Queuing Up

Queuing Up

By kayrollison on March 15, 2014 • 

Bill Shorten recently called for new policy ideas for the Labor Party. Well here’s one.


Let’s have a new policy on asylum seekers.


Professor Robert Manne has now entered the fray in the Guardian
to declare that both the Right and the Left (however defined) are wrong
about refugees, and that a compromise is needed. He believes that
‘realistically’ public opinion will never accept that refugees who
arrive by boat should be processed onshore. He also argues that allowing
onshore processing results in more boats, and as a direct consequence,
more lives lost at sea. So in order to deter refugees from taking to the
boats, offshore processing and tow-back must be retained.


Is this the new policy that Labor is looking for? I hope not.


I am grateful to Professor Manne for provoking this debate. His ideas
provide a starting point for discussion, and there are already a number
of interesting comments on his article. I agree with him that there
should be compromise. But not the one he is suggesting.


First there is the question of what is politically possible. Manne claims that:

‘The harshness of Australian opinion on the question of
asylum seekers is settled. Scores of opinion polls, best analysed by
professor Andrew Markus for the Scanlon Foundation, make this clear.’

But at least one comment suggests that Manne is misusing these results, saying that:

‘Clearly, the research shows a marginally higher
proportion of people in favour of some form of residence, and overall
roughly a 50-50 split between residence vs turning or sending back.’

Another comment questions what is ‘realistic’:

‘there are a range of factors involved in determining
what is acceptable at any particular time to a given polity. Political
leadership is one critical element. The treatment of an issue by the
media is another.’

I don’t think it’s time to give up on persuading a significant number
of people that tow-back and offshore processing are unacceptable, and
that Labor policy shouldn’t countenance it. (I’m still not convinced it
isn’t piracy.) There are some people who will never be convinced, but
then there are people who think the earth is flat. Whatever set of
policies the Labor Party takes to the next election will be derided by
the Murdoch media, and countering this should be of major concern to the
party. But it shouldn’t be a reason for shirking a humane and decent
policy.


It seems to me that such a policy, presented by a passionate and
articulate leader – yes Bill Shorten, I’m looking at you – and based on
practicability and compassion would win more support than one based on
weasel words and political expediency. Labor has to emerge as a party of
principle. After all, expediency hasn’t been working too well lately,
has it?


Manne puts his finger on the crucial problem when he points to the
connection between onshore processing, the large increase in the number
of refugees arriving by sea during 2012-13 (25,000 by his count) and
deaths at sea. This is a wicked problem, as I noted in a previous post on this issue. Is there anything besides tow-back and offshore processing that can be done to resolve it?


Many people feel that boat arrivals are ‘jumping the queue.’ But at
present there isn’t a queue to jump. So why don’t we create one? Let’s
make it easier for people to come to Australia by applying for refugee
status in the transit countries where they are currently stranded.
Knowing there is an ordered process of resettlement is important for
refugees, for governments and for people in countries of resettlement.


The first step would be to establish refugee status in countries of
transit. This should be speeded up by further financial assistance by
Australia to the UNHCR. Once this was established, refugees would join a
queue for resettlement in Australia or elsewhere. (Or accept temporary
safe haven, if there was a realistic chance of returning home.)


Refugees on the queue would live in refugee camps in the transit
country with proper facilities, paid for in part by Australia. There
would be many questions to be negotiated with the host country – health
care and the right to work being two obvious ones. But why is such
negotiation impossible?


If refugees decided to ‘jump the queue’ by buying a passage on a boat
from a people-smuggler, they would be detained on arrival in Australia.
And here’s where it gets really hard. I know that people coming by boat
are desperate, but so are the ones who can’t afford the passage. We
have to devise a system that privileges people who wait in the queue and
discourages those who jump it, by boat or by plane.


If we reject off-shore detention for those who jump the queue – and
humanity demands that we do – the only solution is on-shore detention in
Australia.  Those found to be genuine refugees could be allowed to live
in the Australian community on temporary entry visas, with the right to
apply for permanency after perhaps five years. These visas should not
restrict their right to work – a Labor party could not in conscience
adopt such a policy. But queue-jumpers on temporary visas should not be
allowed to bring out relatives.  That should be a privilege reserved for
those who take the authorised path to permanent residency.


None of this would work unless Australia agreed to take more
refugees. Let’s not forget there are hundreds of thousands of people
seeking resettlement in refugee camps around the world.


These proposals raise as many questions as they solve. But, in
Professor Mannes’ spirit of debate, here’s the compromise I intend to
offer to the ALP as a basis for further discussion.


Recognising that the problem of people seeking asylum in Australia
is continuing and probably worsening, I ask the federal Labor party to
develop an ethical, practical and electorally viable policy on this
issue which will include the following measures:

• Commitment to increasing the number of refugees accepted into
  Australia through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and a
  public campaign to educate Australians to welcome refugees as fellow
  citizens
• Provision of additional funding to the United Nations High
  Commission for Refugees to allow it to more speedily process refugee
  applications to Australia in the refugees’ countries of origin and
  transit.
• Proactive co-operation with our regional neighbours rather than unilateral action to prevent the flow of unauthorised refugees.
• Provision of adequate funding to transit countries to build and maintain decent refugee camps.
• Restoration of foreign aid to countries of origin to decrease the need for their citizens to become refugees.
• Cessation of off-shore processing for unauthorised refugees, the
  reintroduction of on-shore processing, and the development of a new form
  of temporary entry visa which will allow refugees to live and work in
  the Australian community, while restricting their rights in a way that
  makes it clear that they have placed themselves at the end of the
  migration queue.