Asylum seekers, Waleed Aly and the folly of good intentions

Perhaps a more simple way we can put this is that incentives matter. If you know you have a good shot at permanent resettlement in Australia by travelling through multiple countries and paying a people smuggler take you to Australia, chances are you’ll opt for that over throwing your lot in with the international refugee resettlement bureaucracy.

As we saw just this week, incentives also operate on a much smaller level. A reliable favourite of the open-border activists is that offshore detention centres are so awful that asylum seekers are driven to self-harm. In a move that enraged many, Dutton ordered that if self-harming asylum seekers required medical treatment in Australia, their family would not be allowed to join them.

Was this another example of the mean-minded malice we’ve come to expect from our government?

Not so fast. As soon as Dutton’s order came into effect, the self-harming on Nauru stopped. Immediately. What changed was that there was no longer any incentive to use self-harm as a way for asylum seekers to bring their families to the Australia.

To be sure, this kind of measure can seem a bit heavy-handed. But lets put it in perspective. No one is being denied medical care. Asylum Seekers on Nauru are given a reasonable allowance and they’re free to roam a peaceful island. Clearly the standard of living in Nauru falls well short of what we enjoy in Australia. Yet for people fleeing the threat of persecution and violence, this must surely count as some improvement.

As Chris Kenny put it following his trip to Nauru late last year:

Nauru has become a vortex of political and personal agendas conspiring to mask the truth. Even simple facts and obvious realities can be difficult to discern or expose. Happiness is disguised, secrets are kept, identities are hidden, allegations are made and politics are played.

Like any complex area of policy, there’s little doubt Australia’s asylum seeker processing policies and practices can be improved. There isn’t a single politician who doesn’t want to reduce the number of children in detention. That said, there’s a difference between constructive criticism and high-minded pontification without any realistic consideration of the practical alternatives available.

If Waleed Aly, Julian Burnside and Sarah Hansen-Young are genuinely interested in improving how Australia deals with asylum seekers as opposed to burnishing their credentials amongst Australia’s human rights industry, they should spend more time doing the former and less focusing on the latter.