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This week we learnt that the human rights protection for asylum seekers in our former colony Papua New Guinea are more protected by the PNG constitution than they would be in Australia. The PNG government has quickly moved not to change the law and constitution, but to make arrangements to close the centre and ask Australia to take back the asylum seekers. Already PNG lawyers are talking about claims for compensation for the unlawful detention, and rightly so.
The Government's vilification of people arriving by boat has reached the level where the term 'illegal' features in the Budget documents. Immigration Minister Morrison has insisted on referring to people arriving by boat as 'illegals' for some years, despite the Migration Act using the less pejorative term 'unlawful non-citizen'. This is not just a lawyer's linguistic debate; if it were not important, the Government would not insist on the term.
Julia Gillard said 'people like my own parents who have worked hard all their lives can't abide the idea that others might get an inside track to special privileges'. Managing similar perceptions in East Timor, where there is a tide of resentment against Australia among parts of the population, will be a challenge.
The Howard years made me feel ashamed to be Australian, and I felt about his electoral defeat the way East Germans felt about the Berlin Wall coming down: as a kind of cleansing. Rudd disappoints for a different reason.
When debating key issues such as the balance between sovereignty and the human rights of asylum seekers, we can sometimes forget that we're dealing with people. What's clear for advocates can pose difficulties for politicians.
While it is inherently racist for a person to claim membership of the best race, it is no bad thing for a religious person to claim membership of the one true religion. That is what religious people do.
We need to be on our guard against laws and policies enacted in the name of the public interest but with insufficient consideration for the human rights of the minority.
Yesterday's announcement of the Government's policy shift away from indefinite detention of asylum seekers brings Australia closer to UNHCR recommendations. It remains to be seen if it will have the courage of its convictions if more boats do arrive.
The power of the State can be exercised capriciously and unaccountably when the “Don’t ask; don’t tell” approach to government is immune from parliamentary, judicial or public scrutiny. It is the task of lawyers to make it more difficult for politicians to take this approach.
ALP Immigration Policy includes both change and continuity. It gives more priority to teaching English over testing, but there's still too much reliance on ministerial discretion rather than the judicial system.
Compared to that on Nauru, the Christmas Island detention facility might seem to be surrounded by calm seas. But it is exposed by distance, and if a storm of government hostility to asylum seekers blows again, the processes of determining claims there appear to leave asylum seekers dangerously exposed.
The Howard Government must be given credit for increasing the size of our migration program, including the refugee and humanitarian component. But the deliberations of civil society should provide a fair go for all refugees, including those who arrive by boat without a visa.
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