Tough talk about a return to the Pacific Solution

The now deceased ex Nauru President Rene Harris who brokered Nauru’s deal in September 2001 had no hesitation in milking his agreement with Australia for all it could produce. In June 2002 Harris complained to the media that the agreed six-month deadline for assessing the claims of asylum seekers in his country had been reached and Nauru had only received half the promised aid: “Tampa won it for them at the last election and I have an election coming up in ten months time and I’m not riding too well”, he said. One Nauruan MP told me later: “Every time Harris wanted more money he would start complaining in the media and he would be given more. No one knows where some of that money went”.

In 2004 Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs described Nauru as amongst the “most egregious examples of corruption, profligacy and mismanagement in the South Pacific” while Australia continued to pour in money into its coffers. Comments reportedly made by the Nauruan High Commissioner to Australia, Jarden Kephas, last week that “Nauru would be open for negotiation to see how it would benefit everyone” reveal a country with an historical revolving door of leadership and a recently deadlocked parliament which could potentially be vulnerable to dubious future deals to secure Australia’s money.

The Herald Sun last week, unreasonably, questioned Australia’s current $13 million investment in the redevelopment of one school in Nauru - anyone who has seen the state of schools in Nauru would understand the need - but how much more than our current Nauru AID budget would Australians be asked to invest to secure a new deal on asylum seekers?

The politicians involved in negotiating the original Pacific Solution agreements in 2001 are no longer in power in Australia, Papua New Guinea or Nauru and in spite of the Nauruan High Commissioner’s invitation to negotiate with a current Opposition party in Australia, there is little evidence that current Pacific leaders would choose to return to the same broken ground. Mr Kephas reportedly told the Sydney Morning Herald that he saw no detriment in housing asylum seekers in Nauru but, if these comments are correct, he is clearly unaware, or uncaring, of the damage caused from the past Pacific Solution policy to the reputations of Nauru and Australia in particular and to the hundreds of refugees who now live amongst us after their years in the offshore camps.

In 2005 the mental condition of the remaining 27 men in Nauru had deteriorated so dramatically after four years in detention that 25 were brought to Australia as a matter of urgency. Five years later these men are still dealing with the after effects.

One Iraqi man, who had already suffered greatly under Saddam’s regime before his time in both the Papua New Guinea and Nauru camps, says:

It’s become like a habit for me now, medicine to sleep … It’s very hard to lose everything, you lose freedom, you lose everything, it is not easy. They tell you you are not a refugee and they leave you for four years in detention and they know the situation in your country. In four years a child will start to talk. No one listened to us and day by day everyone feels his mental health and his situation become very much worse. Until now sometimes I have bad dream, I am feeling that I am in detention and when I wake up thanks for my god I am finished with detention. This detention is living with me for the rest of my life. Every one hour, you can’t forget four very bad years.

Others now in Australia are still struggling against addictions to alcohol and medications and with the nightmares that began in the offshore camps. “Four years is not easy time, it’s not four days or four months, it is a long time. Our mind is not the same as a computer, we can’t just delete it - we are still thinking about the situation when we were in the detention centre”, says one young man.

One prominent Nauruan believes that the past policy was never actually a “Pacific Solution” or an Australian solution but only a solution for John Howard, Alexander Downer and Rene Harris who all “screwed” each other. “That's what President Harris did in 2001. He screwed Howard, and Howard and Downer screwed him in return. In the end every Christmas they sent to each other a carton of the most expensive French and Australian champagnes and wines and laughed at their genius ways”, he tells me.

There is no actual evidence to support the Coalition’s claim that the Pacific Solution stopped the boat arrivals to Australia in 2001, and a range of other factors operating at the time, most significantly the fall of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and the subsequent return of millions of Afghans, seem more likely have had a stronger deterrent effect.

Look no further than the current government’s suspension on processing Sri Lankan and Afghan claims and hold the mirror to 2001 when the assessment of Pacific Solution Afghans was put on hold while the circumstances changed in Afghanistan. If Afghan people had been assessed on arrival in 2001 most would have been accepted immediately as refugees but by June the next year 697 Afghans in Nauru had been rejected and only 55 accepted. Many of the negative decisions were eventually overturned on appeal but 420 Afghans were worn down by the process and ultimately returned under pressure to their country where many again faced persecution and again were forced to flee.

Whether a repeat of this approach will have the same deterrent effect in the current environment is debateable but the intention from the current government, whether we agree with their actions or not, seems clear.