Houston, we still have a problem

Tuesday 9 October 2012

A critique by Brigid Arthur of the Expert Panel’s 22 recommendations to the Government.
By Sr Brigid Arthur CSB
 
IT is well-known now to those following the debate about asylum seeker policy in this country that the Prime Minister commissioned three ‘experts’ to come up with recommendations to solve the political impasse about asylum seekers. 

The question given to the Panel was: How do we stop people drowning at sea? It is a truism that we get an answer to the question that is asked. The real question is: How do we save the lives of those who have a legitimate claim to protection? In the light of this question it seems to us that the report overall is a cruel response. We say this while welcoming some of the recommendations.

The report is, in its own terms, ‘strategic’. It is not compassionate nor does it attempt to justify its recommendations in human rights parameters. It avoids using the word ‘deterrence’ favouring instead ‘incentives’ and disincentives’ but it is primarily a set of measures to deter people coming to Australia by boat. This ignores the evidence that people seek asylum in Australia because there are few, if any, feasible alternatives in transit countries. Without actually stating it, the Panel has predicated the report on the idea of a queue; a right way to come and a wrong way. 

In the launch of the report, a lot was made of the need for it to be implemented as a ‘package’. There are 22 recommendations in the report but the only two that are being immediately implemented are off-shore processing for asylum seekers arriving by boat on Nauru and Manus Island. If the recommendations are to be seen as ‘integrated’, it is not helpful that the focus for the government was immediately on reopening Nauru and Manus Island. 

The recommendation, already put into legislation, to only have off-shore processing for people arriving by boat, and to do this on Manus Island and Nauru, is really cruel. Related to this, the no-advantage clause is a particularly obnoxious part of the report. This is a principle to ensure that no benefit is gained through circumventing regular migration arrangements. Its purpose is to act as a disincentive for asylum seekers tempted to come by boat. The message is that they will get "no advantage" by getting on a boat rather than waiting in Indonesia. They will be taken to Nauru and will have to wait the same amount of time for re-settlement from Nauru, as they would had they stayed in Indonesia. This could be many years. Even if it works in terms of stopping boats this new ‘solution’ may mean that asylum seekers will suffer unnecessarily and die prematurely outside our gaze rather than within it. 

Under this policy, we will be keeping people in detention on Nauru and in PNG, free only to return to their homeland or, if they are deemed to be in some way "at risk", to move to Australia temporarily; otherwise they will remain in confinement for a currently undetermined, but presumably very long, period. They will have committed no crime, and will have been accepted as having a legitimate claim to asylum, but will be kept locked up purely to deter others: exemplary detention. There are already people in detention on Christmas Island ready to be sent to Nauru. The unnecessary haste of the past weeks means essential safeguards cannot have been put in place. So many basic questions remain unanswered: who will have visitation rights; what constitutes ‘appropriate accommodation’; what type of health care will be available; and how long will asylum seekers be detained?

 Another recommendation of the report is the allocation of an increased number of Humanitarian Program resettlement places for Indonesia. There are just over 4000 asylum seekers who are registered as such with the UNHCR in Indonesia. Increasing the number of these we agree should be resettled in Australia would mean 4000 fewer potential detainees on Nauru or Manus Island. Interestingly since the report was launched Australia agreed to take 400 from Indonesia. Why not 4000? This number would be part of the 20,000 recommended in toto. 

The reports recommends a restriction on family reunion other than through the standard (though expanded) Family Migration category.  This is cruel because the one light at the end of the long tunnel for most asylum seekers is eventual reuniting with family.
 The report recommends that the Minister no longer be the guardian of unaccompanied minors. It appears that such children will have no guardian and therefore no-one to safeguard their rights.   Australia will be sending children to detention on a remote island, possibly housed in a tent and perhaps without any adult designated to care for them or speak up for them. This does not appear to be in keeping with Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A country with an overall annual migration rate of 180,000 has room for enough elasticity in its programs to welcome people fleeing for their lives to our country which is the closest country they can legally come to.  

The main problem that we see with this report, is that it assumes choice. It assumes that people fleeing their country and coming to Australia have a choice not to do so. In our experience, people who have made it to Australia by boat have done so because they are out of choices—coming to Australia is incredibly dangerous and no person would choose to board a boat, or choose to send their son to Australia by boat, if there was another option. We need to stop assuming that people in the most desperate and vulnerable situations have any choices left. The report recommends people seeking asylum choose ‘regular pathways’. To tell someone in northern Sri Lanka or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iran, to go to an Australian Embassy to apply for a passage to Australia makes no sense. There either is no Embassy or there is no possibility of applying for protection . It is insulting to suggest there is this avenue. 
 
So, the choice the panel seeks to create is, wait in a refugee camp in Malaysia, Indonesia or Pakistan, with no certainty about where you will be resettled or how long it will take, with no control, in poor conditions, with no education for your children, or detention on Nauru under carefully managed conditions, overseen by NGOs, with education and medical care for your children, skills training for you, with the guarantee of coming to Australia at the end of that time.
 Many asylum seekers may figure that is a straightforward choice, with the only change being that they need to bring their families with them, given it will be harder to be reunited with them if only one family member gets on a boat. So we may see a continuation of boats but they will contain families not just men.