The price of Indonesian indignation

Historians are often fond of telling stories and some of them are very good at it. Many historians are also good at remembering dates. I am not. But in relation to the issues we are discussing there are two dates that I do remember - December 1, 1973 and December 2, 1973.

On December 1, Papua New Guinea (formerly the Australian territory of Papua and New Guinea) was granted self-government. The next day, Australia became a signatory to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. This protocol removed the time and geographical limitations of the 1951 Refugee Convention (to which Australia had acceded in 1954).

By signing the protocol, the government committed itself to applying the criteria laid down in the convention to anybody seeking Australia’s protection, regardless of their nationality, colour or creed. After December 2, 1973, Australia allowed international law to govern its response to asylum seekers and refugees.

The legislation currently before Federal Parliament (pdf file 293KB) would effectively return Australia to its position before December 2, 1973, when the government dealt with asylum seekers as it saw fit, without being constrained by international legal obligations, and without the UNHCR’s involvement.

In one sense, the draft legislation is already taking us back 33 years. The authors of the senate report tabled last Tuesday (pdf file 303KB) bemoan the “contradictory and sophist nature of some of the information provided by the department”. The offender here is the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that that department was unable to furnish information about the Bill and its implications to the extent required by the senators.

The Bill currently before parliament is likely to have been the brainchild of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs staff and their minister are not meant to be responsibly involved in the administration of Australia’s refugee and asylum seeker policies (except when somebody seeks political asylum, as the Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin (pdf file 1.17MB) did last year). They once were. Between 1963 and 1973, the foreign minister dealt with applications from West Papuans for temporary permissive residence. In fact, he, rather than the immigration minister, decided about all asylum requests in Australia and its territories.

Over the past few years, I have repeatedly argued that the immigration department should be relieved of its responsibility for the administration of Australia’s refugee and asylum seeker policies. I did not mean to call for a return to the days when refugee and asylum seeker issues were considered to be a foreign policy matter.

History could teach us to see the proposed legislation in a wider context. It could alert us to the fact that most West Papuan refugees have not fled to Australia but to Papua New Guinea, both before and after 1973. Papua New Guinea currently hosts more than 8,000 West Papuan refugees. According to UNHCR statistics about the relative burden of providing protection, it carries a refugee load that is more than five times as heavy as Australia’s. What signal would Australia’s new policy send to PNG and other countries in our region?

History could also alert us to the circumstances under which Indonesia acquired the western half of New Guinea. The Australian Government has consistently condoned Indonesia’s approach and downplayed its knowledge of human rights violations in Papua. Because of this history, Australia has a particular responsibility towards West Papuan refugees.

Finally, the fate of those West Papuans who came to harm after being returned by Australian officials to Indonesian territory in the 1960s and early 1970s ought to remind us how important close attention to the rule of law and natural justice, and an unwavering commitment to international refugee law and human rights instruments are, even if such attention and commitment came at the price of Indonesian indignation.