Asylum seeker facts, time for a new conversation

As highlighted by the comments in the lead up to tonight’s Episode One of SBS’s Go Back to Where you Came From, there is a current lack of accurate information in the asylum seeker debate leading to damaging attitudes towards asylum seekers.  Michael Smith, Former Shock Jock, believes that ‘we treat people who lob by boat here far too well’ and Angry Anderson doesn’t ‘accept the boat people at all.  Send them home’.  This correlates to the void of media and political leadership on the issue if asylum seekers.  It’s no wonder that 67% of Australians currently support offshore processing with the level of misinformation and selective facts sprouted by politicians and on the front pages of our papers.

Coalition politicians vocally applaud Australia for resettling the highest number of refugees in the world. This is used to show how generous we are as a nation, that we don’t need to increase our humanitarian intake and that we go beyond taking our fair share.  However, when you consider that figure is based on the official resettlement of only 70,000 out of 15.2 million refugees annually it doesn’t make us as generous as we pat ourselves on the back for.  In fact, according to the latest UNHCR trends from 2011, Australia is ranked 71^st and 32^nd per capita receptively for the number of refuges and asylum seekers we take annually.  In 2011, Australia hosted just 0.6% of the world’s refugees.

Another common myth is that asylum seekers receive more support than pensioners and we roll out the red carpet for people as they arrive by boat.  A comment posted on Channel Nine’s News’ Facebook page a few weeks ago complaining about asylum seekers receiving Centrelink payments greater than pensioners resulted in over 100,000 likes and tens of thousands of comments.  The fact is that asylum seekers do not receive any Centrelink payments.  However, this was overlooked and was not corrected until the Refugee Council of Australia and Department of Immigration put out a statement confirming that asylum seekers do not receive any Centrelink payments and those refugees who arrive as part of our resettlement program access the same benefits as any other Australian.

In the past weeks, Tony Abbott has been corrected for repeatedly stating that asylum seekers who arrive by boat are illegal and referring to illegal boat arrivals.  He laments that if only people came ‘through the front door’.  The unfortunate reality is that for most asylum seekers, there is no queue or front door.  There is no Australian embassy in Afghanistan for Hazaras to apply for a humanitarian visa. The UNHCR resettlement places (the so called queue) was never designed to replace the process of seeking asylum but to coexist with it.  Abbott went as far as to say that people arriving by boat are not seeking asylum but are seeking ‘permanent residency’.  People flee by boat as they have no other choice.

It wouldn’t take much for our politicians and journalists to provide accurate information regarding the plight, rights and contribution of asylum seekers.   Before we can change public attitudes towards asylum seekers, we need to change the attitudes of those responsible for repeating and promoting the myths and untruths dominating the asylum seeker debate.  Then, and only then, we may have a change to an informed, humane policy towards asylum seekers that we are proud of.