Last week, Fairfax columnist Jonathan Holmes wrote an article about offshore processing of asylum seekers who arrive by boat, deploring “the brutal reality of Nauru and Manus Island” and” the practical evils and the moral bankruptcy of ‘off-shore processing’”. Except, he added, “I don’t believe one should pontificate about a policy unless one has some vaguely practical alternative to propose. I have never had one.”
For his carefully worded thoughts, Holmes was attacked as a racist by the left clickbait’n’mansplaining site New Matilda and assailed on social media. The irony of that abuse was that Holmes, during his stint at Media Watch, did more to expose the media’s lies about asylum seekers than all of his critics put together (he also once labelled me “ridiculous” for attacking News Corp’s campaign against Julia Gillard, so I have no particular brief to defend him). The casual labelling of Holmes as “racist” looks more like moral and intellectual laziness than any sort of considered judgement.
And Fairfax gave comedian Tom Ballard room to respond, accusing Holmes of “solutionism”. What’s that?
“[W]hen decent folks see stories about people in our offshore gulags setting themselves on fire in desperation and are so bold as to suggest that might be an indication of something being horrifically wrong, they can expect to be greeted with a familiar response: ‘Well what’s YOUR solution then, smarty-pants?’… This is blind ‘solutionism’ and it is corroding our public discourse.”
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The views of an entertainer on a pressing moral issue wouldn’t normally be worthy of discussion, except that they happen to reflect a larger intellectual enfeeblement that large numbers of progressives have long suffered in relation to asylum seekers.
There’s no such thing as “solutionism” — or if there is, it’s a fig leaf for covering a failure to consider the consequences of one’s actions, or failure to act. All actions, positive or negative, have consequences, and far more so at a governmental than an individual level. The request for an alternative solution is actually a request to compare the consequences of the alternative to the solution currently being employed. Far from “corroding” public discourse, there’s far too little of it. It is that comparison of consequences that few progressives are willing to make. It’s the privilege of the powerless, to not have to weigh up consequences; for policymakers, however, there is no escaping consequences, whether they act or not. It’s intellectually feeble at best, and more likely outright disingenuous, to pretend that a concern for consequences can be dismissed as “solutionist”. It is by solutions, or their lack, that policymakers are judged, regardless of intention. Consequences matter.
It is Holmes himself who notes that solutions are hardly pure phenomena. He correctly explained that the emphasis by advocates of offshore detention, particularly in the Coalition, on the importance of saving asylum seekers’ lives is a very convenient and relatively recent development. Similarly, the professed concern on the part of hardliners for refugees unable to reach Australia by boat is another convenient cover for bigotry, elegantly demonstrated when Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison dramatically slashed Australia’s official humanitarian intake as well as commencing Operation Sovereign Borders to target maritime arrivals.
But the bigotry of hardliners does not render the issues they raise somehow moot. Nor does it make community concerns about the number of boat arrivals irrelevant. For whatever reason, the perception of asylum seekers forcing themselves on Australia by travelling here by boat generates an intense reaction among large sections of the electorate. And intense is not overstating it — a substantial proportion of the electorate, for example, still believe Australia is too soft on asylum seekers even now, despite the rape and child abuse camp we’ve established on Nauru, despite the murder of an inmate on Manus Island, despite rampant self-harm. For politicians who work in a democracy, that can’t be dismissed as of no consequence — unless you think the treatment of several thousand non-Australians should be more important for an Australian political party than the opportunity to improve the lives of 24 million Australians, in which case it becomes a point of principle to become, in effect, a single-issue party.
For policymakers, any decision that might encourage boat arrivals is thus both politically and morally fraught. Whether asylum seeker advocates want to acknowledge it or not, there are far more refugees, and economic migrants who try to pass themselves off as refugees, who can reach Australia than Australia can resettle; the Syrian conflict has maximised “push factors”, along with ongoing instability that we ourselves have created in Iraq. “Let them all come” is not a plausible option. Adopting policies that reward boat arrivals risks trading off the short-term good of ending the detention that causes mental health problems — not to mention rape and child abuse — for the longer-term evil of renewed attempts to reach Australia by boat. The latter will lead to drownings, a toxic reaction in the electorate to a surge in boat arrivals and harm to our broader immigration program and humanitarian intake when we have to deal, again, with a large number of boat arrivals.
But there are some better, or at least less-worse options. The camps on Nauru and Manus Island have been run by an Immigration Department that has adopted a policy of wilful neglect, with the intention of making the camps so hideous that they will serve as a deterrent in themselves. The litany of abuses and outrages on Nauru, in particular, is seemingly endless, and the department stands ever-ready to blame everyone else but itself — the contractors to whom it has outsourced detention centre operation and security, the governments of PNG and Nauru, the media and refugee activists. A policy shift that makes offshore processing less like a torture sentence and more like a place designed to minimise the impact on successful asylum seekers of long-term detention — i.e. safe, with quality mental and physical health services, proper education for children and training for adults — would do much to diminish the outright evil the Immigration Department currently practises in our name.
For good measure, replacing the Immigration Secretary, Mike “it’s all the media’s fault” Pezzullo and a judicial inquiry or royal commission into the behaviour of Immigration bureaucrats who have overseen deaths, rapes and injuries would also be a good start. Given New Zealand has offered to take some of those currently in detention, the government’s nonsensical refusal to allow people recognised as asylum seekers to be resettled there (while pretending that in fact it’s purely the decision of the Nauruan and PNG governments) could also be ended.
And given the government has been successful in turning back boats between here and Indonesia, consideration should be given to at least resettling detained families permanently in Australia. Consider the moral hierarchy of consequences here:
- encouraging boat arrivals leads to deaths at sea, a massive burden on the budget (if we’re to invest in ensuring every arrival is properly helped to settle into Australia), unfairness for refugees unable to reach Australia by boat and electoral hysteria;
- long-term detention leads to mental illness, self-harm, damaged children, and the kind of “banality of evil” phenomenon being demonstrated by Immigration bureaucrats; and
- boat turnbacks risk, but don’t inevitably lead to, some deaths at sea (including of Australian service personnel), damage to relationship with Indonesia and intense and unhealthy secrecy.
Can a boat turnbacks policy by itself address the consequences of appearing to reward boat arrivals and therefore encouraging people to get in boats? Immigration would probably advise that it cannot, that it must be used in combination with a strict policy that no arrivals will ever be resettled here, but given the moral consequences, it is worth considering fully. The government’s policy of “stop the boats” has been successful — so can that success be used to ameliorate other aspects of its policies?
Then there is the need to work with other countries in the region to develop a comprehensive regional solution to refugees. This is the key component of the set of policies recommended by the Gillard government’s panel of Angus Houston, Michael L’Estrange and Paris Aristotle, which recommended offshore processing but only as, in effect, a stepping stone to a comprehensive regional agreement.
Since September 2013, the government’s commitment to such an agreement has consisted of Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton travelling the smaller countries of the region futilely offering bribes to take a few refugees, except Cambodia, where a wad of $55 million was blown on what turned out to be just one refugee.
There doesn’t need to be a binary let-them-come versus malicious punishment option here — as much as it’s in the interests of the Greens and refugee advocates on the one hand, and the Coalition on the other, to make us think there does. Neither side wants us to think through the moral consequences of the policies they advocate or implement, and whether alternatives are less worse in terms of consequences. It’s not “solutionism” to do that, it’s what any policymaker, and any mature human, must do.
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Ten years ago, I blithely argued, “There is no queue”. As a committed lefty, it has been a long, painful and difficult path to accepting that I was naive to argue from such simplistic talking-points. I also used to invoke “racism” as a catch-all criticism of anyone who spoke ill of the “peaceful, beautiful” religion of Islam. I ignored the fact that it’s not a race but a set of ideas that run contrary to most of the principles I, as a progressive advocate, find antithetical.
This is such a difficult issue for the Left.
No it is not. You have principles and believe in human rights and the rule of law or you don’t, they aren’t disposable tissues.
I seem to recall the John Howard referred to Nauru as “the final solution” or perhaps he said “the final Pacific solution” . Apparently he was not a student of history.
Let’s face it. The Crikey et al politically correct lines are continuing to be shown for the disasters they are.
This is the best analysis and article on these fraught subjects I have read anywhere. Where I believe Labor failed was when it agreed to Abbott’s legislation to validate offshore processing (prior to last year’s High Court hearing/decision) without insisting on obtaining some concomitant improvements in the way in which the offshore people were treated and their rights. Whilst I agree with all you have said, may I suggest also the introduction of a “Parliamentary Commissioner” or Ombudsman (or similar, but equally independent) with absolute rights of access to the camps wherever they may be, public reports, and the right to mandate change in management techniques and facilities.
This would go a long way to eliminating the “gulag” circumstances of these camps.
which part of ”it’s illegal’ don’t you understand. As it is illegal to take people by force across foreign borders and jail them why would better conditions make it legal.
“The latter will lead to drownings, ”
Prove it. Let’s see your evidence. Let’s see your intellectual rigor.
Go on. Let’s see a climate-change-esque pile of facts on this claim.
Oh shit! You don’t have any!!
Never, ever, ever, have any of you put that claim to even close to the kind of rigor you pompously demand of other issues. You insist on costings, research, independent inquiries, the whole shebang on other issues, but on this issue?
The laughable idea that we can stop people from drowning IN EVERY OCEAN IN THE WORLD by doing a bunch of racist garbage to a handful of hapless people on a desert island. The idea that we can look out over the vast masses of humanity struggling across the globe and say ‘yep, they’re gonna drown off christmas island unless we get a bunch of kids raped and maybe some people set on fire could help?’.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense logic that we rightly decry when it’s used to justify belligerent nonsense like ‘preemptive’ invasions of the middle east, or harsh sentencing like the three strikes law. Pseudo Intellectual tough guy talk dressed up as Hard Nosed Pragmatism. What’s next? ‘torture stops terrorism?’
The massive scope and complexity of this issue, an endless sprawling season of chaos,
and so-called journalists demand- in the name of intellectual rigor no less- that we engage in of mind-blowing credulity about this, of all claims. The INCREDIBLY POLITICALLY CONVENIENT CLAIM that we are influencing this situation in exactly the way a bunch of racist talkback radio dickheads claim we are.
A laughable, pitiful, utterly untested claim that has morphed into conventional wisdom after years of groveling on this issue by labor, and labor friendly journalists, and the rows of gutless policy wonks and pundits who saw how the wind was blowing and nodded along with this utterly unproven claim. The apex of Australia’s personal version of the cult of the serious, savvy journalist.
And the idea that is about winning votes? As if Labor gains seats from doing this? All labor does by buying into this nonsense is let their enemies set the agenda. They can never win a racist-off with the conservatives, don’t be absurd! Every election they lurch to the right on this issue, and can you point to one, even one case where it paid off for them?
The truth is that when Labor bowed on this issue, they turned an issue that was splitting the conservatives in half, into an issue that split them in half instead. It was a massive own goal, and the deeper they dig themselves in, and the more people defend them, the harder it is for them to get back to a place where they can push an agenda, instead of just reacting to the conservatives.
In 20 years time everybody will know that this is just another example of a racist policy supposedly done ‘for their own good’ when nothing of the sort is the case. This is our white Australia policy. This is our stolen generations. There were plenty of apologists for the Cruel Kindness of those policies, but nobody has any illusions about them now, or the dubious quality of the rationalizations in their defense.
Everybody will look back on apologism like this and laugh at the ridiculous idea that we’re really trying to keep these people safe, or doing anything to ensure their safety.
Oh and GJ putting in the canard about ‘economic refugees’ even though the facts on that matter are VERY clear.
Hear hear!
This whole article is a bunch of stupid bullshit, Bernard. You should be ashamed of yourself.
This line I found baffling.
“or whatever reason, the perception of asylum seekers forcing themselves on Australia by travelling here by boat generates an intense reaction among large sections of the electorate. And intense is not overstating it — a substantial proportion of the electorate, for example, still believe Australia is too soft on asylum seekers even now, despite the rape and child abuse camp we’ve established on Nauru, despite the murder of an inmate on Manus Island, despite rampant self-harm.”
Go back and read what you wrote, Keane. Read it. This is the dumbest argument ever made. How about you look at the polling showing it is a lower priority to voters to actual material things that affect them like the health system, schools, transport, employment and so on. How about, like the above commenter suggested, you look at HISTORY and find that the ALP never, ever, won an election on this?
Do you call the 2001 election the “Tampa” election too? Good god.
Crikey itself has reported on what a low stated priority for voters this issue is. There are numerous indications that this is a fabricated issue politically, but Labor keeps foolishly feeding the flames, making things worse for them with every successive election.
It’s typical insider logic, the journalists and pollies obsessed with finding the ‘real australian’ (who they are sure, lives somewhere in the west of sydney and has social politics somewhere to the right of ghengis khan), people they are so out of touch with that they have become convinced that talkback radio is a genuine insight into the nation’s mindset.
But when the racist backlash reared it’s head back in one nation’s day, it wasn’t damaging to labor- it was a huge headache and wedge issue for their opponents! Only successive eras of capitulation, validation, adding credibility to this farce, has made it into a huuuuuge liability for Labor.
If Labor was smart, it would have capitalized on the other trend showed by one nation- people sick of establishment politics. But they could hardly turn against that. . .
Shorten can lose the election in one easy announcement by following your advice.
We can’t even stop over 300 people drowning here every year, and if we wanted to stop refugees from drowning we could have rescued them instead of ignoring may days.