How two lies became accepted folklore

Both have saving clauses to protect the trafficked women, children and migrants and to exclude those seeking asylum under the Refugee Convention and Protocol. Both have been ratified and agreed to by the Australian Parliament and both have been totally ignored or misused by the government of the day since 2000.

Australia has never jailed a single person for people smuggling. We jail Indonesian crewmembers not for people smuggling, we jail them because we must assess the refugee claims of those who arrive here. A recent Senate investigation showed that Article 232 of the Migration Act, used to detain innocent people was in breach of Article 32 of the Refugee Convention and the People Smuggling Protocol.

As has been observed in relation to other cases of this kind, the prisoners were not involved in a people smuggling exercise. There was nothing covert about either operation. They were transporting the non-citizens to Australia for presentation to Australian authorities. There was no attempt to hide from the authorities or to disguise what they had done."

It is only now that the courts are realising that it is a lie to call it people smuggling and the real insult is in the language of the protocol itself:

During the sessions of the Ad-Hoc Committee, The United Nations of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) emphasized the need to reconcile measures to combat the smuggling of migrants and the trafficking of persons with existing obligations under international refugee law.

UNHCR welcomes the adoption of a saving clause in both Protocols, designed to safeguard the rights of asylum seekers and refugees under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, in particular in relation to the principle of non-refoulement.

In addition, UNHCR appreciates the adoption of provisions for the protection of smuggled migrants, such as the obligation of States Parties to take appropriate measures to afford smuggled migrants protection against violence and to take into account the special needs of women and children.

The Protocol against Smuggling does not aim to punish persons for the mere fact of having been smuggled or to penalize organizations that assist such persons. Australia is now alone in the world in its attempt to jail both refugees who arrive by sea and those who help them. The difference is that the refugees have no legal rights and those who help them do.

As Mary Crock and others point out, no one else in the world jails those who give refugees a ride, although a small number of countries do impose small penalties.

Imagine if our leaders today simply told the plain truth that under Australian and International Refugee Law anyone is allowed to claim asylum in this country and there is no crime in coming by sea. Without "smugglers" no genuine refugee could ever escape their persecutors. Imagine if our leaders simply told that truth?

Would so many still blame the refugees if the truth was told openly by the 'leaders" we have today or are they all so tainted we would not believe them? Or is it simply that the two ignorant lies have taken hold and no amount of truth will ever dispel them?

Australia has never been a leader on refugees even though we helped to write the Refugee Convention - we just like to pretend we are.