We need to focus on resettlement from Indonesia

Last week a rickety wooden boat carrying somewhere in the vicinity of 100 asylum seekers crashed onto the cliffs off Christmas Island resulting in anywhere up to 50 deaths.  Many of these bodies will never be recovered.  Forty-two people were pulled from the ocean mere metres off Christmas Island and are now in detention mourning loved ones and waiting to be processed.  Politicians from the two major parties were initially respectful of the dead, but already after only a week accusations about who is to blame and what should be done are once again being bandied about.

The Al Ali family was on last week’s boat.  Uday Al Ali and his son Abbas are both missing, their bodies unlikely to ever be recovered.  Uday’s wife Rana was injured and airlifted to Perth for medical care.  They left Iraq together 15 years ago and had been waiting for asylum ever since.  Why do asylum seekers who are already supposedly safe in Indonesia willing to risk their lives by getting on an unseaworthy boat to journey to Australia?

The answer lies largely within Indonesia itself.  Living conditions for asylum seekers in Indonesia are often appalling.  Men, women and children are either kept in substandard detention centres, jailed or if free are living in the shadows, attempting to avoid authorities.  Detention facilities and jails are by and large unsanitary, unsafe and isolated.  Education, medical care and work rights are usually not available and food and water where accessible is often of poor quality.  Many detainees have reported beatings and abuse.  People suffer in these conditions for years waiting to be processed and then resettled.  In an effort to support Indonesia, Australia has provided many millions of dollars to curb people smuggling, with much of this money also going to detaining asylum seekers in Indonesia.

UNHCR reports there are 2000-4000 registered asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesia.  There are potentially many more hundreds of asylum seekers that are not registered.  Indonesia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention so it does not resettle asylum seekers, leaving its neighbours in the region to shoulder this burden.  In the past 5 years Australia has resettled only about 50 asylum seekers from Indonesia each year. Earlier this year the Government agreed to increase this number to 500 but as of last week only 100 people had so far been processed and accepted.  It is this back log and long waits in appalling conditions that lead people to risk their lives and take the perilous boat journey to Australia.

Both sides of politics agree that something needs to be done about the increase in boats reaching Australia.  Almost certainly the increase in boat arrivals in Australia this year is related to the corresponding increase in the number of asylum seekers worldwide.  The UN reports that the global total of displaced people increased by 1 million in 2009.

So once again we need to ask ourselves why? Why would people risk their lives knowing they face detention if they arrive safely at the other end? Because they are desperate, because the system is failing and because after waiting years in Indonesia to arrive in Australia through the ‘proper channels’ they see no alternative.

It is time for both of the major parties to stop using the world’s most vulnerable people as a political football.  This is a time for Australia’s politicians to show leadership.  We can attempt to shut our borders, but the more humane way to deter asylum seekers by boat is to remove the factors that are prompting them to depart Indonesia in the first place. The government recognised this when they committed to resettling more people directly from Indonesia.  It should have happened before last week’s tragedy.  It would be a terrible shame if this incident didn’t serve as a wake-up call.  How much longer will it take?