The photograph on the front page of The Canberra Times told a story of enormous poignancy. There were two girls – perhaps aged five or six — hand in hand. They could have been at a school holiday camp, except the camp they were in was not a holiday camp; it was a prison.
The two children were photographed within the grounds of the Woomera detention centre for people who come to Australia without visas – usually by boats across the ocean.
The children were photographed behind a high wire fence in front of a detention centre building which had been extensively damaged by fire and rioting. The damage ran to about $1.5 million and was caused by the inmates. The criminal damage is inexcusable, but it is understandable.
But what is also inexcusable but beyond understanding is the Australian Government’s policy on asylum seekers. Even if the Government felt it necessary for national security to lock up every person who arrived on our shores without a valid visa, do we have to lock them up in the middle of the desert? What have we got to hide? Even if we have to lock them up, must we add to their misery the misery of an inhospitable desert climate?
Opinion polls are showing the majority of people are in favour of the mandatory detention rules which were introduced by the previous Labor Government and more vigorously applied by the present Coalition Government. The majority support has encouraged the Government to persevere with the policy and, if anything, apply it more harshly. Despite the popular sentiment The Canberra Times has opposed this policy, and once again states unequivocally that it is inhuman and immoral in all circumstances to lock children in detention centres in remote parts of Australia and it is not justified to have a policy of automatic detention for adult asylum seekers.
The violence cannot be condoned, but it is understandable. Many people in the detention centre in Woomera face perpetual detention. They technically do not satisfy the criteria of refugee, but they cannot be deported because the country they came from will not take them back.
The policy of mandatory detention has been used as a political weapon for the Coalition to gain electoral support by pretending there is a threatening security problem by a few thousand boat people.
The time has come for a review of the policy of mandatory detention policy, the unsustainable policy of transporting asylum seekers to Pacific islands, and the policy of housing detainees in remote centres away from the support structures available in more populous centres.
The seething resentment, fury and violence engendered by these policies was seen in Woomera this week. The psychological damage the incarceration is causing has been well documented. It makes the folly of the detention policy obvious when one considered that most of these people will ultimately settle in Australia. Instead of having grateful immigrants recognising a generous host – as happened with the millions of post-war immigrants from Europe – we will inherit traumatised, alienated immigrants. This will be to our great economic and spiritual cost – on top of the already wasted millions on the Pacific solution. All in the name of a few votes. And the Labor Party which introduced the policy and supported in the past election is equally guilty.
Surely, Australia has greater ingenuity and humanity to provide a better solution to the difficulty of sifting out the genuine refugees from the smuggled economic ones. Electronic bracelets, vigorous reporting conditions and sureties from community groups and individuals come to mind.
The detention policy is inhumane, immoral, expensive and a blot on our reputation in the international community. The policy must end before there is even greater damage, both human and economic, than what was inflicted at Woomera this week.