Mohammed and Rosie came to Australia from Iran seeking protection. Until late 2018, they were sleeping on a friend's lounge room floor. They each received $240 per week (89 per cent of the Newstart payment) as part of the Status Resolution Support Service (SRSS), which helped them to buy food, clothing, and hygiene items, and pay a small amount in rent.
In November 2018, the government notified Mohammed and Rosie that their SRSS support would be withdrawn. They were very distressed by the news and anxious about the fact that they had not yet secured a job, despite their numerous attempts, or been able to find suitable housing.
The odds were never in their favour. Mohammed and Rosie are in their mid-60s, speak little English, and have had very little education. They are also suffering from debilitating long term illnesses. Mohammed was part of a community gardening group, which we hoped would assist him to build networks, develop new skills, and improve his mental health. But after his SRSS payments were cancelled, Mohammed could not afford the weekly commute and stopped attending. Without employment and a safety net, Mohammed and Rosie are homeless. They rely on food aid and emergency vouchers from JRS and other organisations to survive day-to-day.
Homelessness, hunger, enforced poverty, and unending limbo — these are ongoing realities for thousands of children, women, and men seeking Australia's protection irrespective of how or when they arrived. The government slashed the federal budget allocation for SRSS from $139.8 million in 2017 — 2018 to $52.6 million in 2019 — 2020, a reduction of more than 62 per cent. 13,299 people were on the program in February 2018, and only 5,888 remain in April 2019.
Many who have waited years for interviews with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) or some form of merits review have been cut off and are having protection claims rejected. They now wait anywhere from six months to two years for court hearings.
Others have been found to be refugees and have access to Newstart and English language training. But the government's 2014 Legacy Caseload Bill, legislated with Clive Palmer's support, ensures that approximately 15,000 refugees in this group are given three to five year temporary protection visas with no effective prospects for permanent settlement.
The Bill also warrants that these refugees will not be permitted to bring their families to Australia. The deliberate removal of the right to family reunion for this group has created a circumstance in which Australia has thousands of people recognised as having a well founded fear of persecution at home, but deems it appropriate to leave their spouses, children, and parents in the same situations. Many have not seen their loved ones for up to eight years.
"Australians cannot let this reality continue. Addressing it requires an intentional cross-party and whole-of-society approach to reframing and rethinking the parameters of the debate."
The plight of the men and women on Manus Island and Nauru is equally urgent. Recent reports indicate at least 26 cases of attempted suicide of self-harm on Manus since 18 May. Behrouz Boochani tells the story of a young man who set his room on fire and was taken to the local jail. 'He has witnessed his dreams being stripped away. He is a young man who, like many others held on these two islands, could have lived a simple and safe life in a free society.'
Emerging dissonances in politics and policy-making
Simplicity, safety, freedom, being with loved ones — these are the basic and fundamentally human desires of all the refugees and people seeking asylum caught up in our broken policy regime. They would be our desires if we were in the same situations.
The recent federal election was not fought on the backs of refugees and people seeking asylum. Neither major party actively stoked fear of the refugee outsider or extolled the virtue of strong borders during the campaign. This election showed us that refugees and people seeking asylum do not need to be instrumentalised for votes. Perhaps refugee policymaking could be separated from politics. Perhaps it could be evidence-based and humane, made beyond the reaches of the 24 hour news cycle or the polls.
Alas, the prevailing frames and politics of border protection quickly came to the fore post-election. Despite its clear and undisputed mandate for the next three years, the government needed to question the new Shadow Minister for Home Affairs' position on Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB). Labor in turn needed to reaffirm its support for the principles of turn-backs, offshore processing, and community safety. The mainstream media followed suit in its coverage, and after years of government silence about 'on water operations,' information about boats off our coast line suddenly appeared in newspapers again.
Despite this newfound electoral reality, the thrust of refugee and asylum policy-making also remains unchanged and unchallenged, stuck in the deeply institutionalised logic of deterrence. This in spite of the fact that the powerful idea that any inkling of humane treatment will galvanise the people smugglers and restart the boats has been disproven time and time again.
As we have written elsewhere, abolishing permanent protection visas, cutting support services, and sending people to Manus and Nauru never stopped the boats. There have been 33 known boat turn-back operations since the announcement of OSB spread across five years since 2013. The necessary transfer of more than 1250 children, women, and men to Australia for medical treatment under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison was accomplished without any major new influx of boats or collapse in OSB. Ditto the passage of the MedEvac Bill this year.
So even though we now know elections can successfully be fought and won beyond the toxic politics of fear, refugee and asylum policy, bureaucratic structures and on-the-ground practices continue to be predicated upon policy changes that came into effect post Tampa in 2001 and post 'Stop the Boats' in 2013.
This dissonance between a changed electoral landscape and the continuation of entrenched policies can be characterised by what Robert Manne calls 'automaticity' in our orientation towards those who arrived by boat between 2010 and 2014. The relation of one deterrent measure to another and the relationship of means to ends have been forgotten, and what may previously have demonstrably served a purpose is now purposeless cruelty.
How do we confront purposeless cruelty?
For people like Mohammed, Rosie, Behrouz, and the thousands of other innocent people who came to Australia seeking safety, the current reality is one of pain, suffering, and even death. It is a reality they have no choice of turning away from.
Australians cannot let this reality continue. Addressing it requires introspection, honesty, and bold leadership. It also requires an intentional cross-party and whole-of-society approach to reframing and rethinking the parameters of the debate. Getting to this point is an aspiration, but we have to try and work towards it. Parliamentarians, business leaders, university professors, union officials, faith groups, celebrities, diasporas, leaders with lived experience and everyday Australians all have a role to play in demonstrating to our political class as a whole that such a rethink is necessary.
For a start we can learn to listen, digest, and understand others' views even if they disagree with us; be curious and critical about the multitude of facts presented and their sources; learn how to have values and rights-based conversations; find and share different kinds of stories; join local parish or community groups who care about changing the conversation, and speak to local and federal leaders.
Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego are Director and Policy and Advocacy Coordinator respectively for Jesuit Refugee Service Australia.
Main image: Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Kristina Keneally on the campaign trail in May 2019. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)