Advance Australia Fair? The dangers of the asylum seeker discourse

“For those who’ve come across the seas we’ve boundless plains to share,
With courage let us all combine to Advance Australia Fair.”

What crass and crazy conclusions will our children elicit from these powerful words that form our national anthem? Where is the stanza about fear of the other and hoarding wealth and influence? How will our children learn to function in Australian society if the national anthem is espousing this ideal of unity, compassion, courage and respect?

Asylum seekers do not pose a threat to the Australian way of life. The asylum seeker debate does. If we decide to stand idly by and watch as refugees are stripped of their basic rights and the dignity to live freely we jeopardise our national ethos, our ‘way of life’. We don’t just vote at the ballot box, we vote with our every action, or inaction. We vote with our complicit apathy for an Australia that our children will be ashamed of. An Australia in need of a new national anthem!

Beyond my fears for the well being of asylum seekers, I am concerned for the future of this country and its good people. The prejudice and lack of morality enshrined in policy and reflected in public debate can be changed, but its effect on Australian society could last generations – if we let it. The real threat to our way of life is complacency in the face of such cruelty.

The idea that harsher punitive measures will ‘stop the boats’ is baseless political maneuvering and in any case, a country that punishes the most vulnerable for the accident of their birth is not the kind of Australia we should be striving for.

If you can’t get on board with the ‘pro humanity’ stance because you’re sure that morals are too squishy and don’t make for good policy, then get on board for another reason – billions of your precious tax payer dollars are funding largely unaccountable, foreign owned, internationally condemned, privatised detention facilities to abrogate our regional and moral responsibilities. There is a better way forward. A new three word slogan, ‘stop the votes’.

 

The Politics of Exclusion:

I’m not interested here in Labor vs. Liberal but rather in the framing of the refugee issue as a political one. The political problem is not refugees, the political problem is that we have allowed our politicians to cultivate a climate of fear and prejudice surrounding ‘the other’ which serves to divide the populace. The issue of refugees in this context constitutes a ‘problem’ for our decision makers to formulate a neat solution to and in doing so assuage the voting masses. The problem is, there is no refugee ‘problem’! The refugee problem as it appears in the Australian popular discourse is a political construction. I’m not denying there is an international refugee crisis, but the current influx of asylum seekers do not pose a ‘threat’ to Australia socially, economically or culturally. The framing of the problem as if it is something that can and should be ‘stopped’ is misleading, impractical and cruel – but for as long as we believe it, our politicians will keep coming up with six point plans to create and solve a problem that doesn’t exist instead of addressing the real problem – how to best welcome and integrate as many refugees as possible. How to do our part to allieviate the global crisis of 42 million displaced persons, regardless of their mode of transport!

If we are gullible enough to condemn a capable and worthy leader based on a few spurious negative press comments, we are surely in a position to enable Murdoch to select our leaders for us. Our politicians are acutely aware of this and using the asylum seeker issue to their advantage.

The information is out there in garish neon for anybody who cares enough to look, and I implore you to look. Take the time to deconstruct what you are being told and recognise the manipulation in popular discourse. Let’s not be patronised by accepting that we ought to be fearful of refugees. The asylum seeker discourse is framed by empty rhetoric proffered by politicians and the mass media playing to and enabling our apparent birthright as Australians; an irrational fear of ‘the other’ and a nauseating case of NIMBY (not in my backyard). Our decision makers act as products of a political climate that values re-election above governance, a dangerous condition for democracy. We are quick to berate our leaders for this, yet we seldom acknowledge that we are to blame for essentially ‘voting’ with our apathy.

The refugee situation in Australia is not a national emergency, it is not even a problem, but we have been led to believe that we are under siege and it’s a race to strip back morality until somebody proposes a cruel enough pseudo-solution to get re-elected. How have we allowed this to happen? I suspect it’s something I like to call ‘the glittery turd’.

 

The Glittery Turd:

I have found in discussing this policy that once the regurgitated vernacular of current popular objections is dismantled, people are left clinging to their real belief in its raw and ugly form, the glitter is dusted from the turd and they say something like, ‘well, they just don’t belong here’. Aha! If we can expose the prejudicial subtext of the widely held conviction that refugees pose an existential threat, we can have the discussion we really need to have. Unjust fear and racism. My concern about this policy is, that in spite of its irrationality, cost, hyperbole, xenophobia, violation of international law and callous outcomes it has been rather popular with many Australians. Why? And what does this say about us?

Well, we have accepted that our lives are inherently more valuable than the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. As a country built on migration, an ethos of egalitarianism and that ever pervasive vernacular of ‘the fair go’, this policy seems the antithesis of everything we learn we are as ‘good Aussies’. Unfortunately, as ‘good Aussies’ we also inherit a sense of entitlement laced with an insidious xenophobia that leaches into this debate under many guises. The current intake of ‘Irregular Maritime Arrivals’ (‘boat people’)constitues around 2.7% of our total national immigration figure and the total refugee intake (IMAs and non IMAs) under the Gillard government was 6.6%. We ought to ask ourselves honestly, if these were boatloads of Swedes arriving would we have the same hysterical reaction? If this is not an issue of race, why aren’t we up in arms about Irish backpackers coming over in ‘swarms’, over staying their visas, and skilled migrants taking our jobs?

For centuries racism has been a tool used by those in power to divide and conquer and it is in our interest to dismantle the discrimination both in law and in practice that is so pervasive in Australian society. How quickly we have forgotten the moral outrage of post-WWII that led to our ratification of the 1951 convention in the first place.

To this end, many will attest that the problem is not racism, it is the thousands perishing at sea, victims of this ominous ‘people smuggling business model’ we are so desperate to dismantle. I want to stop the deaths at sea, I want to stop people smugglers taking advantage of the situation by exploiting young Indonesian fishermen and profiting from chaos. But punishing the victims of this trade is not the way to achieve this. Refugees are not going to disappear because we change tack politically. Deterrence policy does not and will not work, so why do we really want to stop the boats?

 

Deterrence:

I want to see the boats stopped. Not because I don’t want asylum seekers here but because I feel disgusted, devastated and embarrassed to be Australian every time a boat sinks knowing that it is a preventable consequence of our own apathy. Let us understand that until Australia plunges into civil war and chaos, we will never be able to produce a deterrent stronger than the human drive for freedom from persecution. The extremely high risk of drowning is the strongest perceivable deterrence and yet boats continue to arrive. The compelling push factors forcing asylum seekers from their homelands (and oftentimes their transition countries) make drowning at sea a viable risk. What a blessing it is that this is impossible for most of us to comprehend.

“On a boat you die once; here I die a little every day.”

– Asylum seeker interviewed by Mary Crock, Sydney University Law Professor and refugee expert.

Being a refugee is not a choice and the circumstances that lead to becoming a boat person are beyond our understanding. Deterrence policies in the face of such desperation are futile and miss the point. Advertisements in the Adelaide Advertiser with tough, manly looking fonts certainly won’t do the trick and we are kidding ourselves if we think that such advertisements are actually aimed at would-be refugees and people smugglers.

No amount of money spent on advertising our increasingly harsh policies will prevent the persecuted from fleeing by whatever means necessary and our leaders know this. Such a campaign is nothing more than comfort for the ignorant and blatant advertising for the government. This strategy is straight out of the ‘how to appeal to bogans 101’ textbook.

Such egocentric policy and action neglects to acknowledge the push factors that drive asylum seekers to flee their countries of origin in the first place. Petty arguments over who managed to ‘stop the boats’ neglect to acknowledge the global factors contributing to the increased volume of refugees around the world that many would argue Australia plays a role in perpetuating.

Why do we have such righteous attitudes when it comes to immigration? My family came here by boat, but unlike the ‘boat people’ of today, the arrival of my ancestors did have grave implications for the rightful owners of this ‘lucky country’.

 

The ‘Lucky Country’:

With great irony, we pedal around terms like ‘the lucky country’ but hurriedly attribute our successes to anything other than simple good fortune. We often base our pride on factors that we did not achieve, factors like our skin colour and our places of birth. We are conditioned to believe that somehow, the privileges afforded to us through nothing other than the sheer luck of popping out of a geographically well-placed vagina entitle us to dictate who else is worthy of the same basic freedoms. By insisting we are all equal in opportunity, we can continue to argue that the basic human rights we enjoy on a daily basis are ours through our own hard work, good nature, perseverance and that old VB commercial-esque Aussie grit. Hate to burst your hard earned thirst, but they’re not!

Though I don’t wish to take away from Aussies who have worked hard for their keep, we must understand that we are born into the opportunity and conditions required to flourish. This is not an achievement, it’s an accident. We have no right to deny others this opportunity based on our inflated sense of ‘ownership’ of such a privilege as a nation. Moreover, how does somebody else flourishing diminish your own opportunities? How does somebody else exercising their rights diminish yours? Students who have toiled through university on minimum wage without access to government benefits (heck knows I’ve been there!) cannot begin to compare such a situation with that of a refugee and such anecdotes certainly don’t qualify as a reason for denying asylum seekers access to welfare! We need to accept that we are blessed with wealth well beyond our basic needs and it is for the good of us all to use our sharing skills!

 

So, What’s Your Alternative Then?

I am often asked for the solution. Apparently a prerequisite of standing up for social injustice is virtuosity in convoluted international diplomacy and sovereign law! You don’t have to be an expert to recognise that repealing anybody’s human rights is wrong. I don’t deny it is difficult policy to write but this does not mean we ought to accept our current evasive stance of throwing money at it and growing adaptively callous in the vain hope it disappears. Understanding the facts beyond the popular discourse allows us to act with greater volition when deciding how best to redress this issue. I believe we should;

– Stop the boats, start the planes!
– Expedite and expand processing in Indonesia
– Evaluate the performance of the IOM and ensure operational transparency to provide better service to those awaiting resettlement
– Remove children and vulnerable families from detention
– Take back control of detention facilities from SERCO and G4S
– If mandatory detention is non-negotiable, impose an upper limit on mandatory detention as Julian Burnside has recommended
– Allow asylum seekers to live within the community while their applications are processed
– Enable asylum seekers to work and or claim welfare payments
– Allow children to attend school and introduce study programs and employment training options for those in detention for their initial arrival period
– Drastically increase humanitarian intake, at least to the proposed figure of 30,000
– Introduce community and school programs to combat prejudice and foster empathy
– Campaign for more inclusive coverage and a just representation of the asylum seeker debate

We need to stop the boats but let’s talk about how and why we need to stop the boats and I’ll give you a hint, it’s not because our borders are under attack. We need to honestly examine what is happening in transition countries and focus our efforts on speeding up processing in transition countries to eliminate the sense of desperation that drives people onto leaky boats in the first place.

The IOM is not achieving its mandate and as a result even those granted refugee status awaiting resettlement are subject to horrendous living conditions. It is estimated that, when working to capacity (if it ever manages to work at capacity!), the UN can interview a maximum of 20 asylum seekers per operating day. That works out to be approximately 24 minutes per interview – less the time required for interpretation and documentation – leaving an estimated 6 minutes per interview to assess the validity of asylum claims. You don’t have to be an expert to understand this is grossly inadequate.

 

A Case for Compassion

We have both a legal and moral responsibility to afford those asking for our help the same compassion we extend to those who find themselves facing adversity within Australia. Given our history of charitable responses to crises I like to believe that if Australians were exposed to the situations that drive asylum seekers to come here and they were forced to see the names and faces of the persons they are ‘turning back’ or condemning to detention on the nightly news, we may not be in the midst of this crisis of compassion. By dehumanising these individuals and reducing their plight to a repetition of statistics it makes it much easier to exercise our practiced prejudice in demanding they go back to where they came from.

I may not be versed enough in international diplomacy to offer a feasible solution but I will do whatever I can to ensure that I cultivate the kind of educated and compassionate society that I want waiting for our asylum seekers and beyond that, my own children.

Compassion isn’t political. It’s perhaps a lofty concept but that doesn’t mean it’s not an intelligent one. There’s a reason helping people feels good. It’s not an accident, it’s in our biology. We are hardwired for cooperation. It has enabled us to survive through the ages and now we are being told to shun this inherent part of us as human beings because it’s ‘soft’ and left and antithetical to the kind of society we live within. The rights and dignity of others should come before profit and power – we’ve got the ‘bottom line’ wrong! The reason we chase ‘profit’ and ‘power’ is because we seek better lives that is the bottom line. What sort of society perpetuates suffering? Ignores suffering? Doesn’t recognise that the suffering of others is the suffering of the collective? What sort of leadership encourages and enables its populace to engage in such self-interested bigotry? Certainly not the kind of society I want my children to grow up in.

 

What Can We Do?

What can we do beyond letter writing and protesting? Letter writing, symbolic action and protesting are important and the next protest will be at 1pm on the 24th of August at Town Hall, Sydney. This is a national day of action organised by the Refugee Action Coalition to send a message to those in power that we will not allow the ‘PNG solution’ to go ahead in our name. If our politicians are so gutless as to play to popular public sentiment then we need to make this cruelty unpopular. We did it in the wake of the Tampa forcing Kevin Rudd to dismantle the Pacific Solution and we will do it again.

Beyond this, we need to find the patience and perseverance to overcome prejudice in our own communities. I reside in Southern Sydney and have spent my study years dreaming of ways to remove myself from the enclave of sheltered privilege and elitism I have experienced that provides an ideal environment for such prejudice to flourish. I have realised that our role as apparent ‘dissenters’ is much more frustrating than to simply remove ourselves from prejudicial situations, our role is to change the conversation within our communities. Ask open questions. Calmly refute the untruths you hear perpetuated in pubs. Expose the xenophobia in your friends’ and acquaintances’ arguments and force them to recognise the basis for their beliefs. Once we can no longer hide behind our excuses we can open a dialogue that addresses the insidious undercurrent of racism and self-interest in this country and move toward a multicultural society that does not merely tolerate its citizens, it welcomes them.

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.”

– Shelley, ‘The Mask of Anarchy‘

I want to reclaim a little part of our heritage that has been hijacked, the fair go. With courage let us all combine to advance Australia fair.

 

Myths and Misperceptions:

– They’re not our responsibility! – Guess what, they are.

– Why don’t they just stay in their transition countries then! Would living illegally with no access to public services, constantly under threat from authorities seeking to detain you and exploit you sound like a reasonable life for you and your family? Indonesia and Malaysia are not signatories to the 1951 convention and asylum seekers are illegal immigrants in these nations. Beyond the constant threat of incarceration, asylum seekers are prevented from working, accessing social security, studying, engaging in civic life and are denied medical care.

– They are all terrorists. Actually, not one ‘irregular maritime arrival’ has been confirmed to be engaging in terrorist activity and many cases that ASIO has deemed ‘adverse security assessments’ have since been overturned after coming under international scrutiny.

– You can say whatever you want but Howard stopped the boats. Nobody has truly ‘stopped the boats’ and nobody can.

As much as we like to think the sun shines out of our arse and everybody wants to come here, the reality is most refugees would love the opportunity to stay in their home countries, but little disagreeable things like war, famine, persecution and genocide kinda take that option off the table. They’re not picking Australia out of a glossy catalogue, regionally we are the best hope of offering asylum seekers a chance at freedom and a happy life for their families. We should be proud of that.

Some governments may have managed to uphold the illusion of ‘stopping the boats’ but this is only because the Australian public have coalesced with those in power to allow them to have us think that while the boats aren’t arriving on our shores, that the problem has disappeared. What is seldom considered is how the global situation has differed markedly between successive governments. A government’s policy on asylum seekers can hardly be held solely accountable for increased arrivals in the context of increased global conflict (in 2012 we saw the greatest number of displaced persons seeking refuge in over a decade). These leaders praise themselves for preventing drownings at sea but how many asylum seekers died as a result of being returned to their homelands? How many died as a result of the decision to stay home? How many decided death was preferable over life in detention?

– If they come here illegally, then serves them right. Seeking asylum by any means necessary with or without appropriate documentation is not illegal, it is a human right.

– They are all queue jumpers and they should wait their turn. The problem is, as a country free of persecution, we liken this queue to a queue at the post office.

Imagine standing in a queue that was indefinite, you had no idea how long you could be standing there. You could be standing there, like many asylum seekers, for 20 or 30 years, perhaps even until you die – who knows. While you are standing there you are not allowed to work, your children are not allowed to go to school, you are illegal in the country you reside in and face the constant threat of incarceration, you are subject to sexual and physical abuses at the hands of your captors, you are being extorted and bribed for your safety, you do not have access to clean facilities, you are impoverished, you are in hiding, there is nowhere for your children to play, there is nowhere for you to practice your religion, you do not speak the language, you have fled your besieged homeland leaving behind friends and family for a chance at freedom and while you wait for that chance you are systematically disenfranchised and considered a second-rate citizen leaving you hopeless and helpless until you are able to risk your life on a leaky boat for a chance at freedom. It takes courage and desperation to board a boat to Australia, yet once you arrive you will be treated as a cheat and a criminal.

The notion of a queue is very nice when you are standing at the bank, and you would be well within your rights to be a bit miffed if some bastard pushed in, but when you are running for your life there is no such thing as an orderly queue and those who ‘jump’ this supposed queue do not deserve to be subjects of our vitriol and condemnation. In fact, only 0.5% of the world’s total refugee population even had a chance to access this ‘queue’ in 2011! The UN conducts interviews that last for an estimated 6 minutes. How can you possibly determine the ‘level of desperation’ of an individual in 6 minutes? How can we judge and rank suffering? The processing arrangement merely has the superficial appearance of due process and Howard and Ruddock managed to exploit this veneer by alluding to those arriving by boat as ‘queue jumpers’. Unfortunately the rhetoric stuck.

– They bring their problems with them. As over 90% of the asylum seekers arriving by boat are determined to be genuine refugees, there is no doubt they have experienced horrors beyond the frame of reference of Australians lucky enough to have been born into this free, democratic country. This doesn’t mean we should turn our backs on them and it certainly doesn’t mean we should incarcerate them under circumstances that contribute further to their trauma. If we can provide compassionate care and assistance to new Australians in coping with the trauma of fleeing their homeland we will welcome vibrant, skilled and grateful Australians who will contribute wholeheartedly to our society. If we vilify and segregate we can only expect to perpetuate resentment in our communities.

– We have to dismantle the people smugglers’ business model – What exactly do we mean by this? The people smuggler’s business model is much the same ‘business model’ you or I might use if we were to start our own business. For as long as we have refugees, we will have people smugglers.

If what we mean is that we need to take away the demand for people smugglers in order to render their ‘business model’ ineffective, we can do this by either fixing the world’s problems to stem the international flow of refugees, or we can improve the channels through which refugees can travel safely without soliciting the service of third parties. Banning refugees from entering Australia may have a limited push down pop up effect in that some boats may go elsewhere, but if this strategy appeases the public, we are hypocrites who don’t really care about the lives lost at sea.

The victims of the people smuggling business go beyond asylum seekers and, in our region, include the captains and crew members who are often underage Indonesian fisherman lured or forced into the trade. These operators will continue to provide services that exploit the desperation of refugees and the chaos of the current system. If we really want to ‘dismantle’ the model, the way to do it is through streamlining and expanding existing channels to remove the demand for their services.

– They get higher welfare payments than us! When asylum seekers arrive in Australia, they have no access to Centrelink benefits. A small number of asylum seekers are eligible for the Red Cross Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme for a limited period of time. This amounts to only 89% of the Newstart Allowance.

Some asylum seekers are released into the community while they await processing of their claims. Since November 2012, they have been released on bridging visas which do not allow them to earn an income due to the government’s ‘no advantage’ policy. Bridging visas even limit volunteering and training opportunities. This situation drives many families into poverty and a cycle of dependence. The homelessness rates of asylum seekers are substantially higher than the general population. These bridging visas prevent civic engagement, self sufficiency and the ability to settle into a new community.

After an absurdly lengthy process, if an asylum seeker is granted refugee status they are granted residency and are thenceforth entitled to exactly the same welfare payments as the rest of us.

“There is no truth to claims that refugees are entitled to higher benefits than other social security recipients. Refugees have the same entitlements as all other permanent residents—they do not receive special refugee payments or special rates of payment.”

– Australian Parliament website.

– We are being overrun by boat people! If we were to take the same amount of arrivals as the previous year, it would be approximately 0.14% of the world’s total refugee population. Though boat arrivals have increased in recent years due to increased global conflict, Australia still receives a very low number of maritime arrivals each year. Every day refugees arrive via less vilified modes of transport and slip peacefully into our communities! Even taking all refugee arrivals into consideration, Australia receives only 3% of the world’s total asylum claims made in industrial countries. We rank 12th in GDP. The UNHCR claims,

“by comparison, asylum levels in Australia continue to remain below those recorded by many other industrialised and non-industrialised countries”.

The burden of accepting refugees in vast and overwhelming numbers rests with developing and underdeveloped nations who currently host around 80% of the world’s refugees.

It’s rather difficult to argue we are being ‘overrun’.

– They are all economic migrants just looking for a better life. Over 90% of the ‘unauthorised maritime arrivals’ in 2013 have been deemed to be genuine refugees. In previous years this figure has been around 93.5%. Those arriving by plane are almost twice as likely to have their claims rejected. The statistics show that economic migrants generally don’t risk their lives on a roll-of-the-dice voyage.

– We need to secure our borders! Let’s have all the lols shall we!? Considering we are completely surrounded by two shark infested oceans, our borders are amongst the safest in the world. Unless man-eating sea creatures suddenly evolve into land dwelling killing machines, we are pretty sweet in the border security department. This is yet another catch phrase used to elicit fear and contribute to the climate of prejudice that our politicians are able to capitalise on, providing us with solutions to crises that don’t exist. Moreover, we have more control over our arrivals and a greater knowledge of our populace than most countries. Even those with reduced control over movement, (like our pal the USA) manage to cope swimmingly with the conundrum!

– We can’t afford it. Yes, we can and it will be significantly cheaper than the current model. Community resettlement in Australia will cost an estimated 30,000 – 35,000 per year, but it pales in comparison to the billions of dollars currently spent on privatised, outsourced offshore processing and deterrent policies each year that operate outside Australia’s jurisdiction and that are largely hidden from public scrutiny. Deterrent policies haven’t worked for twenty years so perhaps we could take that money and put it toward something that actually delivers a return beyond the ballot box.

– What is so wrong with PNG? They should be happy to be out of their country! Where to start. After decades of Australia’s foreign aid or thinly veiled imperialism in PNG, infant mortality, sexual violence against women and corruption has never been worse. Homosexuality is a crime, poverty is rife, approximately 97% of the land is traditionally owned and a fledgling (at best) democracy fails to provide basic rights to its own people.

Beyond the concerns for PNG’s suitability as a host nation for our refugees, it is abhorrent that one of the richest countries in the world is outsourcing its fundamental responsibilities as a nation to one of the poorest. Our government currently advises against its citizens travelling to PNG and – if this wasn’t reeking of irony quite intensely enough – currently accepts Papua New Guinean asylum seekers!

The UN condemned G4S run camp at Manus is rife with disease and reports of sexual abuse have been met with indifference by both G4S staff and the government. Moreover, the controversial British multinational G4S contract went for an eye watering 80 million dollars. Resettling asylum seekers in the community while they await processing is not only a more humane approach but it is a comparative bargain at the current cost of between 25,000 and 30,000 per person per year, money that stays within the country. Lengthy incarceration comes at a high cost to the Australian taxpayer and to those subjected to detention in these privatised facilities.

Australians have a responsibility to face the consequences of our policy and attitude towards refugees and in doing so, recognise that our fear is making strangers of people who should be our friends. This is not just a squishy, feel-good issue, this is an issue for all Australians for moral and practical justifications. If we choose to ignore social injustice, our inaction will inhibit our growth and success as individuals and as a nation. It is in our interest to unite and demand a fair and just way forward.