After a week of violent protests on Christmas Island, it’s clear the federal government is facing a humanitarian crisis with no clear resolution.
More than six thousand people are languishing in immigration detention — some for more than a year — but it was the sight of Australian Federal Police members in full operational gear taking on a group of rock-throwing asylum seekers which really brought it home. Both sides are in agreement, something needs to be done and fast.
But as always, the federal government is also facing a crisis of perception. To appear tough, without being cruel. Humane without being weak. But when the boats keep coming and the strain begins to show it becomes increasingly difficult to play both sides of the game.
The solution to the detention problem, of course, is unclear. Offshore processing, trumpeted loudly pre-election by the Rudd/Gillard government via the East Timor solution, has fallen off the radar. East Timor doesn’t appear to have the capabilities to shoulder the burden, while regional cooperation, also spruiked by the Prime Minister during her recent Asia jaunt, seems to lack the political will required of our partners.
Community detention, also an emotional minefield due to the NIMBY attitude, seems to be one method the government is willing to try in the hope it will help ease the strain on the overloaded system. Although you won’t hear them shouting it from the rooftops.
ASIO are clearly a problem. Criticism is mounting on the secretive spook agency for the length of time taken to process the required security checks for arrivals. The figures speak for themselves — there are are currently more than 900 people in detention who have been granted refugee status but are still waiting for their security check. Apparently ASIO have cut a deal with DIAC to speed up processing.
The Age are reporting this morning that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship is working on a proposal to transfer thousands of single men in detention facilities waiting for their check to a form of community detention. DIAC would not comment on the potential for a new visa category, while the Minister’s office pointed to Chris Bowen’s pledge to move most children out of detention centres by June this year as the main priority.
Last week, 100 asylum seekers were flown from Christmas Island to the mainland, while there are also unconfirmed reports that 40 asylum seekers were moved from Christmas Island into a Melbourne detention centre on the weekend. There are also reports that an asylum seeker boat intercepted recently near Ashmore Reef will be taken to the mainland, instead of Christmas Island which is typical government policy.
Last June, Australia agreed to take 500 refugees in the hope it would discourage asylum seekers from taking to boats.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has said Christmas Island is unsustainable. The Australian Human Rights Commission wants it shut down. The UNHCR are not keen on mandatory detention full stop, let alone on an island 2,600 kilometres from the nearest capital city.
Whatever the government chooses to do, they best go about it quietly. Unless they want coverage like this:
Or this:
Or this:
11 thoughts on “Government facing crisis of perception over Christmas Island”
Lorry
March 21, 2011 at 1:48 pmTypical of this govt, all smoke and mirrors. If I recall, the first Julia (as opposed to the real Julia) stated that these illegals would not be brought to the mainland (not to mention being released into wide stream Australia). Ar could it be another LIE, perhaps she needs to acknowledge that their so called policy is another FAIL to add to their shameful record. The real j-U-LIAR should be renamed passion fingers – what ever she touches she F–Ks. Alternatively Kevin 07 (or is that Kevin Lemon, or perhaps Kevin Armageddon – so many to choose) should replace her at the helm, at least there was only one of him.
fred
March 21, 2011 at 2:51 pmDilemma alright!
We have bipartisan support for mandatory detention of people who seek asylum , but only if they come by boat and not by plane. In the post september 11 2001 terrorist attack on tthe USA, we in Australia chose to protect us from the same by making ASIO responsible to confirm asylum seekers are not terrorists. Immigration officers assess the protection claims , check for civil or war crimes etc, and determine case by case refugee status. DIAC then waits for ASIO to do a national security check, what ever that is, and ASIO after an increasing length of time find 99% of DIAC’s decisions were correct.
Hardly risk management is it, or good husbandry of the nation’s resources.
It is however exceedingly damaging to human beings to keep them in a state of not knowing their future, a state of idleness when they would grab the chance to work for their keep and provide for their dependants. Since last August, five deaths in Immigration detention custody- four of them suicides. The latest, a 20 year old Hazara had lost all hope , it is said, after about nine months in detention. The Scherger detention centre would have to be the most geographically isolated in Australia with the mining town of Weipa 30 or so kms away, dirt road, Wet season and 850 km from Cairns.
What was it that Prof Patrick McGorry said on being anounced Australian of the Year 14 months ago? DETENTION CENTRES ARE MENTAL HEALTH FACTORIES? For ten years the psychiatrists and other medicos have said do not do this to innocent children or women or men because it makes them sick. Maybe for life. Detention without a reasonable ( 90 days?) end date is the problem , when all you really need is a place to receive and register , health and initial security check them and treat them the same as plane arriving asylum seekers. Other civilised countries do this.
Lorry
March 21, 2011 at 4:21 pmIt is a matter of identification – come with papers to prove your identity and consideration should be given to “priority” processing – no papers then sorry, off to the gulag you go. That is the fundamental difference between boat and plane.
fred
March 21, 2011 at 4:39 pmLorry, and the people who fled in fear,who have no identity papers, never had them, just like the traditional owners of this land?
You wouldn’t keep them in the gulag indefinitely though, would you, if they are illiterate throught no fault of their own and and tell with graphic detail their horrific story of persecution, show their scars etc? all of which falls into place if they are members of an ethnic group or a religious group or a political group that is known from other reputable sources to being actively persecuted, wiped out?
Any idea what the Migrant Alert List or Country Information or the Interpol data bases looked like before computers? How was the assessment made before that era?
Thirty years ago if you were born in Vietnam, were Christian or ethnic Chinese or anti communist, and you came by boat or were selected off shore where the boats stopped and resettled from the refugee camps in Malaysia or Indonesia you were a refugee, papers or no papers.
Western Red
March 21, 2011 at 5:01 pmI suspect the Government have been using extended detention as a form of Howard style deterrent. Given the continuing arrivals you might think that it is not working.
The Government said they would process claims within 90 days and failed to do that, in the process they have massively over crowded the Xmas Island facility.
The issue I think is establishing a balance between our national interest and the humanitarian interests. After all everyone who turns up on a boat is one less we take from a refugee camp.
I think we could consider whether changes to visas might stem the flow ? How about a 2 year visa , a probation during which we can establish if the refugee returns to their home country or generally turns out to be a bad egg, add to that maybe a visa of between 1- 3 years where there might be a turn around in the problem, eg, Sri Lanka.
It still begs the question why we accept asylum claims from people who have already been in another country en route here .
As a true believer I figured I wanted a beating from both sides!
michael crook
March 21, 2011 at 5:47 pmThe Kim Beazley legacy is one that continues to haunt Labor. Take the easy course and follow a populist line and you will end looking and indeed being the redneck conservatives. The gutlessness of labor on asylum seekers is shameful. Add to the mix that ASIO and the sadists who run the Department of Immigration are doing everything in their power to destroy the governments credibility, and you have a very sorry state of affairs. But it is not too late, sack Serco, close the detention centres, introduce 30 day onshore processing, allow asylum seekers to get jobs while they await processing, and I guarantee that every humanist in Australia will help you win the next election.
drsmithy
March 22, 2011 at 12:16 pmCan you give some examples of “asylum seekers” who arrived by plane, without visas or ID, and were not either put back on the first plane out, or detained ?
fred
March 22, 2011 at 4:12 pmDr Smithy, I should be more precise. I’m told that asylum seekers generally don’t get past the airport control to continue their journey to Australia at the airport in Bangkok or, Singapore or KL or Jakarta etc where Immigration has officers helping the locals identify false passports, inadequate documentation and a valid visa for Australia. It’s the outer ring of protection to stop criminals on interpol lists and , yes, asylum seekers who can fly this far but usually not into Australian airports.
Some – but very few I understand, do get through and they are usually identified in transit (eg to NZ) or at the point of entry in Melb or Syd and taken straight to detention centre if claiming asylum or to immigration transit accomodation and “turned around” as soon as possible, with the carrier fined for bringing them in. I just hope a genuine asylum seekers gets the chance to make their claim, and believe it is mostly respected. It needs independent scrutiny. I’d welcome DIAC statistics on how many they turn around, by nationality.
I think you are making the point that people with passports, visas and even those who say they come to study or to visit but claim asylum after they leave the airport, some times just before their visas expire, are not a threat to national security and therefore should not be detained? Right? Visitors and students etc are security checked?
Back to the beginning. Asylum seekers from countries like Afghanistan, the biggest (4000?) cohort in detention at present, if they are persecuted people and the Hazara say they are for religious, ethnic and political reasons, they are rarely able to obtain an official passport from the government that cannot protect them, let alone a visa to visit Australia . Rarely can they get to a safe UNHCR office in a neighbouring country. But the persecution is real, he has to flee for his life.
It is not fair enough that he hopes to go to a safe country – one that recognises his refugee status and gives him permanent protection? Is it not true that only Cambodia is a signatory to the UN Refugees convention on his pathway east throughout SE Asia? In Indonesia they jail asylum seekers , because in local law they are illegal immigrants if their visa to enter has expired. And that is not a pretty sight – filthy, crowded ,unhygenic cages, no exercise, no rights.
Of course we must register and check these undocumentet desperate folk who come by boat. But does the deprivation of liberty have to be indefinite? Is 90 days not really the maximum, a Labor standard which is fails to meet? Is 30 days too short for most, as the Greens are recommending by way of a maximum? Detention
and indefinite detention are very different – and what we have at present is abominable because future citizens, asylum seekeras who will meet the criteria and be ASIO cleared in the end, are being tormented and driven into mental illness by the waiting for a decision on their case.
Ten years documented medical evidence says our indefinite mandatory detention policy damages people, some of them for the rest of their lives. I wish this Government would listen to experts and learn from the tragedies of the past. To this day I see evidence of the detention related traumas of the refugees who were tortured by 3 to 7 years of temporary refugee status after release into the community from months and years in Curtin, Port Hedland and the notorious Woomera .
A 99% success rate for security clearance of asylum seekers by ASIO suggests that it is not boat arriving asylum seekers without passports and visas – a few thousand a year even- who are a national security threat, and I wonder what fear drives us to maintain this system of punishing them instead of protecting them from harm.
michael crook
March 22, 2011 at 4:30 pmThank you Fred
fred
March 22, 2011 at 4:51 pmWestern red, it is a matter of balance , but is it not in our national interest to be humane, to be good neighbours, to hold fast to principles of democracy and universal human rights?
It is a political choice on the part of Cabinet in the Government of the day what quota they put on the various categories in the controlled annual immigration program. The year we selected and controlled 300 000 immigrants to come live and work with us, the controlled refugee migrant component was 13750 “humanitarian ” entrants of whom 6 000 were refugees referred to us by UNHCR for resettlement. We could chose to increase this number to reflect crises in certain parts of the world, to give a life chance to people who cannot go home, displaced peoplem who have no home to go back to. After a war, after an earthquake etc
But boat people seeking protection are in a different ball park from the selected refugee migrants. The outcome of their claim for protection does not have to mean a decrease in that annual selected orderly migration program . Governments choose to make is so and create the idea of competition between two types of refugees when there can be none. A refugee is a person with a well founded fear of persecution .
The Howard Coalition Government made that the link, because CONTROL is their imperative. Keep a lid on the numbers but promote the idea that we are generous etc. The ” we will decide” mantra is deeply imbedded. How can we deny the international obligation we voluntarily took on in 1954 when Menzies signed the Convention for this nation, an obligation drawn down into our own Migration Act?
It is remarkable that the Coalition with all its trained lawyers has never risen to the bait from the One Nation supporters out there, especially in Quieensland, who tell them to withdraw from the UN Refugees Convention! Their silence is dishonest.
The Refugee Council of Australia ( a good website for information) has recommended (for years) the delinking of the refugees chosen for resettlement from UNHCR waiting lists in Africa, the MIddle East and S E Asia and the refugees confirmed to be so by our own border processing, asylum seekers who arrive “spontaneously” across our borders on their escape journey from persecution, with what ever help is available. Their legal right. They should be counted separately asasylum seekers/ refugees who presented themselves at our borders, and who were confirmed as needing protection. Let us call them “Border refugees”.
Many Australians believe we should help our neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia by increasing our resettlement intake of confirmed refugees to 10% of our annual migration program. That would in effect make the UNHCR offices in KL and Jakarta our off shore processing centres, and require some add on funding to the generous funding Australia already provides, and has done for years.
What do you think? better than Christmas Island, Darwin, Curtin, Leonora, Inverbrackie, Scherger, Northam, MITA, BITA, Asti MOtel, Airport Lodge, Palm Motel, Maribyrnong, Villawood, Perth Airport, Port Augusta? 200 AFPolice on Christmas Island ? $37million contract to Serco?