We are continuously bombarded with endless political plans on how to get tough on asylum seekers and how stop people seeking asylum. Whether it’s the ill-thought out and illegal turning back of the boats or the offshore processing of asylum seekers, each major political party seems hell bent on finding new ways of detaining or denying asylum seekers their most basic human rights.
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ne of the most enduring myths in the asylum seeker debate is that once asylum seekers arrive in Australia, they are treated to the good life. Not a week passes without ASRC receiving an email complaining that asylum seekers are getting 4 times what a pensioner does, and that asylum seekers are flushed with support from the Federal government.
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Asylum seekers arriving by boat have, once again, become a hot button political issue in this year’s election. We have returned to the worst of the Tampa election year, where asylum seekers have once again become a political football.
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The Gillard Government has tried to massage the language and fool the public that kids are no longer in detention but rather ‘just’ in places of detention. While the razor wire may be gone, everything else remains intact. No freedom of movement, locked buildings and guards monitoring their every move.
Read moreTony Abbott has promised as his first order of business if elected at the Federal Election will be to re–open the Nauru Detention Centre in order to ‘stop the boats’. Such promises exist in a historical vacuum, disconnected from the past horrors and suffering caused during Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’ when Nauru was used as a place of detention.
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