Hypocrisy rules refugee debate.

They wept, they wrung their hands, they swore not over their dead bodies as they declared their mission to prevent further loss of life at sea.  They then supported a solution which requires asylum seekers to get into dangerous, overloaded, fishing boats and to set off into the vast ocean with the hope that the Australian navy and customs will rescue them. Then and only then will the “solution”, be it Malaysian or Nauruan, be enacted.

For Labor this means that potentially 800 people are put at risk in order that they arrive at Christmas Island for transportation to Malaysia, a known human rights transgressor, as a warning to other asylum seekers not to try. These people are to be dumped at the back of the 100,000 others who are looking for safety. This plan is predicated on the unproven and unlikely idea that 800 people will not board boats and try because after 300 or 400, asylum seekers will get the message and stop trying. It depends on people knowing Australia’s change in policy and giving up in response.  It contradicts what asylum seekers have told NGO workers in Indonesia. “We have taking the risk to reach here, it will be the same risk that we take to continue our journey until we reach there.”

For the Liberals people are required to board  dangerous boats in Indonesia and head out to sea where the Australian Navy is to be ordered to interdict  and send the people back to Indonesia in boats which are so decrepit that they are sinking en route. Considering that Australia’s search and rescue zone begins only twelve nautical miles from Christmas Island, the Navy’s task presents major challenges.  The Indonesian government has been clear that they will not accept boats back so this policy will create another problem of bad relations with our populous Indonesian neighbour and the huge market they offer. Those unable to be sent back are to be dumped on Nauru for an indefinite period of time. Considering that everyone knows that over 70% of the previous Nauru transfers were eventually resettled mainly in Australia, this plan presents less threat than waiting in Indonesia with no rights to work, school for the children or anything beyond subsistence living on an indefinite basis. However years on Nauru will cause great harm to the men, women and children incarcerated there, as it did last time.

These are the facts of what was on offer as policy ostensibly to stop people drowning at sea. Neither faced the reality that there are 1200 approved refugees in Indonesia waiting for resettlement right now. They cannot be sent back to Afghanistan and Iraq because they have been found to be refugees in genuine need of protection. Without some hope for resettlement and a future, they will be doing what any intelligent resourceful human being would do and taking action to remedy their situation. The problem is that action involves a dangerous boat journey.

Only the Greens policy really addressed the stated problem of loss of life at sea. The Greens proposed that 1000 resettlement places be made available immediately to these refugees and that a formal intake from Indonesia be put in place. A completely logical plan if the Australian government really wants to save lives. Replace the “people smugglers business model” with an organised and orderly process would seem a logical and sensible solution.  Why not resource UNHCR to assess claims in Indonesia more efficiently?  An immediate intake of 1000 would reassure the 1200 waiting refugees that there was an alternative to dangerous boats with unscrupulous agents.  People have told me from Indonesia that they would wait in Indonesia for 2 even 3 years if there was some hope of resettlement, rather than risk their lives on the boats. What is happening now is that they have given up on UNHCR and they know that Australia is taking only 300 people this year leaving them without a real choice.

Of course if the real policy objective is to punish people for fleeing from their country and treat them as harshly as is legally permissible, then dumping them in Nauru or Malaysia if they survive the boat journey will achieve this end.  So toxic and contaminated with base politics is the asylum seeker debate that the inherent flaws of a policy which only operates after asylum seekers have risked a dangerous boat journey are ignored.  The Greens are criticised for a proposal which replaces the dangerous boat journey and formalises entry by resettling refugees who are assessed and approved by UNHCR.  They agreed with the increased intake proposed by the major parties and suggest more resources to the UNHCR and encourage regional cooperation.   Common sense policy which involves building co-operative relations with our neighbours.  Instead hypocrisy reigns as Australia claims concern about the loss of life while indulging in a NIMBY game towards refugees with an anywhere but here policy.

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