The real illegals can now stand up.
After more than five years of branding asylum seekers “illegal immigrants” we now see where the real illegality lies — not among the asylum seekers, but within the Government.
The cases of 201 detainees are now to be looked at by the Palmer Inquiry or its successor as to whether their detention was legal. That is more than a fifth of the total of 928 detained.
We have had confirmation of the illegal treatment by the Government of at least two detainees – Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez.
Only now, when the boot is on the other foot, is the Government softening its approach. It is now not going to return a couple with their new-born baby to detention – though that unbelievable possibility was put by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and her department until Prime Minister John Howard contradicted her.
Some back-bench Liberals have dared buck the worse elements of the mandatory-detention system.
Why the change of mind? (One could hardly call it a change of heart.)
Media coverage has much to do with it.
Howard won the 2001 election largely because of his approach to refugees. He tapped into the emotion of fear. His policy smacked of defending Australia from being swamped by “illegals”. The masses went for it. It won him the election. He admitted this week that a great part of the Coalition’s political success was built on its attitude to asylum seekers.
But the success relied on an absence of human knowledge. As long as voters could not see the refugees as humans, all was well. The Government hid them in camps in the desert and on remote islands. It denied media access to them on the spurious grounds of “privacy” – as if any of them had any real privacy in the first place or if given an informed choice would have not leapt at the chance to tell their plight to the world.
Any refugees whose case came before the High Court was given a number – instead of the usual litigants’ name — under Government legislation.
The dehumanisation was epitomised when former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock in a television interview kept referring to a refugee baby is “it”.
Out of sight, they became a pawn in the Government’s presentation of itself as protector of Australia’s security.
However, once voters begin to realise that if you prick them do they not bleed, the game is up.
The cases of people – like Peter Qasim — locked up forever because no country would take them, started to prick consciences, particularly after the High Court (6-1) agreed that there was no legal redress.
Cornelia Rau was the first significant dent in the Government’s dehumanisation. The media could not be kept away. She was a bridge between voters and the detainees because she was an Australian citizen and victim of a ghastly bungle. An opinion poll suggested 70 per cent of Australians thought she deserved an apology from the Government — one that does its best to avoid apologies. The same poll, nonetheless, showed more than half favoured mandatory detention.
Vivian Alvarez then showed the Rau case was not an aberration.
Then Malaysia shamed Australia into freeing Virginia Leong. It was another blow to dehumanisation as the media explained her “Sophie’s choice”. If she took Malaysia’s offer of refuge she would be able to take her three-year-old Naomi out of the detention into which she was born, but Mrs Leong would be permanently separated from her other child, Griffin, who was born of a previous marriage.
Then came case of the detained Vietnamese couple whose child was born in Perth this week. The Government lifted the curtain on bans against media photos because it could not deny photo sessions to mark a new baby.
After all this, perhaps the next poll might show that mandatory detention is no longer an election winner.
There is no justification for it. There never has been, for several reasons.
The boats have stopped coming because repression has dropped off in source countries, not because they, and the people smugglers they resort to, have been deterred by detention. Besides, what is the morality of detaining the innocent (particularly children) as a deterrent to people smuggling. It is almost the moral equivalent to hostage taking? And this from a Government that falsely accused asylum seekers of abusing children by throwing them into the sea.
Nearly all those detained get refugee status and move to the community. Why has the Government been so stupid as to bear the cost of long-term detention, including resentment and the costs of the mental illness that inevitably come from indefinite detention?
Ultimately, all of the post-Vietnam-war boat people and other refugees were successfully settled into Australia without a policy of indefinite detention.
The whole sorry saga — the Tampa, the Pacific Solution, the “certain maritime incident” and now Rau and Alvarez – surely highlights the need for a Bill of Rights in Australia: one that prohibits indefinite detention and one that prevents government from denying media scrutiny of its activities.
As the searchlight of publicity (despite the secretive powerless Palmer inquiry) further illuminates this appalling policy voter opinion will turn against it and the Government will hopefully abandon it.
How can any Government in conscience can justify the continued imprisonment of a man without charge for seven years or permit a baby to be born in detention and remain there for the first three years of her life? That could be your dad or daughter.
If these people are “illegal”, charge them. Bring them before a magistrate or judge and let them apply for bail.