Yes, Tony Abbott has 'stopped the boats'. But the cost is catastrophic
As
thousands of poor souls lose their minds in tropical prisons,
Australia’s compliance with international law is at breaking point.
Political success must transcend
thousands of poor souls lose their minds in tropical prisons,
Australia’s compliance with international law is at breaking point.
Political success must transcend
If you judge political success by delivering on a three-word slogan
at any cost, then Tony Abbott’s asylum policy has succeeded. He has for
now, as he promised, “stopped the boats”.
But if you judge
success as delivering on the intent of a policy in a responsible way,
while trying to minimise soaring collateral damage, then his asylum
policy has been a dismal failure.
Many disagree that “stopping the
boats” was ever a necessary or pressing aim in the first place. But
given the position of both major parties at the last election, it was
widely supported in the electorate. However, even if “stopping the
boats” is the starting point, the government never spelled out these
consequences.
There wasn’t a voiceover at the end of the election
ads, low and quickly spoken like the health side-effect warnings at the
end of pharmaceutical adverts, saying: “May require 3,000 people to lose
their minds while waiting for years in tropical prisons, may require
stretching to breaking point Australia’s compliance with international
law, may require sending people back to possible persecution, may
involve ridiculous attempt to assess asylum claims with four questions
via video conference on the high seas, may require riding roughshod over
the high court and the parliament, may require refusing to answer any
legitimate question put to the minister by the press, may require
treating the voting public like imbeciles.” There was no asterisk in the
print advertisements directing voters to that kind of fine print.
On
Thursday Scott Morrison stood in front of what seems to be the new logo
for “Border Force” – an ominous blank face in a helmet looking like a
cross between Darth Vader and Daft Punk – and once again declared that
Operation Sovereign Borders had been a raging success and that the
government would not “budge” or “roll over” or “be intimidated”. No
actual answers to questions of course. No information about what the
government is doing with 153 Tamils somewhere on the seas. Just
patronising assurances that there would be no signs of weakness in the
“protection” of Australia’s borders.
Determined to tick a box and
claim political victory and vindication – the government’s benchmark for
success remains to make sure not a single asylum seeker arrives by
boat, whatever the cost and whatever the policy chaos. And the cost and
chaos are increasing.
Altogether the lives of tens of thousands of
human beings are collateral damage in the Coalition’s determination to
take the hardest possible line to prove a political point.
There
are the 1,202 on Manus Island and 1,191 on Nauru. Health and mental
health problems are endemic. They are now being slowly processed but
have no idea how or where they will be resettled. Contrary to the
original rushed agreement with the former Labor government, Papua New
Guinea may not be willing to resettle all of those on Manus who are
found to be genuine refugees.
Its immigration minister, Rimbink
Pato, has said he will choose which asylum seekers are resettled on the
basis of their skills, which raises obvious questions about what will
happen to the ones he does not select. Those found to be refugees on
Nauru will be temporarily settled in that country (unemployment rate
90%) before possibly being sent to Cambodia, a impoverished country with
which there is also no finalised resettlement agreement.
Amnesty
International and the UNHCR have criticised the centres for having
inadequate health services, water and sanitation. Stuck in these places
and on Christmas Island with no idea what the future holds some asylum
seekers have attempted suicide and self-harm. No one has been charged
over the killing on Manus Island of the Iranian asylum seeker Reza
Barati.
Then there are the 20,000 or more asylum seekers living
in sanity-sapping limbo in Australia, refused permanent protection,
without the right to work, subsisting on a payment of 89% of
unemployment benefits, also with no idea what will happen to them, or
when.
The government is also fiercely determined to show no “weakness” when it comes to the cases of these poor souls.
After
the Senate struck down the government’s attempts at reintroducing
temporary protection visas, the high court ruled the government was
obliged to process them under the existing law. But the government is
now reaching for truly extraordinary measures to circumvent the court
ruling as well as the Senate and put itself above both.
It will now argue that it is against the “national interest”
for any asylum seeker arriving by boat or plane to ever be given a
permanent visa – upending every previous understanding of a government’s
obligation to protection – to make sure protection is only ever
temporary for people they insist on referring to as “illegals”. When
TPVs were used under the Howard government they had serious mental
health consequences for the refugees, and the deterrence impact is
surely minimal since all the other “border protection” measures have
stopped the boats anyway.
And new legislation will make it much
more difficult for even those TPVs to be awarded – including changing
the definition to assess their risk of persecution from one that
effectively says they cannot be sent back if there’s a 10% chance they
will suffer persecution or significant harm, to one that requires a
greater than 50% chance.
“This is an acceptable position which is
open to Australia under international law and reflects the government’s
interpretation of Australia’s obligations,” Morrison said when he
introduced the changes. The Senate, thankfully, appears likely to take a
different view and decide we are in fact not a country that thinks it
is acceptable to take an each-way bet on returning someone to possible
torture or persecution.
The cost to Australia’s international
reputation could also be high. If the government is in fact doing a
four-question rapid assessment of Tamil asylum seekers on the high seas
before returning them to the Sri Lankan navy, the UNHCR seems pretty clear this is in breach of our obligations.
“UNHCR
considers that individuals who seek asylum must be properly and
individually screened for protection needs, in a process which they
understand and in which they are able to explain their needs,” it said
on Thursday night in a statement. “If protection issues are raised, they
should be properly determined through a substantive and fair refugee
status determination procedure to establish whether any one of them may
be at risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations …
“Anything
short of such a screening, referral and assessment may risk putting
already vulnerable individuals at grave risk of danger.”
And
Abbott’s assurances that Sri Lanka is not at war any more do not
actually address the very real human rights concerns about that country
raised by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, nor remove the
possibility that a Tamil sent back after four questions on a videolink
could be returned to persecution.
The breach of Australians’
normal understanding of a government’s obligation to tell citizens what
it is doing is also extreme. We have reached a situation where the
government is accused of breaking international law, using the
Australian navy, off the Australian coast, and the relevant minister
says he will answer questions when he decides an incident is
significant, and in his view, this one is not.
And despite
refusing to provide its citizens with basic facts, the government is
happy to shower them with inflammatory rhetoric that with
ever-decreasing subtlety links “border security” with “national
security” and the arrival of asylum seekers with some kind of undefined
threat to public safety.
The diplomatic cost is also high. Boats,
of course, did not stop setting off on the journey to Australia – with
the real risk of drowning at sea – as Guardian Australia documents in this data blog.
They were just not allowed to arrive, with eight known boatloads of
asylum seekers returned to Indonesia, one return resulting in the
Australian navy violating Indonesia’s territorial waters. The
government’s silence was in part about allowing the current president,
Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, to save some face on the highly sensitive
issue of maritime sovereignty. In recent weeks there has been a public
thawing, underlined by the meeting between Yudhoyono and Abbott. Both
candidates in the Indonesian presidential election may well take a
different view.
The turnbacks, the hardline rhetoric and the
determined use of offshore processing have largely achieved the
government’s myopic aim.
And Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison remain
jubilantly confident voters will reward a promise kept through
unwavering resolve and will disregard the mounting costs and
side-effects. They just aren’t confident enough to openly explain those
costs, apparently believing the electorate won’t care, or won’t notice.
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