The 'Malaysia solution': has its time now come?

Even so, there is a good case to be made for the Malaysian solution.

I am not naïve about Malaysia.

But the hitherto obstructed and rejected “Malaysia solution” is about the best available option that is now to be had to the problem we face.

It provides the most workable, humane, long-term sustainable approach now on offer. It offers one that, more than all others, is sensitive to human rights issues and capable of promoting a principled concern for them.

It is a policy that stands somewhere between saying no to everybody and yes to everybody who shows up here — or who tries to and, facing terrible “peril on the sea”, gets less than half-way from Java to Ashmore or Christmas Island.

Neither of those other approaches is sustainable: the former mainly for international reasons, the latter for national, domestic political reasons.

The “Malaysia solution” too has its problems and defects. But implementing it would set in motion a necessary process. It would start doing what needs to be done.

It would effectively recognise the international nature of a problem — of a cynical exercise where Australia stands at the end of the line of a global game of passing on the “hot potato” — and would regionalise the practicalities of its handling and management.

The problem that Australia faces requires both Indonesia and Malaysia seriously to adopt and maintain a fairly clear stance. A policy that does not shelter any cynical “passing-the-back” pragmatism behind disingenuous generalities.

If we here in Australia could agree to the “Malaysia solution” we would not only “cut the link” enabling people to get in touch with a “pilgrimage to Australia” agent somewhere in Asia and then directly claim Australian residence rights and citizenship.

That, of course, has been the government’s argument.

More than that, once the Malaysia solution procedures were activated, there would soon develop two classes of asylum-seekers in Malaysia. Some would come under the enhanced, if imperfect, human rights provisions and protections of the scheme. Many, most other refugees there would not.