Politics of fear and boat people

The Gillard federal Labour government in Australia is hanging by a thread. The result of the August 21, 2010 election forced them to form a minority government with the support of two country town conservatives, one Green and one independent from Tasmania. After 14 months, they are recording the lowest poll rating of any government.

It appears that Australia has already forgotten their excellent stewardship of the economy through the global financial crisis, being one of the few countries in the world not having a recession.

Engulfed by calls for her resignation, Julia Gillard, the first female Prime Minister of Australia made it clear she is not going anywhere saying “I have too much to do”.

The latest ruling by the Full Bench of the Australian High Court was however a massive blow to the already shaky minority government. Labour’s plan was to send 800 boat people back to Malaysia in return for Australia accepting 4,000 already processed asylum seekers from that country. This was considered to be a bold attempt to break the people smugglers’ trade.

The Australian High Court ruled six to one that the Malaysia deal was invalid because the country had no international or domestic legal framework to protect asylum seekers.

The majority of judges found Immigration Minister Chris Bowen’s decision to declare Malaysia a “safe” country to send asylum seekers had no legal basis.

The dissenting judge, Justice John Heydon, said he did not find the argument about protection, put by the refugees’ lawyers compelling. Mr Bowen (his wife is Maltese) had sworn an affidavit that he believed Malaysia had made a significant conceptual shift in its thinking about how it wants to treat refugees.

Mr Bowen said: “Let’s make no bones about the High Court decision. It is profoundly disappointing for me. I have got obligation to the government and the nation to see this issue through.”

According to Ms Gillard, some legal experts are saying they find the decision incomprehensible, beyond understanding. “The High Court decision turns on its head the understanding of the law. The ruling also represented a missed opportunity to send a message to asylum seekers not to risk their lives”.

The decision of the High Court has ramifications for all offshore processing. The government appears to be considering a possible change to immigration laws to satisfy the requirement of the High Court and to continue with the Malaysia agreement.

The government warned that as many as 600 people a month would enter Australia without checks on their status unless the processing of refugees were done offshore. If brought to the mainland they could overflow from detention centres into the surrounding communities and raise tensions between them and locals.

When the Liberal/National Party was in power with John Howard in the leadership, processing of asylum seekers offshore was their bible. Their war cry is that in fact they have “stopped the boats”.

The Liberals paraded the Pacific Solution by sending asylum seekers offshore to Nauru and other remote islands in the Pacific. They also established the infamous Christmas Island, the facility opened by Mr Howard in 2001 with a capacity to house more than 1,100 asylum seekers.

When the Labour Party led by Kevin Rudd won in 2007, his party’s national platform said that asylum seekers should be processed onshore (in Australia).

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (the late Bishop Joe Grech was the spokesman on migration and refugee matters) are in total agreement that asylum seekers’ processing should be processed onshore. Cost factors should also be taken into consideration as it is being predicted that it would cost $1.1 billion to process asylum seekers and house them in detention centres this year and next.

Unfortunately, the debate about immigration, population and illegal entrants into Australia has become a political issue, driven by push-polling of fear, lies and exaggerations.

Australia is about 22nd in the world in the ranking of countries most likely to have people lining up at the borders to get in. It is a fact that more asylum seekers arrive in our tiny island of Malta than they do in Australia. At present, there are some 5,500 persons in detention in Australia.

It has been said many times that at the current rate of arrival it will take 20 years for asylum seekers to fill the Melbourne cricket ground.

Indeed, the whole issue of the boat people has been blown out of proportion. More backpackers are in Australia illegally than people who arrive by boats.

Mr Bowen, when in opposition, had said that the Pacific Solution did not break the people smugglers’ business model, it broke the will and spirit of asylum seekers. It’s hard to understand why the Australian Labour Party so critical of Mr Howard’s offshore processing model has adopted his cruel and inhumane method in the distant hope of breaking the high-risk and sometimes lethal trade by the people smugglers.

We now have Tony Abbot, the Liberal’s wrecking ball, desperately wanting to get to the Lodge at any cost, showing us who are the toughest on asylum seekers and going on with the pathetic catch phrase of stopping the boats. Australian parliamentarians could do well to stop playing politics while so many asylum seekers are being shipwrecked or lost at sea and belatedly arrive at a no-partisan policy on boarder protection.

The decision of the High Court could be a blessing in disguise for both the government and the opposition. They now have a clear chance of getting together so that they can process asylum seekers more humanely, cheaper and much faster.