Later as a doctoral student in India I had the great fortune to form deep friendships with both Afghans and Iranians. Some were escaping the strictures of the Khomeini regime in Iran and the terrors of war in Afghanistan. India provided a safe sanctuary and a place to study. 

The brutalization of Afghans and others under Australia’s refugee policies was not only an affront to ideals that drew me into the arena of overseas aid, but hurt at a more subtle emotional level as I projected what it would mean for my erstwhile friends. 

The Tampa affair and the crushing reality of the punitive policies it spawned saw me withdraw iteratively from a state machine that was imprisoning refugees in desert gulags, endangering lives of desperate people at sea, engineering and re-engineering the Pacific Solution and the cruel regime of temporary protection visas. 

I had been involved on the margins of the Pacific Solution in PNG but the crunch came in an ironic twist. On return from PNG I was thrust into the midst of a whole-of-government stratagem to punish refugees. As part of what I perceived to be an orchestrated marginalization process by senior managers, I was put in charge of aid to Nauru. This ill-begotten program was a bribe to a failed state to accept complicity in our politically motivated violation of the rights of the people dumped on Nauru. It ran contrary to the various manifestos of sustainable development and good governance we belaboured in our dealings with other Pacific states dependent on Australian aid. 

By default I became a member of the Prime Minister’s task force on offshore asylum seekers or ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘boat people’, depending on the agenda of the day. The core business of this group of senior public service, police and defence assets was to construct, deconstruct and re-engineer the legal, logistical and administrative underpinnings of boat arrivals policy and to shape (spin) the official line for their political masters. Lawyers were central to the exercise to test and tweak the legal ramifications and inner workings of excising chunks of Australia from the migration zone. 

The most extreme construct involved excision of the total Australian landmass from the migration zone. It would be ‘pythonesque’ if the consequences were not so tragic for the victims. I became a member of the Immigration Department’s coordination committee on the Nauru detention facilities, which regularly and perfunctorily discussed how to manage detainees who had self-harmed or adopted other forms of protest. It was a dehumanizing, soul-destroying experience."

 

What's going on in the land of Oz...

Morrison and his conga line of media cronies are continuing the campaign to hold government by trashing Labor’s record on everything, especially its policies on climate change, tax and asylum seekers. The science on climate change is routinely questioned and vilified by skilled dog whistlers and commentators compromised by their links to vested interests opposed to carbon pricing. A largely ill-informed electorate have up until now swallowed the sound bites and media grabs of this shoddy bunch and have been conned into believing their life-styles are under threat. This may finally be changing…

Morrison pretends to care about the little people while doing the bidding of the mining and power companies. He is a power monger of the worst sort. We have seen his type of politician down through the ages. They set up straw men like ‘evil strawberry terrorists’ to knock down and claim the credit for ‘saving’ the people from some imaginary onslaught. He pitches a different message to different audiences, depending on their relative levels of literacy. Demagogues always operate like this - it is in their DNA to tailor the message to suit the crowd and they are gifted at pressing the right buttons with confected outrage or sanguine ‘nothing to see here’ messages. 

                                               

                                         

Another plank of the strategy is to demonize the Labor leadership, much in the way the Tea Party demonized Obama’s leadership in America. They paint a picture of disunity, betrayal of the body politic, a ‘stab in the back’ for decent citizens by a party beholden to ‘special interests’ such as unions and unspecified ‘elites’. More coded dog whistling to convince the electorate that Labor is incapable of protecting the country from outside threats and the export of jobs.  
The Coalition has gained rich pickings from fear-mongering, as evidenced by electoral support in Queensland, Tasmania, Western Sydney and WA in recent years. Various demographics drift to and from the ‘tea party’ rump of the LNP, in thrall to simple minded messages on climate change, tax and good ole migrant & refugee bashing. 

                                       

                                                 

In much of the media and shock-jock land narrow sectional interests get a helpful leg up in most areas of debate on public policy. We get a diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on issues such as immigration & asylum seekers and important areas of public policy are ‘spun’ through the lens of media celebrities who survive on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, ‘gotcha’ moments and limpid sensationalism. Political analysis has been reduced to talk-show patter and infotainment for a presumed audience with the concentration span of a distracted gnat. 

Misinformation and outright disinformation have become the currency of many mainstream commentators. The template for this was set up with the formation of the Gillard minority government. Many in the print, radio and television media did not like the result and wanted it gone.  Turnbull is the most recent victim of this phenomenon.

                                                

Morrison’s approach is to don baseball caps and work safe gear and roam bloke dominated small and medium businesses, pretending to care about working people and announcing the end of civilization has been postponed through his prayer tour.  A true ‘man of the people’ with an eye to the big end of town (nudge, wink)…Howard battlers should be checking their back pockets because they’re being conned again.

                                         

 

 

 The end of the conga line...

The asylum seeker issue is fueled by hysteria and incendiary demonizing by Morrison and his ilk and finds a largely credulous audience with their ready prejudices, determined to disbelieve the legitimate claims of asylum seekers who didn’t stand in a non-existent queue of orderly people waiting for whichever repressive regime they are escaping to allow them to migrate, or a third world stopover suffused with social and economic disadvantage. The silliness of this position overwhelms me at times.

The history of propaganda reveals you can package lies very successfully if they play to irrational fears and prejudices – it is especially difficult to counter when cloaked in the garb of ‘border security’. So the term ‘illegals’ is tailor made for the job!

The Coalition’s constant vilification of Labor for being weak on border protection has now morphed into a hypocritical concern for the rights of refugees. We were told these would be protected on Manus and Nauru.

 But how can anyone forget the Libs’ response to Tampa and kids overboard? Blame the victims for their own plight, extract as much sensationalism out of the role of people smugglers, put words in the mouth of ADF personnel who cannot answer for themselves, and then whip up public sentiment against refugees. Throw in dollops of confected outrage over your political opponents complete lack of preparedness to face down the ‘threat’ and you have your stock in trade ‘dog whistle’ response to the terrible plight of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Oh, I forgot - then you can set about making weak neighbouring countries complicit in policies that violate human rights! Sadly, the Labor government fell in behind this construct too easily! It now has an opportunity to put things right...

Asylum seeker management - another way - An open letter to Labor

Under the Howard government mandatory detention of asylum seekers evolved into a tragic farce. Australians were alarmingly sanguine about the travesty. Its worst manifestation was the Pacific Solution, which I became embroiled in through the Nauru aid program. Of particular concern to me were the tawdry misuses of official aid under the Pacific Solution and the downstream implications of the strategy, which was made up on the run by bureaucrats doing their level best to engineer good outcomes from bad political motives. The perfunctory official approaches adopted toward self-harming detainees were another disturbing aspect.

As the Party responsible for the legislative framework (in particular 'mandatory detention') within which Howard evolved his refugee 'house of horrors', it is appropriate that a Labor Govt put Australia's human rights compliance at the top of the international agenda and put our domestic laws ‘house’ back in order."

Tragically, the failure to shine a light on the true mentality behind the prosecution of these earlier policies saw the ghost of the Pacific Solution and the shop of horrors that was the Howard Govt's refugee program continue to linger in the corridors of power.

As an erstwhile member of the Howard Government's task force on 'illegal' migration I am completely cognizant of the issues surrounding the Bali framework process. I am supportive of a regional approach that stops boats but doesn't breach the UN convention on treatment of refugees. Playing the bidding game on who can be hardest on boat arrivals and 'detention without end' is cynical politics, and it fails to satisfy the requirements of a progressive charter in this area.

The mandatory detention regime opened a Pandora's box of opportunities for low rent political agendas, which politicians like Howard, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Dutton have exploited ruthlessly. Labor is continually playing catch up, rather than biting the bullet by re-examining the rationale for long-term mandatory detention and changing the tenor of the whole debate.

The unedifying sight of Labor politicians jumping on the xenophobia bandwagon was one of the key reasons I left the party, as I saw defenceless people used as betting chips in a nasty bidding war.

Labor could re-capture the high ground by reviewing mandatory detention and off-shore processing policy and wring the necessary changes? A public information program to explain the reasoning behind the changes, including Australia's obligations under international refugee and human rights instruments, could usher a new awareness of our collective standing and responsibility as a defender of human rights.

This would be attractive to the progressive side of the Labor support base and small 'L' Liberals. Maybe its time to make our general decency something Australians can be proud of again! A sensible, humane and orderly approach to offshore processing, which involves regional partners to their benefit, could be a crucial element to stymie the smuggling trade, whilst enabling on-shore processing within the community after mandatory health and security checks are completed in short-term detention.

Arrangements with key community groups to manage welfare, work-for-allowance strategies and language training could be developed to integrate asylum seekers in the larger society soon after their arrival. Regional areas with labour shortfalls could be targeted for short-term settlement in this respect.

The UNHCR, IOM could be brought in as partners in the process to lend their mandated legitimacy to the exercise. Isn't it time to stop playing to the reactionary game book?

 Poor fella my country...

 

 

In August 2012 I wrote a closing post to this blog.  Nothing has changed, so I'll reprise my thoughts and get back in the saddle...

"I am appalled by the decision to reprise the Pacific Solution. On so many levels it is an abject failure of public policy. A legacy of the Howard years is a default toward fear and division on the issue of boat arrivals. It was an easy target for ideologues bent on shoring up the conservative support base with a radical reactionary agenda that lends itself easily to demagoguery.
 
Although the recommendations of the expert panel point toward a more humane regional framework approach as a long term objective, the reality is that many asylum seekers will be subject to years of uncertainty and an outright violation of their human rights by a Labor Government. A mandatory detention regime is a violation of human rights. To preempt someone's refugee status on the basis of their irregular arrival by boat is illogical and cruel. 


However, the tenor of public debate in Australia since Tampa has been infused with the kind of hysteria associated with fear politics. We have seen this construct at work all through history and it invariably succeeds for a period, until people wake up to the fact that their prejudices have been manipulated by unscrupulous politicians and their supporters for political gain.

The evil banality of the hypocrisy underpinning the Coalition's stance on boat arrivals is laid bare for anyone with a passing knowledge of refugee matters. You will hear constant mealy mouthed posturings by Coalition politicians purporting to be concerned about the refugee convention and the welfare of children. In the same breath as they plead for off-shore processing to be restricted to countries that have signed the refugee convention, they advocate turning back boats to a country that hasn't signed the convention, putting the unfortunates on board in more harm's way. Where was this great concern for the refugee convention when the Pacific Solution was initiated? No where to be seen.

The media has mainly been a pliant player in prosecuting this nasty farce. It is hard to feel proud of this country when its key institutions are so culpable in enabling this mind-numbing outcome to be foisted on the body politic. Rather than represent the best of us, these politicians have stooped lower and lower to the point where we are plumbing new depths of intolerance, fear and cruelty, with poor neighboring countries active participants in this perfidy. It is truly disgusting and should be condemned in the strongest terms.


I'm ceasing this blog activity as my will to persevere has been crushed by this demoralizing climate of bigotry and 'creeping crypto-fascism'. I find I don't have anything else to add - my previous posts sum it up. I am ashamed of this country's political culture, which routinely rewards the worst political opportunists who dress themselves in the garb of the common folk and who pitch successfully to the lowest common denominator."

The Resurrection

After many years absence this blog is being resurrected.  The ongoing disgrace of offshore detention of innocents can't be allowed to stand.  The leaders responsible for these crimes against humanity will be held accountable one day, and I don't think the 'Nuremberg' defence will wash.