In October 2001 Prime Minister John Howard said at the launch of his re-election campaign, “We decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
He instilled fear in the hearts and minds of part of the Australian electorate and won the election.
That statement, though, invites two questions. Who are “we” and what is “this country”? The meaning of both has changed since 2001.
“This country” used to mean Australia with all of its islands. But in our brave new Alice in Wonderland world the word “Australia” means just what John Howard chooses it to mean — neither more or less. And in this instance slightly less than we all thought.
For the purposes of the Migration Act, suddenly islands are being excised from Australia. It is a legalistic way for Australia to worm out of its international agreements on refugees.
Under those agreements Australia has a duty to treat refugees who arrive in Australia in a certain way — not to return them to countries where they might be persecuted and to accord them basic living requirements (even if in detention) and a right to protection while their homelands are in turmoil. The Migration Act gives them a right to apply for a visa and the High Court can supervise the way that law is administered.
Understandably, not every one of the 17 million or so refugees in the world can apply to Australia for protection. Our international obligations extend only to those refugees who arrive in Australia, otherwise we would be swamped. So the Government – with at least partial connivance of the Opposition – has redefined Australia for the purposes of the Migration Act. It has said that various islands are not included in Australia and that refugees who land on them are in no better position than a refugee anywhere else in the world (say on the Rwandan border) in their right to call upon Australia for protection or have access (however limited) to the courts to supervise that.
Some people have joked that Tasmania could be excluded from the Migration zone – that is, excluded from the definition of Australia for the purposes of the Migration Act. It is not a joke. Tasmania could be. So could a certain very large island lying between 10 degrees south and 37 degrees south and 110 degrees east and 155 degrees east. That very large island can be in or out of the migration zone at the whim of the Parliament.
In this case, the Parliament is the “we” in John Howard’s statement. If the Parliament so decides, Australia does not have to have a migration zone at all. It does not have to give any protection to any refugees. It has only done so out of a sense of compassion and decency to desperate people. It has done so as an international good citizen in recognition that there are evil people in positions of power in other countries who would happily kill, imprison and torture their own citizens and it is up to decent international good citizens to help those fleeing.
What form that help takes and in what circumstances it is applied is up to the Government and Parliament of the country where the refugees land.
In Australia, under this Government, it takes a legalistic and half-hearted form under which refugees are misused as a part of a political scare tactic. “Ha, ha,” our Government says to people arriving in leaking boats, “You haven’t really arrived in Australia.”
The refugees who arrived on Melville Island this week actually asked that question: “Is this Australia?”
So the excision of these islands is a way of whittling down the international obligation through artifice and legalism while pretending that we still live up to it.
Why the hypocrisy? If these refugees really pose the threat the Government says they do, why muck about with excising just the islands from the migration zone. Why not excise the whole of Australia from the zone? Why have the zone at all?
Seriously, if the Government thinks that these few refugees arriving on boats are such a serious threat, why draw the distinction between those who land on Melville Island and those who make it a few kilometres further on to the mainland. Logically, there is no difference in the “threat” posed by them. If anything the mainland arrivers are more of a threat. On the Government’s reasoning, why give any of them protection? Why not bundle them all to Nauru and deny all of them any skerrick of protection?
It is a hypocritical and spineless Government. On one hand it says it is saving Australia from terrible danger by dragging those who are unlucky enough to land on an excised island off to a dreadful “Pacific solution”. But on the other hand it has not got the courage to do the same thing to refugees (who presumably pose the same threat) who happen to land on the mainland.
The excision of islands is just grandstanding and scare-mongering.
What are the facts? Since 1989 just 13,475 people have arrived by boat. That is less than 1000 a year.
In 1999-2000, the family and skills program brought in 70,200 people. In 2002-03 it brought in 108,070. In that time the humanitarian program went from 9960 to 12,525.
So while the Government has been scaremongering about being swamped by boat people, it has in the past four years added to the legal intake the equivalent of 10 times the number of boat people who have arrived in the past 13 years.
There is some further hypocrisy afoot if allegations made in Parliament are true. The former Minister for Immigration Philip Ruddock personally granted 138 refugee visas in his final week. He used his discretionary powers more than any other previous minister averaging 170 interventions a year and favouring Lebanese who have been more successful that all others. Ruddock’s friend Lebanese businessman Karim Kisrwani has been more successful at intervening with Ruddock on behalf of people seeking visas refugees than any other person or community group. The use of the discretion is the subject of a parliamentary inquiry following allegations in Parliament – denied by Ruddock – of visa grants being linked to donations to the Liberal Party.
Ruddock’s personal interventions of visa granting after refusals by the department and tribunals are the equivalent of nearly 20 per cent of all those dangerous boat people who must be excluded from Australia.
And among those dangerous people to be refused visas were the two Indonesian children whose mother died in the Bali bombing who wanted to come to Australia to see their Iranian father Ibrahim Sammaki who until Thursday was in Baxter immigration detention centre.
Gosh, what a threat that visit would have posed to Australia’s security. In this instance, Philip Ruddock was the “we” who decided who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. God help us.