Australia’s immigration policies failed Michael Howard

Just as with the “War on Poverty” to which he has signed up, Blair (or later Brown) should be pushed in the third term to formulate and advocate more humane and effective international refugee policies: policies that differentiate between dictatorships and those who flee them; policies that protect the fundamental right to asylum at a time of fluid global labour markets.

Populist policies founded on de facto racism only play into the hands of extremists and fundamentalists. The Australian model is one of unnecessary individual suffering caused by bad policy.

To our credit, we continue to resettle people processed in other countries’ refugee camps, taking about 10,000 refugees a year through the UNHCR’s programs. The Conservative Manifesto would have had Britain both withdrawing from the Geneva Convention which mandates the UNHCR and confining its refugee work to resettlement of those processed by UNHCR, which is even a lazier refugee policy than Australia’s.

But what’s not so well known is that asylum seekers continue to arrive in Australia. Last year 6,299 asylum seekers arrived, 8,296 the year before. These were years when only 788 and 899 refugee visas were granted respectively - largely to people who arrive by air, on a tourist or education visa, and who make a claim for asylum when they get here.

They don’t get the publicity, rarely get detained, are generally entitled to a range of benefits over the months and years their claims are processed and have around a one in ten success rate in their asylum claims. The “boat people” - 90 per cent of whom, even under hostile processing, are found to be refugees - arrive in smaller numbers overall, but get the harshest treatment.

Many Australians are convinced the problem is solved if boat arrivals are blocked. Australia still doesn’t have a fair, fast processing system and we still have no effective way of dealing with any future large-scale (in our terms) boat arrivals in the future.

We have made no real contribution to world efforts to develop a system that provides protection for those who desperately need it at a time of increased economic migration, and we still have the victims of our immigration policies in detention. In May 2005, we still have over 150 “boat people”, who arrived in 2001 and earlier, in detention and who have been refused asylum. They have committed no crime but are kept in detention because they won’t return to their country of origin, or are stateless. The absence of any effective judicial review of this system allows an unaccountable bureaucracy to extend the same treatment to people who are entitled to reside here.

The essential feature of the Australian immigration model is the failure to deal with manageable issues, masked by public mistreatment of innocent victims for short-term political advantage, but with long term consequences.

Eventually, the Howard Government will need to do more than just pretend it has dealt with the worst features of it’s policies and we all will have to face up to what has been done and learn how to do it properly.

Immigration is still a live issue in Britain as a result of the election campaign. Let’s hope the British study the Australian immigration model and help us move beyond it.