Sustaining the unsustainable

Far from being on the periphery of Australian politics, the Asylum seeker policy is at the centre, it is the elephant in the room. It has taken on a life of its own and now to varying degrees dictates the working agenda of a number of key government departments and agencies including, Immigration, Defence, Customs, Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister and Cabinet, Attorney-General, AFP, ASIO and ASIS.

We have witnessed the progressive politicisation of the uniformed branch of Defence. Starting with the deployment of the SAS onto the Tampa under John Howard to the current breaching of Indonesian sovereignty by the Australian Navy as it tows boats back across the maritime boundary.

Refugees legitimately seeking asylum, for that is what they are doing, do not constitute a security threat. Yet Immigration Minister Morrison acting on the hysteria generated by Prime Minister Abbott, has chosen to couch the legitimate quest for freedom, by asylum seekers, in terms of an invasion and to prove perverted logic has appointed General, Angus Campbell, to manage the response.

The overwrought and over the top reaction to what in reality is the movement of a small number of people has, overtime, created an informal but highly centralised mega department in Canberra, not overly concerned with the rule of law.

Immigration have advised sending Tamils back to Sri Lanka without hearing their claims for asylum on the basis, untested, that they are economic refugees. They oversee the hellish holding camps for asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru. They have primary responsibility for a policy which treats people very badly and illegally both in terms of Australian domestic law and international law.

The Attorney – General’s Department has acquiesced in these illegalities and supports the indefinite detention of over 50 Tamil refugees on security grounds based on the flawed assessment of ASIO, which has received its advice from the Sri Lankan government, the victors in a civil war which has seen the defeated and persecuted Tamils seeking to flee the country.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, apparently acting on domestic political imperatives, has obfuscated the reality of existence for Tamils in Sri Lanka which embraces persecution, in order to back the Australian government’s policy of denying refugee status to Tamils. Together with the AFP, who has officers stationed in Colombo, has sought to strengthen the resolve of the Sri Lankan authorities to stop boats with Tamils on board sailing for Australia.

The AFP has also been involved in working with people smugglers in Indonesia and Malaysia to disrupt sea borne smuggling operations to Australia. ASIS have also been involved in these operations and in gathering information on the likely movement of people from other countries, including Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

Prime Minister and Cabinet is the co-ordinator and political driving force of this mega department, although power shifts and positions are contested, sometimes hotly, depending on the ambitions at play within the Khaimah. However a consensus and team mentally has built, a common language agreed behind officially sanctioned walls of silence, which has helped unify the bureaucratic players assisted by the consensus on this key issue between both major parties.

The adverse centrifugal impact on the political advisory process by the perverse and fearful response to asylum seekers arriving by boat has the potential to substantially undermine established democratic process.

The resulting pressure on core processes and beliefs will inevitably lead to a judicial inquiry or royal commission into Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. None of the fictions invented about the responsibilities of the PNG or Nauruan governments toward deported and incarcerated asylum seekers can absolve the Australian government from their legal and humanitarian responsibilities.

Morrison claims he has stopped the boats, he has not, his agents continue to turn them back. He has not developed a sustainable policy. The numbers are building on Indonesia. What will they do?

Concluding secret deals with Cambodia, a notoriously corrupt state, for the resettlement of refugees seeking asylum in Australia cannot remove Australia from its responsibilities and the UNHCR has said as much. Nor can returning Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka without testing their claims be construed as anything less than an act of bastardry.

An expert international panel of Judges, academics, former diplomats and UN officials gathered under auspices of the Rome based Permanent Peoples Tribunal on 10 December, 2013, in Bremen and after an exhaustive process found that genocide against the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka continues. These facts were accepted by the 25th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in New York at the end of March 2014. 

Perhaps doing deals with rogue states might be justified if Australian security was at stake, but it is not. The party political imperative behind Australia’s asylum seeker policy has been a desire to hold onto power by acceding to the wishes of red neck electorates. A political framework for dealing with refugees, other than the one forged by John Howard, properly presented, might see fear driven ignorance recede. Instead this fear has been shamelessly exploited.

This cynical exploitation of ignorance presents a real challenge to the social fabric of Australia.

The Howard asylum seeker framework, adopted as policy by successive Labor and Liberal governments, failed to address the issue of people travelling to Australia by boat. It was always open to Australia to process off shore within a regional framework, it still is. However the policy of deterrence negates such an arrangement. Deterrence is predicated on the notion that it is possible to stop people fleeing adversity and seeking asylum. It is not. The issue can however be managed and managed in such a way that it is humane and lawful.

For all the money that is now being so wastefully and wilfully spent on cruel and unsustainable deterrence measures, it should not be beyond the range of limited imaginations to encompass the prospect of processing on Indonesia and bringing people to Australia in an orderly and caring manner.

With over 1200 deaths of asylum seekers, 200 dying in detention, with women and children detained on Manus and Nauru and with many if not most of the asylum seekers that have passed into Australian ‘care’ now permanently suffering chronic mental health issues, the time for a royal commission into Australian asylum seeker policies is overdue, particularly when set against the Abbott governments commission of inquiries into pink batts and unions.