The news from Manus Island is dreadful. We know that at least one asylum seeker has died as a result of injuries sustained in disturbances over the past three days. Many asylum seekers have been wounded, some seriously, in reported gunshot, club or knife wounds.
There is still much we do not know. We do not know if these deaths and injuries were sustained within the perimeter wire i.e. on Australian-administered camp territory, or outside the wire i.e., on PNG sovereign territory. We do not know if asylum seekers had voluntarily left the Australian-run compound, or demonstrated (or rioted) within it; we do not know if the compound was then invaded by angry or out-of-control PNG police or security forces, and if asylum seekers then fled the compound trying to escape attacks by armed men.
There is the official story so far, as told by Scott Morrison, and the unofficial counter-story as told by Ian Rintoul of the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition, based on many telephoned reports by detainees. They are very different stories.
There are two official enquiries announced so far: an Australian Immigration Department enquiry, and a PNG Government enquiry. Labor has called for an independent enquiry. Labor should therefore support Gillian Triggs (Director of the Australian Human Rights Commission) in her reasonable call for access to the site and to witnesses, to enable her to prepare a thorough independent enquiry. If the two governments have nothing to hide, they should promptly grant Triggs' request for access.
Whatever story or stories emerge as to how the violence and deaths happened, there is the underlying basic question; did the Australian Government violate its duty of care, by sending to a detention centre in a poorly-policed foreign country people who had arrived in Australian waters and made asylum claims there under the Refugee Conventions? Many decent Australians would contend that it did.
Whatever bad things have happened at Curtin, Woomera, Baxter, Maribynong and Villawood detention centres, these places were or are subject to Australian law and public accountability safeguards. The truth usually eventually comes out. Manus is not, or very imperfectly. Cover-up of atrocity is a lot easier in Manus than it would be in an Australian detention centre.
And this of course is what was intended. Manus is part of the asylum-seeker deterrent system. The fear of death at sea, and the fear of death by security force brutalisation at Manus, are intended to deter asylum-seeker voyages. To stop the boats.
And, awkwardly, this was Labor's view too, when it reopened Manus late in its final term of government. And this is why Labor is impotent now to do more than call for the facts of what happened. It cannot evade policy responsibility for Manus being in operation.
Tanya Plibersek is reported to have said words to the effect that a few deaths or injuries in riots at Manus is better than hundreds of drowning at sea. Well yes, but wrong comparison. First, because Labor's record of asylum seeker deaths at sea in 2009–2013 is far greater than since the Coalition regained power, and more than double the death toll under Howard. Second, because asylum seeker deaths at sea haven't been inevitable, but are usually the result of negligent or dilatory Australian agency responses to known distress situations.
Labor's problem — and we see it again in its first responses to the awful news from Manus — is that it is neither principled enough nor brutal enough. It suffers from conflicting objectives: in government it wanted to deter, but to stay within the law and decency as far as possible. So it sent mixed policy messages to the Border Protection Command, ADF, and Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
Like Henry II with his troublesome priest Thomas A'Becket, it wanted its officials to deal firmly with the mounting asylum seeker inflow, but not in ways that Australia could be held to account for violations of law or rescue failures. It sent conflicting signals to officials. It tried ineffectually to cover up rescue failures that should never have happened, if it had made clear its determination to apply correct rescue-at-sea protocols.
The Coalition's message is brutal and clear: we will stop the boats. To do this we will break international maritime and refugee laws, jeopardise Australia's relations with Indonesia, and stand at arm's length and watch as major avoidable violence and human rights abuses take place in PNG. Because all this bad stuff reinforces the deterrent message we are utterly determined to keep sending.
And so far, it is working.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Cambodia and Poland and author of several books including Reluctant Rescuers.