The recent transfer of pregnant women from the Papua New Guinea detention centre to Australia was a good decision by the Gillard Government. The choice to follow medical advice not to transfer children under the age of seven to the facility is also good policy. But who could credit a Labor Government that believes detaining women and children (of any age) in remote locations, without justifiable reason, is a good idea in the first place?
The detention of any person in Nauru or PNG is bad policy. Care must be taken not to obscure the needs of vulnerable men when focusing on women and children. But the incarceration of women and children in particular sits uncomfortably with many Australians. The Government would be wise to suspend future transfers.
The capacity of the offshore asylum seeker camps is already surpassed by large numbers of ongoing arrivals, which render meaningless the 'deterrent' excuse. If the Government continues to make an example of women and children, the chorus of dissent will continue to grow. When Labor returned to power in 2007 it was on a promise to end the cruelties of the previous Coalition government, not to embrace or entrench them.
While Labor regularly finds itself wedged on asylum policy, the Coalition is gifted with an easier ride and allowed to indulge in higher levels of hypocrisy. Detaining asylum seekers in Nauru and PNG is Coalition policy — they invented it, they claimed it, Tony Abbott advocated for its return. But as the policy fails to produce desired outcomes, shadow immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison (pictured) is shifting blame to the Government.
Ray Hadley and other commentators supportive of the Coalition never call Morrison out on his 'inconsistencies'. Hadley, like Abbott, deliberately refers to asylum seekers as 'illegal' as he rails relentlessly against Gillard, and Morrison is one of his favourite guests. The rest of the media should stop letting Morrison off the hook.
When news broke of the transfers of pregnant women from Manus, Morrison quickly linked the move with the Government's decision not to transfer young children to Manus (based on medical advice covering a range of issues, including immunisations).
This was, he cried, 'another example of how the Government doesn't think these issues through' — meaning: women in Manus will get pregnant and give birth to children under the age of seven. But evidence of past Coalition practice, under its hastily cobbled together Pacific Solution policy, gives no reason for Morrison to gloat.
Morrison claims he doesn't oppose the transfer of pregnant women to Australia and says 'you always have to have the proper care provided to people who are in that situation'. But under Coalition policy, newborn babies, toddlers and pregnant women were all indefinitely detained in PNG and Nauru, and women were not transferred to Australia to give birth to their babies.
Medical reports from the Coalition's time in power note the case of a 17-month-old in Manus with congenital hip dislocation, yet nowhere are concerns raised about the toddler's immunisation or about other very young children. The case of an eight-year-old with Malaria, complicated by severe urinary tract infection, was reported during the same month that two depressed pregnant women told staff they wanted to abort their pregnancies.
Both major parties have taken risks with the health of detainees transferred to Manus. Malaria, for example, is a serious problem in the region and numerous detainees (including young children) and staff were infected during the Coalition's time in power.
No preventative medication can provide complete protection, and the Royal Perth Hospital notes that malaria is a significant cause of stillbirths, infant mortality and low birth weight, and 'pregnant women are twice as attractive to malaria-carrying mosquitoes as non-pregnant women'. The World Health Organisation cautions, 'pregnant women should be advised to avoid travelling to areas where malaria transmission occurs'.
Morrison also tells us that he is concerned about inadequate separation (a wire fence and green shade cloth) between families and single men in the Manus facility. But how can we take him seriously when the Coalition previously detained men, women and children within mixed gender offshore compounds — without even a shade cloth — and women reported being too frightened to go to the toilet in a camp full of male strangers?
If Labor continues to support an inhumane and flawed policy, which is not slowing boat arrivals and does nothing to address the problems of displaced refugees in the region, the effects of the political wedge will always be Labor's to own. But it was the collusion of both major parties that gave us the Pacific Solution in 2001 and both are responsible for the decision to reintroduce the policy in 2012, against the advice of government agencies.
Both Labor and the Coalition should now be feeling the full force of the media's scrutiny, and both should be condemned for toying with the lives of vulnerable human beings.
Susan Metcalfe is the author of The Pacific Solution (Australian Scholarly).