Part I: Coalition’s radical new policy is no solution

Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison announced a radical shift in the Coalition’s refugee policy last week in response to the record number of boat arrivals and subsequent overcrowding of Australia’s detention centres. While presenting the long-standing coalition policy of turning back the boats and reintroducing offshore processing and TPVs as the “the first solution,” Morison proceeded to attack the legal and moral foundations of the Refugee Convention and effectively called for its overhaul as an appropriate long term response.

Although he makes the welcomed suggestion that Australia should do more to improve conditions in source countries, including a (temporary) increase of our Afghan refugee intake, he goes on to propose that Australia should refuse Afghan asylum seekers who arrive “illegally” and subsequently exchange them for refugees in camps bordering Afghanistan.

Morrison attempts to base this new proposal on pragmatic and moral grounds by arguing that “when the boats are not coming, there are no children on boats, our detention centres are not crammed and our assessment processes are not backlogged.” He concedes that achieving this goal of stopping the boats carries “a heavy moral burden” which has “very real human consequences” but is ultimately justified because, in Morrison’s mind, boat arrivals are illegal queue jumpers:

“When the boats stop coming, thousands are not forced to wait offshore for their special humanitarian visas in even more desperate situations as priority is given to those who have made their way to Australia by boat with the support of people smugglers.”

In reality, Morrison’s speech was an attempt to obscure the real issues and avoid Australia’s true moral burden in order to justify “solutions” that are in fact aimed at shifting Australia’s responsibilities offshore.

It is easy to respond to and find misinformation in all parts of Morrison’s speech.

Overcrowding

To begin with, Australia’s detention centres are not overcrowded due to an unmanageable number of arrivals but bi-partisan support for the policy of mandatory detention. All unauthorised arrivals could easily be processed in the community after security and health checks just as those who arrive with a visa are. This would end the overcrowding and subsequent mental health issues associated with detention at a fraction of the cost.

Stopping boats saves lives

Secondly, the argument that stopping boats would save otherwise lost lives misses the point. The truth is that whether people make it to Australia or not, they are still compelled to leave their homes and are still in need of protection. That moral responsibility falls squarely on Australia’s shoulders as the nation with the largest capacity in the region to respond (see table below). A real solution to both these problems would involve an increase in Australia’s resettlement intake from Indonesia where a potential wait of up to 10 years in a detention centre provides the motivation to risk the life-threatening boat trip to Australia. While there were 2500 refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2009 in Indonesia, the last decade saw Australia resettle an average of only 50 per year.[i] Furthermore, if Australia were to pull its weight in the region, it would be in a good position to negotiate with other countries to resettle more refugees as well, reducing the pressure on Australia.

Push vs Pull Factors

While the driving forces behind refugee movements are “push factors,” an oft repeated counter-argument to an increased resettlement intake is that it would create a “pull factor” for refugees to the region. While this may be true, it needn’t be a problem unless the numbers became so large they were unsustainable. There is little reason to expect that to be the case. There are 10 million refugees in the world. If Australia is so soft on asylum seekers, why haven’t they all rushed here already? Why do we only receive a trickle of up to five thousand or so?

The first reason is that only a fraction of the 10 million refugees in the world are in emergency situations and in need of immediate assistance. Around half are already being provided with effective protection in countries of first asylum. The remaining majority are indeed in a long-lasting and intractable state of limbo but their lives are not at risk. Of the 10 million refugees in the world then, only 128 000 were in need of emergency resettlement last year due to the lack of adequate protection. The second and more significant reason why Australia receives so few asylum seekers onshore is because the vast majority of refugees are not very mobile and Australia is relatively isolated. So while there are likely to be more refugees seeking Australia as their final destination due to “pull factors,” there’s no reason to suggest it wouldn’t be manageable.

Next week, we’ll assess Morrison’s claim that asylum seekers are queue jumpers and that accepting onshore arrivals results in “inequitable outcomes” where the only just “solution” is to send them back where they came from. Stay tuned.

[i] United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Reports, http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/

[ii] Savitri Taylor & Brynna Rafferty-Brown (2010), “Waiting for Life to Begin: the Plight of Asylum Seekers Caught by Australia’s Indonesian Solution,” International Journal of Refugee Law, pp. 1-35.