Boundless plains to share
Treasurer Peter Costello urges Australians to have more children. He seems to think a bigger population would be a good thing for Australia. So why is his government pathologically averse to, one could say xenophobic towards, refugees?
Australia has distinguished itself yet again by proposing refugee policy even more appalling than before. Having previously ‘excised’ certain remote islands from our ‘migration zone’, sending asylum seekers who reached these atolls to hellish detention camps in Nauru or Papua New Guinea to be interned for years — without right of habeas corpus, access to family, lawyers, journalists or adequate health care — while their refugee claims were assessed, the Howard Government now seeks to excise the rest of Australia, yes the whole continent, from the grasp of seafaring refugees. Only those who arrive by plane will be permitted to remain in Australia while their claims are processed. All others will be sent to ‘refurbished’ camps in Nauru, beyond the reach of human rights, human kindness and what greater degree of justice Australian law might offer them.
The UNHCR has condemned the move, warning that it will increase the risk of refoulement — sending a person to any country where they might face persecution — prohibited under Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a party. The UN is also concerned that the Bill has no provision for legal assistance to the asylum seekers; denies them access to independent merits review of negative decisions on their refugee status; denies them access to Australian courts; and does not require the Minister for Immigration to report to Parliament on cases that take more than 90 days to process.
Says retiring Federal Court judge Ron Merkel :
"Jews were rejected at the Swiss border and sent back to Germany because they were unlawful. The Refugee Convention was created to ensure that will never happen again. . . [T]he sad fact is that most of the people we’re now proposing to send to Nauru are of the very group that have the high percentage of refugee determinations in their favour. It’s the people who arrive by air [who comprise] the lowest percentage being upheld as refugees, they’re allowed to stay in our system because they don’t come from West Papua or other places like that. But the groups who do have this high percentage of refugee determination are the ones we’re turning our backs on."
Merkel hints at why this is happening. Rights Australia is less coy, dubbing it the ‘Indonesian Appeasement Bill,’ intended to placate our neighbour Indonesia, irate over the acceptance by Australia of West Papuan refugees.
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee is due to report on the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 on 13 June. Submissions to the committee have closed but you can still write to your Senators to oppose this Bill. Australians all, let us live by the little-known second verse of our national anthem, made bitterly ironic by this government:
For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine to advance Australia fair.
Hello – had you come across this electronic brief published by the Parliamentary library.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/settlement.htm
“This electronic brief provides an overview of Australia’s settlement services for migrants and humanitarian entrants, and a guide to internet resources, research and comment on current settlement issues in Australia. It also provides information about the development of settlement and ‘integration’ services overseas.”
Readers may wish to note that in mid-August this bill was withdrawn by the government at the 11th hour — a victory for civil society and renegade MPs who vowed to vote against it.