One step forward, another step back
Andrew Hamilton calls for a humane response to Australia's asylum seekers.
Recent news about asylum seekers has been at one remove from the way in which they experience their lives in Australia. From stories of self-harm, gassings and batonings and the storming of fences, we have now moved on to stories of applications for refugee status, courts, enquiries and government initiatives.
Here are some of the more important items.
The enquiries have been into detention. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has been holding hearings into the detention of children. Those who have made submissions have asked whether, given the manifest psychological harm suffered by children in detention, the regime can be said to be in the best interests of the child. Some submissions have also asked whether it is right for the minister responsible for the detention regime also to be the legal guardian of the children, and therefore responsible for deciding what is in their best interests. Few were reassured by Minister Philip Ruddock's most recent defence of child detention on the grounds that, if the children were released, they might be kidnapped and held hostage by other asylum seekers.
Two separate delegations from the UN Commission on Human Rightshave visited Australia to report on aspects of Australia's detention regime.
Louis Joinet, chairman of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, named four areas of concern: the detention of children and other vulnerable people; the relationship between indeterminate detention and the widespread depression suffered by asylum seekers; the issues raised by the administration of detention centres by private companies; and the practice of holding in prisons asylum seekers and prisoners who have completed their sentences but who await resolution of their visa status.
It is as ritual a practice for government to criticise judges for not implementing its will when important cases are about to be heard as it is for cuckoos to sing before spring. The latest criticism preceded a case being heard by five judges of the Federal Court. At issue is the interpretation of recent government laws that sought to prevent judicial appeal against most immigration decisions. Judges have offered diverging interpretations of the scope of the law. Some of these interpretations suggest that the new laws may not efficaciously exclude appeals based on natural justice. These issues are so important that they are likely to be tested finally in the High Court.
But behind courts and enquiries are human faces and human predicaments. Particularly poignant is the case of the East Timorese who fled East Timor up to eight years ago. At that time Australia would not have their cases heard because Indonesia would have been offended if the East Timorese had been found to be refugees. They have since settled and raised their families here, but are now forced to apply for refugee status, with the prospect that they will be returned to East Timor. The government has rejected a proposal that they should be offered special humanitarian visas.
State governments have also become involved in asylum seekers' issues. The South Australian government was drawn into the treatment of children at Woomera, while the Victorian government has appealed to the federal government to allow the East Timorese asylum seekers to stay on humanitarian grounds. It has also contributed funds to organisations offering legal and other services to the group.
But the general field of play remains the same: the stronger the criticism and the more authoritative the body making it, the more intransigent the response. The government will not be moved in any sense of the word. In its intransigence, it knows that it enjoys the support of the majority of Australians. Those of us who argue that the present policy is humanly destructive and deeply corrupting of public life still need to persuade other Australians of the truth of our convictions.
Andrew Hamilton sj is Eureka Street's publisher.
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